This spreadsheet uses the popular Candito 6 Week Intermediate Program as a base and replaces the regular bench press work with Candito’s Advanced Bench Press Program. The result is a solid program for intermediate level strength athletes seeking considerable bench press volume.
Candito 6 Week + Advanced Bench Press Hybrid Program Overview
- 6 weeks in length
- 4 to 5 training sessions per week
- Bench Press is trained 5x to 2x per week, depending on the week
If you enjoy the program, please donate to Jonnie Candito.
Spreadsheet originally assembled by /u/thisisnotjonah, then improved by Lift Vault reader, Elliot.
A list of the improvements is below.
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Improvements to New Spreadsheet
As described to me by Elliot.
Fixes
- It didn’t include the upper body accessories: back (horizontal + vertical) and shoulder accessories, that the original 6 week has in the program.
- Not having access to low-pin and high-pin bench can be quite limiting – so added in some alternatives.
- Week 4 had programmed bench day 1: 3 sets of 10, and bench day 2: 3 sets of 5-10 @80-82% (which could obviously kill a man). The reps and sets were the wrong way round.
New Features
- An RPE column, as it was expected throughout you would gauge your own weight on several exercises – this leaves the weight column free so you can include your working weight to keep track of it
- Throughout the routine the bench accessories, deadlift variations and upper body accessories are automatically updated based on the drop-down menus on the ‘Inputs’ page. The list of options for these accessories can be found in a hidden group of rows on row 29 – these can be changed if desired, I’ve included all the ones recommended by Candito and added a few myself.
- Lists for accessory exercises that you can add your own desired exercises to – which will then show up in the routine drop-down menus for additional accessories throughout the routine.
- Days and dates for each training session based on a start-date inputted in the ‘Inputs’ page – this was a feature in the 6-week program that I found useful.
- A deload week – based on what Jonnie recommended to use as a deload week in his 6-week program – I just made a sheet for it.
- A taper week, for if you wanted to test your 1rms. Admittedly, this is not Candytoe’s work, but rather Bruce Krawfish’s, it is the exact taper week from Calgary Barbell’s 16-week program.
- An updated way to calculate your projected maxes, and an input calculator to do it for you. I have to say this is just something I thought up and thought it was smart. It is essentially just based off the RPE % scale @10, so if you got 2 reps in week 5, then you are using a weight that is 96% of your true 1RM weight – therefore, you can calculate your estimated 1RM weight from this. It’s not a perfect science, but it makes sense – and has more scientific backing to it than the ol’ multiply by 1.03 for 2 reps, 1.06 for 3 reps, etc. (although it is almost the same thing).
