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Brian Alsruhe Conjugate Program

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Brian Alsruhe’s conjugate program is a 16 week, 4 day per week strength program built on max effort and dynamic effort work. Max effort days work up to a 3 rep max; dynamic effort days call for 10 sets of triples at 40% to 65% of 1RM. It leans heavily on bands and chains, so plan on having access to them.

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8 Week Deadlift Program Spreadsheet – GC Performance Training

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An 8 week deadlift specialty program that utilizes high block pulls, low block pulls, and competition style deadlifts to help build maximal deadlift strength. [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.

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Brazos Valley Barbell 8 Week Intermediate Powerlifting Program

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The Brazos Valley Barbell Intermediate Program is an 8-week powerlifting program with 5 training days per week, written by David Woolson. It’s two 4-week blocks, each with three hard weeks and a deload. You squat 3 times a week, bench 4 times (counting feet-up and close-grip bench), and deadlift twice, and every session pairs the main lifts with a few accessories.

The first block uses tempo and paused variations to clean up technique at moderate weights. The second block moves to the competition lifts and builds to a heavy triple on the squat and bench press and a heavy double on the deadlift in week 7. Every main lift has both a percentage and an RPE, so you get a target weight and room to adjust it on the day. David’s 10 Week Powerlifting Program and Full Year of Powerlifting Programming are also on Lift Vault.

David wrote it for the lifters who asked for it, who mostly had one to three years of training and fewer than three meets. He says in the video that it might be a little advanced for that group, and you’ll need to be comfortable judging RPE. If you’re newer than that, start with something simpler like GZCLP.

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TSA 9 Week Beginner Powerlifting Program

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The Strength Athlete (TSA) released their 9 week beginner powerlifting program (aka general beginner approach) as a follow up to their successful 9 week intermediate powerlifting program. Like the intermediate program before it, the beginner program is structured as a 4 day, 9 week program, but also includes a 4 week peak if preparing for a meet.

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Brogains 10 Week Powerbuilding Program Spreadsheet (4 Day)

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The Brogains powerbuilding program is a strength and hypertrophy program written by Brogan Pratt. It runs four days a week on an upper/lower split, with each half of the body getting one heavy day and one dynamic day.

It comes in two lengths from the same sheet. Run it as 10 weeks for a general training block, or as 12 weeks if you are peaking for a meet, in which case the last two weeks are the peak.

Progression runs off AMRAP sets rather than a fixed weekly jump. You record how many reps you hit and the sheet decides whether your training max moves, which means a bad week does not push you into weights you are not ready for.

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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.

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Top 7 Intermediate Powerlifting Programs

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Once adding weight every session stops working, the next step is a program that varies intensity across the week instead of grinding the same thing every time. These are seven of the most popular intermediate powerlifting programs, each with a free spreadsheet.

They cover a wide range. Some are weekly-progression templates you can run indefinitely, others are fixed 6 to 16 week blocks built toward a meet. Most train the squat, bench, and deadlift two or more times a week with variations filling in the rest.

Moving on too early costs you progress. If you can still add weight week to week on a novice program, keep doing that. There is nothing here that will outperform linear progression while linear progression is still working.

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Candito 6 Week Advanced Bench Press Program Spreadsheet

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Jonnie Candito’s Advanced Bench Program is a free 6-week bench specialization built for lifters who’ve stalled on the competition bench. You bench up to 5 days a week for the first 3 weeks, then drop to just 2 sessions a week for weeks 4 through 6. Each bench day pairs the flat bench with one primary press accessory and a couple of high-rep isolation lifts, and the loads run off your current 1RM early in the cycle, then off your goal max once you reach the peaking weeks.

Candito built this after a full year of stalled bench progress and nagging shoulder pain. He scrapped the “just bench more to bench more” approach and leaned on heavy barbell accessories, an RPE-based effort target on those accessories, and a much shorter taper than he runs on squat or deadlift. It’s the bench companion to his advanced squat program and advanced deadlift program, the same one-lift-at-a-time idea applied to the press.

This one is for advanced lifters, meaning your bench isn’t moving month to month anymore. If you’re still adding weight every few weeks, you’ll get more out of the Candito 6 Week Strength Program or the beginner-focused Candito Linear Program. There’s also a hybrid version that runs this bench work alongside the 6 Week Strength Program’s squat and deadlift.

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Candito Advanced 9 Week Squat Program Spreadsheet

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Jonnie Candito released this 9 week advanced squat program in 2016. Like his advanced deadlift program and advanced bench press program, it puts nearly all of its attention on one lift and holds the other two steady.

It is aimed at lifters who have plateaued on the squat specifically, or who have decided to prioritize it for a while. At 9 weeks it was the longest of his single lift programs when he released it, and the reasoning for that length is squat specific. His advanced deadlift program came later and runs longer still, at 10 or 14 weeks depending on the version you pick.

If you are still progressing on all three lifts at once, this is not the program to run. The Candito 6 Week Strength Program is the better fit in that case, since it trains all three.

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3 Peaking Template Spreadsheets by Barbell Medicine

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Following up on the popular Bridge Program, the crew at Barbell Medicine introduced a free peaking program for athletes preparing for a powerlifting or strengthlifting meet. [Read more…]

Powerlifting Academy 3 Day 16 Week Program Spreadsheet

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This is the Powerlifting Academy 16 week program spreadsheet, 3x weekly training version. There is also a 20 week version available.

Powerlifting Academy 16 Week Program Overview

  • 3x weekly training
  • Competition lifts are the primary focus, but the following variations are also used:
    • Squat
      • Pause squats
    • Bench Press
      • Bench press, closer grip
      • Bench press, close grip (what is often called CGBP)
    • Deadlift
      • Deficit deadlifts (3-6cm deficit)
      • Deadlift from boxes (8-12cm raised from floor, i.e. rack pulls)

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Doug Hepburn Method Powerbuilding Program Spreadsheet

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Doug Hepburn was a Canadian strongman who won the 1953 world weightlifting title and the 1954 Commonwealth Games, and he did it on training that looks almost too plain to work. Four days a week, two lifts per session, squat and bench on one day, deadlift and overhead press on the next. No percentages chart, no wave loading, no accessory list.

The method itself is one idea. You pick a weight you can handle, you keep it exactly the same, and you add a single rep each session until you hit the target. Only then does the weight go up, by five or ten pounds, and the whole climb starts again.

Everyone else in the 1950s was chasing heavier bar loads week to week. Hepburn added volume at a fixed load and let strength come from the accumulated work.

There are two programs here, A and B, and each has a power phase and a pump phase. I’d run this if you like simple, repeatable training and you’re happy to be patient. The catch is that it’s slow, it’s repetitive, and it programs almost no direct arm or back work, so if you want a varied session or you’re chasing a peak for a meet on a date, this is the wrong program.

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TSA 9 Week Intermediate Powerlifting Program (v1.0 + v2.0)

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The TSA 9 Week Intermediate Program is a free 9-week powerlifting peaking program from The Strength Athlete. It runs 4 days per week using a daily undulating periodization (DUP) structure, with squat and deadlift each trained twice a week and bench press trained three or four times depending on which version you run. The cycle ends with a test week (or mock meet) where you go for new maxes.

The program blends percentage-based loading with RPE-driven autoregulation. You load the main lifts off your 1RM, but RPE keeps the top sets in check, especially as the cycle peaks. The first four weeks build volume at moderate intensity, Week 5 is a deload, and Weeks 6-8 ramp intensity while volume drops. Week 9 is the test. There are two versions: v2.0 (the current recommended version) adds heavier top sets with higher-rep backoff work and more bench frequency; v1.0 is the original DUP template with a fixed percentage structure and a warmup tab included.

This program is built for intermediate powerlifters who already have a current 1RM for all three lifts and are comfortable with RPE. If you’re still new to the big three or don’t have a true 1RM to work from, start with the TSA 9 Week Beginner Powerlifting Program first. The intermediate program assumes you can recover from 4 days of training per week and is a strong choice if you’re peaking for a meet or a mock-meet test.

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Benching the Monolith Program Spreadsheet

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Benching the Monolith is a version of Jim Wendler’s Building the Monolith program that focuses on, you guessed it, the bench press. [Read more…]

Brian Alsruhe Programs (Dark Horse + 4 Horsemen)

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Two free strength programs from Brian Alsruhe: Dark Horse and 4 Horsemen. Both were published on his YouTube channel, and he walks through each one end to end on video rather than handing out a PDF.

Brian coaches out of Never Sate Athletics and comes at strength from a strongman and conjugate background, so both programs lean on max effort work, heavy carries and conditioning rather than a straight percentage progression. They are demanding programs, and neither is a good first template.

If you want a written breakdown before committing, watch the overview video for whichever program you are considering. I have kept the vlog series at the bottom too, because watching somebody actually run Dark Horse week to week tells you more about the workload than any summary will.

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GZCL Jacked and Tactical (Bench + Squat Only)

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This is a variation of Tactical Barbell programming combined with the GZCL program framework. It only programs the bench press and squat movements. Deadlifts are not included. This is ideal for athletes that are either unable to deadlift or looking to focus primarily on improving their bench press and squat. [Read more…]

MEGAZORD Hybrid Program Spreadsheet

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If you’re a fan of Frankenstein-esque hybrid programs, then Megazord may be exactly what you’re looking for. Written (or maybe concocted is a better word…) by /u/BenchPauper on Reddit, this program combines the Coan/Phillipi Deadlift Program, Greg Nuckols’s 2x weekly Intermediate Bench Program for OHP from his 28 Program Collection, and Ben Gillingham’s Raw Bench Program.

The results? Well, see for yourself…. [Read more…]

Cast Iron Strength 12 Week Powerlifting Peaking Program

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Marc Keys billed this as “the best fucking 12 weeks of powerlifting you’ll have all year,” and the structure backs the swagger up. It’s a 12 week meet prep run on 4 total-body days a week, where every session touches at least two of the three lifts and the squat spends most of the block parked at 85%.

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