Table of Contents
Brazos Valley Barbell Intermediate Powerlifting Program Overview
- Written by David Woolson with Brazos Valley Barbell
- 8 week powerlifting program
- 1 deload week
- 5 days per week
- 3x weekly squat
- 3-4x weekly bench press (if counting bench variations like CGBP)
- 2x weekly deadlift
Long program description and video overview are available below.
Brazos Valley Barbell Intermediate Powerlifting Program Spreadsheet
Video: Brazos Valley Barbell Intermediate Powerlifting Program
Program Description by Bravos Valley Barbell
This was written by David Woolson with Brazos Valley Barbell.
This program is designed for lifters with a solid foundation in strength training looking to increase their performance on the powerlifting competition movements. Through the course of seven weeks, the athlete will build up to 3RMs on all of their competition movements followed by a deload on week 8. The program follows three weeks up, one week down, structure that most of my athletes follow through the course of their training. The programming style, exercise selection, and formatting are all that in which my standard coaching is delivered.
The spreadsheet that I have built for my programming can perform a number of interesting functions for the purposes of our training. Most cells on the spreadsheet will be locked, but the ones that will be useful to you will still be editable. Those cells are the ones for you estimated maxes at the top of the page on week one, and all of the cells in black at the bottom the page that will track your performance and estimate load. The numbers that are input into those cells will populate the following week and fill out the “adjusted” column next to the originally estimated numbers based on your performance from the previous week. An important note when using that tool to track your performance is that you should only track competition movements. Meaning that variations of the movements should not be tracked as these are intentionally meant to be harder and would give you an artificially lower number for you estimated max for the following week. The program will also only track intensity above 6.5PRE, so sorry no sub 6 around here.
You will see that I use a combination of percentage and RPE. To me, one without the other doesn’t mean much. The percentage should give you an idea of where you should be but, especially on top sets and the heavier work, you will need to be smart. That means increasing or decreasing load when necessary. Some percentages and RPEs stay the same from week to week. This doesn’t mean that you need to use the same load every time but it can. Think of these as readiness tests. We need to have a standard of performance and many times we use singles at a given load to understand your response to training. Go up when the training dictates or be conservative when you need to. Don’t overthink the need to be exact with the RPE numbers and don’t live in fear of overshooting from time to time. It is not the end of the world regardless of what many of the internet coaches would have you believe.
Use the originally projected loads, along with the new adjusted loads from week to week to make good choices. These numbers are here to help suggest numbers and decisions but nothing is set in stone. As a general rule, top sets should be much more variable from week to week based on your performance, but back down work and straight sets should usually follow a pretty standard weekly progression.
Many of the videos are hyperlinked that will show you how to perform some of the exercises that you are unfamiliar with. From mobile, you should just have to click on the “Drive” option when you select the hyperlinked cell and you will be taken to the videos. The last page labeled “Data” gives you a birds-eye view of the program and might be interesting to some to see some of those numbers.
