9 Week Beginner Program

The Strength Athlete (TSA) released their 9 week beginner powerlifting program is a four day per week, nine week training program. In addition for anyone who’s using this program for a meet has a four week peaking routine.

• Four training days per week
• Nine weeks per training cycle
• Squat 2x per week
• Bench Press 3x per week
• Deadlift x1 per week
• Includes tabs for training history to track progress if running repeat cycles is desired
• Uses RPE % based weights

Exercises

The exercises are split into what I perceive to be three categories; group one are main lifts (squat, deadlift, bench press), group two are compound heavy exercises that isolate larger muscle groups. Group three are isolation/hypertrophy exercises mainly isolating the arms, core, and leg muscle groups.

Program Weekly Phases

The program is split into four phases as seen in the below table, each phase has a training goal. Week one to nine is leading up to the test week, then week ten to thirteen is the meet week.

• Phase 1: Acclimation (week 1)
• Phase 2: Progression (week 2-5)
• Phase 3: Intensification (week 6-9)
• Phase 4: Peaking (week 10-13)

Program Overview

9 Week Intermediate 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.