September 21, 2019 Edit: Added v2.0 of the 9 Week Intermediate Powerlifting Program.
Description from The Strength Athlete:
We wrote this program as a nine-week program for an intermediate level powerlifter, with the goal of strength and proficiency in the squat, bench press, and deadlift. You will work using progressively heavier loads week by week toward a testing week at the end of the cycle. The program is designed to work on many of the shortcomings and inefficiencies we see in common intermediate and beginner level powerlifters. Namely, underdeveloped posterior chains, lack of technical practice with the competition lifts, control off the floor in the deadlift, and upper body hypertrophy.
See also: TSA 9 Week Beginner Powerlifting Program
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Table of Contents
TSA 9 Week Intermediate Powerlifting Program Spreadsheet (v2.0)
Released by The Strength Athlete in Summer 2019.
TSA 9 Week Intermediate Powerlifting Program Spreadsheet (v1.0)
TSA 9 Week Intermediate Powerlifting Program Description (v2.0)
From the spreadsheet:
This is a 9-week training approach designed for intermediate lifters to peak effectively into actual competitions (or a mock meet) with high performance. The first four weeks represent higher overall work and lower overall loading, designed to build training adaptions and muscle hypertrophy. We’ll deload on Week 5, shedding some fatigue and preparing for the next phase. Finally, we’ll peak with exposure to heavier loads, bringing out your best.
While this is a generalized approach, meaning we aren’t targeting any individual athlete strengths or weaknesses or problem-solving strategies, it’s designed to overcome many of the shortcomings with powerlifting approaches we’ve seen. It additionally has an option for female and male athletes to make sure the approach is better tailored to your needs. This is the intermediate approach we wish all athletes had access to, with balanced volume, intensity, and frequency.
As our training methods continue to evolve, we’ve updated the intermediate approach to match those changes. You’ll see an increased use of autoregulation and the addition of lower repetition top sets with higher repetition backoff work to combine the best of both worlds. As you get close to peaking, you’ll see some subtle changes to the peaking structure to ride the line between fitness and fatigue. We think you’ll really like it.
For squat, we begin with higher training volume over two days per week of training frequency. We already have some exposure to higher intensities early on, allowing the athlete large amounts of time for low-repetition adaptations to occur. We’ll build overall lower body strength with the overall amount of volume (and added leg pressing work), and increased skill with high specificity. We utilize multiple rep ranges to ensure maximum strength and hypertrophy.
For bench press, we include regular exposure to pressing to allow for accelerated rates of progress. Athletes will handle horizontal pressing four times a week with access to singles starting on week 1. More than likely, you’re about to bench more than you have in a long time.
For deadlift, we have a fantastic balance of competition work with paused work, designed to teach technique and bracing and ultimately improve positioning. There’s a delayed shift for heavy work on deadlift until much later in the training approach to allow space for building strength before we test strength.
