Muscle Building and Beginner Powerlifting Program

Sometimes the internet can be a daunting place and lead to more confusion than assistance. Most times you will see results with any program if you stick to it (therein lies the problem!). How do you know that the program you are following will work? With this doubt in mind it becomes easy to become a “jumper”; one who does a program for 2 weeks, finds another program to do for 2 weeks, then finds another program after that… and so on and so forth until no progress has been made.

The following programs are 4 week phases that have been tested repeatedly and shown success when done following the rules and guidelines for training (details in my previous post here). We start by determining the lifters 1RM (1 Rep Max) by either max effort for 1 rep or 2-4 reps and calculating their 1RM (if you want to try this and do not want to find your 1RM, choose your working weight with 7 or 8 RPE (rating of perceived exertion) for the program, where you don’t fail your lift but could do 1 or 2 more reps than the target reps. After the main 3 lifts 1RM are determined, the percentage of that can be calculated into the equation. This programming will build muscle and general fitness (or GPP, general physical preparedness, as the great and masterful Louie Simons would call it). Starting with the higher repetitions also builds movement competency for those newer to the lifts.

Using percentages is nothing new to training and there is a reason they are still used regularly, because it works! The exercise selections are based around building a balanced body using the basic movements of the body… not squatting while standing on a stability ball with a band around your knees and balancing a medicine ball on your head! We call that “enter-train-ment”, and it simply serves the purpose of attention grabber, not something you want to try at home.

*Hypertrophy will really come down to an increase in volume over time. This increase along with eating enough calories and getting enough rest will result in larger muscles.

Sample Program for Weeks 1 - 4:
Workout A - D are individual days. Working from top to bottom and left to right (the first column after the exercises is week 1). As always, start with a warm up of some kind to prevent injury

Any exercises paired together are done as super sets, where you do 1 set of the first exercise and then do 1 set of the other exercise, then you repeat that for 3 total sets.

After the 4 weeks, the lifter has the option to take the next week to re-test their max or continue into the following program. All of the lifters that have used this program or similar have seen strength improvements in their main lifts after only 4 weeks!

What brings results is not fancy exercises or something that seems so complicated it has to work… program design is simple and the basics are what really work and deliver results. You just need to follow the program and challenge yourself to progress.

If you look at the main lifts from week 1 they start with 3 sets of 10 reps, and then by week 3 they change to 4 sets of 8 reps. Seeing as increasing volume is critical for building muscle, let’s use it as an equation (math is fun)! If I have 100 pounds for squat and I do a total of 30 reps (3x10) that is a volume of 3,000 pounds for week 1. If by week 4 I squat 125 pounds for a total of 32 reps (4x8) that is a volume of 4,000 pounds. Thats a 1,000 pound volume increase in the squat exercise alone!

After the 4 weeks of the program you can take a deload (easy week with light weight) or take a few days off for rest and retest your max effort to gauge your percentage training. After that week you can change exercises, or even repeat the same program (as long as you can progress).

Exercise selection and understanding what is needed for you specifically is equally important so you train your weaknesses. Some lifters will struggle in different parts of the lift in their 1RM attempts and that lets you know which exercises are critical for the next program in order to strengthen their weaker link in the movement. So there is some variable, and not every person will use the same exercises.

And as always with anyone following a program I give them: WRITE YOUR WEIGHTS DOWN AND TRACK YOUR EXERCISES!!! This way you know what you did last time and can improve upon that.

Feel free to come in or send me questions if you want to try this out but don’t fully understand any aspect of this!

Ryan Sensenig