What's Your Program?

Training Powerlifting
1

I am starting this thread for people like me who aren’t actually on a specific program but still make gains. This can be a place to talk about what influences the methods you use, what hasn’t worked for you in the past, and also to help give other lifter’s on set programs new ideas for their training. Here is a layout of my short term plan for the Night of The Living Dead in about 12 weeks:

Block 1: 4 Weeks- Strength/Coordination Oriented

Max Effort Cycle- all for singles- Week 4 is a deload
Upper-
Week 1- Floor Press
Week 2- Seated Log Pin Press
Week 3- Close Grip or something
Week 4- Stability-Chaos Bench

Lower- singles
Week 1- Close Stance Low Box Squats
Week 2- Raw DL
Week 3- Chains Suspended GM’s(for a triple)
Week 4- Stability-Chaos Squats

Repeated Effort Cycle-
Upper-
Weeks 1-4- Light speed work/Heavy Upper Pulls (this is back and bi’s day, brah!)

Lower-
Week 1- RDL’s for a 6rep max
Week 2- Squats for a 6rep max
Week 3- Speed Pulls- Work up to a 1rm
Week 4- Speed Squats&Pulls w/50%

This is a Strength/Coordination Oriented Cycle because the heavy rep work on RE Days. I feel the ME days arent great for building strength. I know I will catch some shit for this but hear me out. Max weights do not cause enough time under tension to elicite stable gains in strength and power. Also, hitting singles all the time with no heavy rep work could cause you to close the gap on your training max and your competition max… which is very bad. The heaviest weights you lift need to be in competition, which is why I will very rarely hit the big 3 on ME day. That being said, there is no better way to increase intra/intermuscular coordination that with max weights. This is all a combination of info from “Supertraining”, “The Science of Sports Training”, and “Flex Magazine”… just kidding.

The reason for the 6RM on RE day is not arbitrary. This is through practical application/experience and also from DeLorne’s program for building strength. DeLorne waved from 10RM, to 6RM, to 3RM with a very precise warm-up and rep system that autoregualted itself based on the parparedness of the athlete. Look it up. It’s pretty cool stuff. Looks a lot like the base principals of 5/3/1 only this was about 50 years ago. With 6 reps on RE day it’s heavy enough to create some decent time under tension but light enough that I don’t feel like a trash truck hit me on ME days.

When this 4 week block is over, a Strength/Speed Oriented block will begin. This will start up traditional dynamic cycles, instead of the RE days, for squats and deads. I might ditch the singles for this 4 week period and go on to 3rm for my ME days. I am still going through my old logs to figure out what I am going to do for the final 4 weeks. But it will be similar to the above mentioned Strength/Coordination cycle.

Also, cardio wise:
3 days of 30 minutes at 70% maxHR
2 days of 15 minute intervals
I am trying to drop some weight since the meet is solely based on BW.

Thats the plan for now. So far so good. I started the second week yesterday and felt very strong.

2

All I have been doing lately is squat, bench, chins, deadlifts and light arm work MWF. I try to do all the lifts everyday but cycle intensity based on how I feel. Hard, but simple.

Oh, and tuesday/thursday I do cardio since I have been trying to get back down to 181 for a meet on the 14th. After that I am done with cardio for a while.

3

monday:
squat
front squat
good morning (re-added these recently to fix my itch to have same number of exercises every day lol I do them real light)

wednesday:
bench
1board
2board

thursday:
deadlift
bent row
squat to a milkcrate

friday or saturday:
close grip bench
super highrep fly w/10pound plates
super highrep side delt raise w/10pound plates

I use old schoolish peaking schedules for squat bench dead, the rest is one high rep set. I train in my basement so I dont have a lot of equipment, and I find this program is the best for the equipment I got. Been doing almost exactly that for the past 3 years. I guess it’s become a routine more than a program, I’m not comfortable doing anything else than that really.

4

Bastardized Westside.

Sunday is Shoulders, Triceps and Lats. I rotate between standing military, seated military, and seated dumbbell shoulder press. Triceps are performed heavy on this day, lats are high volume.

Monday is deadlift and accessories. Been running Ed Coan’s deadlift program (Tsampa.org: Coan-Phillipi 10 Week Deadlift Routine)

Wednesday is Max Effort bench and accessories. I max out some form of bench, rotate it every couple weeks, or every week, depends on how I am feelin and how gains are coming.

Friday is squat and accessories. I had been doing Ed Coan’s squat peaking cycle, but the past two weeks I have done an old “body building” squat workout due to not having some spotters available.

5

I pretty much do as I feel like, as I dont feel the need at this point in my career for a wrote-down-to-the very-last-rep-on-the-ab-machine cycle.

The last 3 weeks for bench have been crazy volume, as on the squat and deadlift. Also some really heavy band tensions too. Last 3 weeks of deadlifting have been all straight weight so nothing special there…not maxing out tho. Just trying to learn and tweak my gear.

6

I keep it pretty simple too. For a while I based everything on 3 week cycles and it worked pretty good.

Week 1- ME Squat, Bench, and Dead
Week 2- The Prefect Rep methed on the same three
Week 3- DE on the big three

Now I’m trying out a westside template with more conditioning than I’m used to. There’s one thing I wanted to ask though, I was thinking about doing two different conditioing exercises after my workouts, sled drags and sledge hammer; would it be best to do the sled drags after my leg days and hammer after press days or the other way around? My logic was a finisher for that day.

7

most of my training philosphy is based upon current weaknesses… im off to the gym but ill elaborate later.

8

right back from the gym.

My training is based upon what I was shit at at my last strongman comp and the events I havin coming up in my next comp

I will however always squat on mondays and deadlift on fridays. usually the normal type and a variation. the variation and set rep scheme will depend on my next comp.

tue-thurs will be split up into Olympics/cv day, and tri/OH day. again exercise choices and rep/set schemes will depend on events in next comp.

Sunday i train events and obv these will depend on equipment available and what events i need to master. pretty basic.

9

Lately training just one day a week, working the big 4.
Squats
Benches
Deads
Overheads

Five sets each, total ranging from 10 reps down to singles.

No excuses I should be training more, I am just lazy!

10

5/3/1 as written for most of it but currently in process of making modifications and eventually something else completely different. At least half will stay unchanged for 6 months or so as long as its working for me.

Standard 5/3/1 4 days a week with monthly deload

Bench Press: Not 5/3/1 on this one, Rotating 3 ME bench variations followed by high volume DB Bench/Rows/Lats
Squat: As written but with max that allows 10+ reps even on week 3. Adding Speed DL next cycle possibly as warmup
Press: As written in program but every other cycle Speed Bench press as assistance lift
DL: As written with heavy singles some weeks following main lift. Priority on Grip with assistance lifts.

11

I did 3 days/week with an 8 day week (i.e. squat every 9th day). Did 3x3 for two weeks and then went for a 10RM with a different exercise on the third week. Main exercises were SQ, MP, conventional DL, BP. Did this for 5 or 6 months and took my squat from ~405 to 495. MP went from ~155 to 185. Conventional went from ~405 to 455 for a triple.

That was a pretty great phase but I started to go too heavy on 10RM days. I decided to replace the 10RM week with a “hypertrophy” week so it would be easier on the body. Also going to try not going for AMRAP on the last work set and see what happens. Also, I have been fixing my digestion and recovery seems to be a lot better now.

Right now I’m trying out a slightly different scheme… 2 days on, 1 day off. 3 week cycle, 3x3, 3x1, 2x15+ with the main lifts being SQ, MP, sumo DL, incline BP with the 2x15+ days being front SQ, seated MP, conv DL, BP.

Hopefully with this plan I can get over a 545 sumo dead, 505 squat, and 205 MP this year (not much time left though).