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Overhead Press 2 Days per Week - Powerlifting & Strength Programs

Here are spreadsheets for powerlifting and strength programs that require the athlete to overhead press (aka military press) 2 times per week.

To search through all Lift Vault programs using a variety of criteria, check out the Lift Vault Program Library.

Intermediate Bodybuilding Program Spreadsheet by Ripped Body (5 Day)

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This is a 5 day intermediate bodybuilding program developed by the smart folks at Ripped Body. It runs for 4 weeks at a time, with the 4th week acting as a deload. It increases weight each week, but reduces volume each week of the cycle. If you’re still able to progress weekly without reducing sets or reps, then the beginner bodybuilding program is a better choice and will let you progress more quickly. [Read more…]

Ivysaur 3 Week Intermediate Aesthetic Workout Routine

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A progression from the recommended Ivysaur 4-4-8 Beginner Strength Program, the Ivysaur intermediate aesthetic program is a 5 day per week linear progression hypertrophy program. On it, you’ll be adding weight to your lifts every 3 weeks. [Read more…]

Tactical Barbell Program Spreadsheets (Operator, Zulu, Fighter, Mass & More)

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This is a collection of templates for the Tactical Barbell program. Included are the Operator, Zulu, Fighter, Gladiator, Mass, and Grey Man templates – all in the same spreadsheet, with drop down menus and 1RM inputs for easy customization.

Tactical Barbell is K. Black’s strength system for people whose job demands more than lifting: military, law enforcement, fire fighters, and other first responders. Sessions are short and submaximal – you’ll work between 70% and 90% of your 1RM in 3 week waves – so you can keep training hard on the conditioning side without digging yourself into a recovery hole.

Most templates run 2 to 4 days per week on a 6 week cycle, so there’s a version for almost any schedule. If you want a minimalist strength base that leaves room for everything else in your life, it’s hard to beat. If a bigger squat or bench is your main goal, a dedicated program like 5/3/1 will get you there faster.

[Read more…]

The Famous Reddit PPL Program Spreadsheet (Improved)

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The Reddit PPL is a 6 day push/pull/legs program built on linear progression. You train a push day, a pull day, and a leg day, then run all three again, with one rest day to finish the week. The barbell lifts (squat, bench, deadlift, overhead press, and rows) drive your progress and add weight every session you hit your reps, while the rest of each day is hypertrophy work to build size.

It came from Reddit user u/Metallicadpa and became the recommended PPL routine in the r/Fitness wiki. The idea is simple. You progress the main lifts the way a beginner program like GZCLP does, then wrap that in enough accessory volume to actually grow. If you’ve finished a basic linear progression and want more bodybuilding work without giving up strength gains, this is the natural next step.

It’s best for late beginners and early intermediate lifters who can train six days a week. If you can’t get to the gym that often, or you’re brand new to lifting, you’ll get more out of a 3 day full body program first. Run this when you have the time and a year or so of consistent training behind you.

[Read more…]

Sheikburn Program Spreadsheet (Sheiko x Hepburn Method)

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Sheikburn combines Hepburn Method style sets and rep structure (progressively adding more reps to the same weight OR adding more sets to the same rep range) Sheiko style periodization (alternating heavy days and light days).

Fans of “frankenprograms” like Megazord or GZCL / MagOrt / Deathbench will probably find this program interesting. [Read more…]

Coolcicada 6 Day PPL Spreadsheet

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The CoolCicada PPL is a free 6-day Push/Pull/Legs program that started as a post on the BodyBuilding.com forums. You train each movement pattern twice a week: push days hit chest, shoulders, and triceps; pull days hit back and biceps (with an optional deadlift); leg days cover quads, hamstrings, and calves. Main compound lifts run at 3-5 sets of 5 reps, and accessory work fills in at 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps. There are two spreadsheet versions below: one with deadlifts on pull day, and one without.

The program runs on simple linear progression. Add weight every session when you hit the prescribed reps. There’s no AMRAP, no RPE, no percentage-based loading. You just show up, hit your sets, and add a small plate next time. High frequency is the other piece of it: by running push, pull, and legs twice per week, you’re getting each muscle group in the gym every 3-4 days instead of once.

It’s a good fit for intermediate lifters who can get to the gym 6 days a week and want to build both size and strength at the same time. If you’re newer to lifting, I’d start with a 3-day linear program first, like Starting Strength or StrongLifts 5×5, before jumping into 6-day training. If you can only train 3-4 days, you’ll get more out of something like the PPL collection that has 3-4 day variants. For more PPL options, check out Lift Vault’s collection of PPL programs.

[Read more…]

Brian Alsruhe Conjugate Program

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Brian Alsruhe’s conjugate program is a 16 week, 4 day per week strength program that utilizes conjugate methods (dynamic effort, max effort) to stimulate strength gains. It makes heavy use of resistance bands and chains so it is recommended that these are used when following the program.

Max effort days [Read more…]

Brian Alsruhe Mass Building Powerlifting Program

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Another free strength program from Brian Alsruhe, this time focusing on mass building. A video overview is below.

[Read more…]

JV Askem 5×5 Compound Movement Program

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This is a simple 5×5 method that was developed based on JV Askem’s 5×5 training principles. You can find those below, originally featured here.

The spreadsheet comes with [Read more…]

Strength Power and Fortitude 4 Week Powerbuilding Program Spreadsheet

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The Strength Power and Fortitude (SPF) 4 week powerbuilding program by Brogan Pratt is an off season program for powerlifters designed to help build base strength and work capacity. It can be run as a 3 day or 4 day program and resets every 4 weeks, using an AMRAP set on week 4 to gauge progress.

[Read more…]

RTS General Intermediate Program Spreadsheet – Mike Tuchscherer

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The RTS General Intermediate Program is a free 9-week powerlifting program from Mike Tuchscherer and Reactive Training Systems (RTS), the coaches behind some of the strongest raw lifters in the sport. It runs four training days a week early on and drops to three days later in the cycle. Every session pairs a competition-style main lift with variations and accessories, and each lift is prescribed as a number of reps at a target RPE rather than a fixed percentage of your max.

The whole thing is autoregulated. Instead of grinding a fixed percentage on a bad day, you work up to a top set at the prescribed reps and RPE, then use RTS fatigue percents to add your working volume. You drop the bar by a set percentage and keep doing sets until the RPE climbs to target. It’s the same idea RTS built its reputation on, and it’s a different animal from a straight percentage block like GZCLP.

This is a loose template, not a polished beginner program. It’s built for intermediate lifters who already rate RPE well and understand fatigue percents. If you’re still learning to gauge RPE or you want something more scripted, run a percentage-based program first and come back to this one. For a similar 9-week RPE-driven peak that’s laid out a bit more cleanly, see the TSA 9 Week Intermediate Program.

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GZCLP Program Spreadsheets, Progression Tips, and Accessories

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GZCLP is a linear progression strength program for beginners, available in 3 day and 4 day versions. Each session is built from three tiers: a T1 main lift (starting at 5 sets of 3), a T2 variation (3 sets of 10), and a T3 accessory (3 sets of 15), with the last set of each tier an AMRAP.

It’s a simpler, faster-progressing version of Cody Lefever’s GZCL method. You add weight every time a lift comes up, like Starting Strength, but the tier structure gets you a lot more volume per session.

It’s highly customizable too: you pick the lifts you want to run in each tier, and the spreadsheets below handle the progression math for you.

[Read more…]

Hepburn Method Powerbuilding Program Spreadsheet

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Doug Hepburn has become synonymous with brute force and sheer simplicity. This is reflected in his programs, which focus entirely on compound strength movements and do not explicitly recommend any direct accessory work.

Below there are essentially 2 programs, each with a power phase and a pump phase. In the old days, [Read more…]

PHATburn Powerbuilding Program Spreadsheet

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Established by Doug Hepburn as a powerbuilding routine that blends the heavy weight work of powerlifting training with the hypertrophy-inducing volume of bodybuilding training, PHATburn is a challenging program for advanced athletes. If you’re looking to introduce more volume into your off-season training, this may be what you’re looking for. [Read more…]

Building the Monolith Program Spreadsheet (kg + lb)

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Building the Monolith is a 6-week strength and size program from Jim Wendler, the creator of 5/3/1. You train 3 days a week, and every session pairs a heavy lower body lift with a press and a pull. Loads run off a training max set at 85% of your true 1RM, which keeps the high-rep work like 5×5 squats and 10×5 pressing hard but doable.

It’s a brute-force plateau breaker. Standard 5/3/1 runs slow monthly waves; Building the Monolith front-loads a huge amount of squatting and pressing over six hard weeks to pack on muscle and work capacity fast. You can see its DNA in later high-volume templates like GZCL and nSuns. Wendler wrote it for lifters who had stalled and wanted a short, punishing block to shake things loose.

This one’s built for advanced lifters trying to break a plateau. You need a solid strength base and the recovery to handle the volume while eating and sleeping to match. If you’re a novice or still adding weight every week on a linear program, you’ll get more out of standard 5/3/1 for now. For a bench-focused take on the same idea, check out Benching the Monolith.

[Read more…]

Dan Alexander 10 Week Powerlifting Peaking Program

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10/1/19 Edit: Fixed the rounding and added support for lbs and kgs! 🙂

Dan Alexander’s 10 week Powerlifting Peaking Program is designed to improve the 1RM of the squat, bench, and deadlift by 5%. Spread across the three lifts, this can result in a sizeable boost to a lifter’s total on the competition platform.

This program is a hybrid of Korte’s 3×3 program and Verhoshansky’s Soviet peaking routine. [Read more…]

6 Week Soviet Peaking Powerlifting Program

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Update: Spreadsheet now rounds weights to the nearest 5 (lb) or 2.5 (kg).

This 6 week program is designed to help peak the bench press, squat, or deadlift. It is based on training twice each week: once heavy, once light. After 6 weeks, it aims to increase your 1 rep max by 5%.

It was designed by Soviet coach Yuri Verkhoshansky and described to John Abdo, who brought it back to the USA. It has been described as “intense.” [Read more…]

Kizen 16 Week Powerbuilding Program (4 Week Preview + PDF)

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Hot on the heels of the immensely popular Kizen 6 Week Bench Peaking Program spreadsheet, Silent Mikke, Bart Kwan, and Omar Isuf have teamed up yet again to release the first 4 weeks of their 16 week Powerbuilding Program for free, including a PDF that explains the theory behind the program!

[Read more…]

GZCL Method Spreadsheets: General Gainz, UHF, Jacked and Tan 2.0, The Rippler & More [Complete]

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The GZCL Method is Cody Lefever’s powerlifting training framework, named after his Reddit username, /u/gzcl. This page collects free spreadsheets for every major GZCL program: General Gainz, Jacked & Tan 2.0, UHF, The Rippler, VDIP, and more.

Everything GZCL is built on a tier system. T1 is the day’s main lift (heavy, low reps), T2 is a variation of it (moderate weight and reps), and T3 is higher-rep accessory work. How each tier progresses is what separates the different programs.

If you’re a newer lifter, start with GZCLP, the linear progression version – it has its own page with dedicated spreadsheets. For the theory behind all of it, read Cody’s blog and the r/gzcl subreddit.

[Read more…]

Metallicadpa 6 Day PPL v3.04 (Reddit PPL) Program Spreadsheet

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The Metallicadpa 6 Day PPL is the canonical free Push/Pull/Legs routine from r/Fitness, written by /u/metallicadpa. You train six days a week across two Push days, two Pull days, and two Leg days. Compound lifts use a 5/5+ AMRAP structure (five straight sets, then an all-out rep set), and loads are driven by your 1RM inputs so the spreadsheet suggests starting weights for you.

The program runs indefinitely with session-to-session linear progression. When you hit the target reps on your AMRAP set, the sheet advances your load for the next session automatically. Upper body lifts go up 2.5 kg at a time; lower body lifts go up 5 kg. The idea is to keep adding weight as long as you can before accumulating fatigue forces a reset, which is the core mechanic of linear progression borrowed from programs like GZCLP.

This program suits intermediate lifters who can recover from six training days per week and want high-frequency hypertrophy work built into a clear structure. If you’re newer to lifting or can only make it to the gym three or four days a week, you’ll get more out of starting with the PPL spreadsheet collection, which covers shorter variants of the same split.

[Read more…]