8 Week Powerlifting Peaking Cycle Week 1 The first two weeks include four lifting days—two upper body and two lower body. Additionally, there is a lot of variation. Fred Hatfield's Peaking Program. This spreadsheet will draft up a 9 week program consisting of two workouts per week (one heavy and one light day). It attempts to increase your 1RM by 10% by the end of week 9.
If you are looking for a 6 week powerlifting program, you need one that produces results in a short period of time without all of the unnecessary fluff.
Because of this, you will need to use a linear program that pushes your body just a little harder each week, with the ultimate outcome of a new personal best on each lift at the end of the 42-day time period.
During the first couple of weeks, you may even feel that you aren't pushing yourself hard enough. This is normal—don't attempt to raise the intensity on any of the lifts. Things will become very challenging fast once you hit the third and fourth week.
When you are finished, it is also recommended that you complete a short Bulgarian training cycle of 14 days to maximize your neuromuscular adaptations (your body's ability to efficiently produce the electric stimulation required for a strong, forceful muscle contraction) and hit a huge new max.
Powerlifting Peaking Program
6 Week Powerlifting Program Outline
The 6 week powerlifting program includes a mixture of hypertrophy and strength work to make sure you build muscle while your strength increases. Towards the end of the cycle, however, volume is decreased to begin preparing you for maximal strength output.
This is an excellent program to use while in the off-season or pre-season for an upcoming meet or strength event. It is most suited to intermediate and advanced lifters—if you have been lifting for less than 1-2 years it is recommended that you stick with a beginner plan that focuses on linear strength progression and hypertrophy (and tailor it to specifically meet your 6-week time requirement). Whether you love or hate him, Jason Blaha’s Icecream Fitness 5×5 program is an excellent choice that goes a step further than StrongLifts 5×5 and will undoubtedly lead to more progress.
You will perform all three lifts each week:
- Squats are done twice
- Bench press is done twice
- Deadlifts are done once
When selecting your main movements, you can swap out the suggested movements to fix specific weak points you may be having—but only on one day per week. For example, if you decide to substitute front squats for back squats one day, you still have to complete back squats on the second squatting day.
- Squat
- Weakness in the hole
- Paused squats
- Pin squats
- Knee cave
- Wide stance squats
- Wide stance paused squats
- Hips rising before the knees extend
- Front squats
- Narrow stance squats
- Bench Press
- Weakness off the chest
- Paused bench press
- Wide-grip paused bench press
- Middle area or lockout
- Spoto press
- Pin press
- Deadlift
- Weakness off of the floor
- Deficit deadlifts (stand on 45-pound plate or short box)
- Snatch-grip deadlifts
- Opposite deadlifts (choose the stance you wouldn't normally do: conventional vs. sumo)
- Weakness around the knees
- Rack pulls below the knees
- Block pulls (you can use rubber 45-pound plates to form the block if you don't have one)
- Paused deadlifts below the knee
- Weak lockout
- Rack pulls below or above the knees
- Block pulls
- Paused opposite deadlifts
- Weakness off of the floor
- Weakness off the chest
- Weakness in the hole
6 Week Powerlifting Program
As mentioned above, each of the main movements are performed twice per week with the exception of the deadlifts which are performed only once. Additionally, the percentages refer to ratio of your one-rep-max (1RM).
For example, if you can squat 300 pounds, 70% of your 1RM would be 210 pounds (.7 x 300).
For deadlifts, no percentages are provided as it can be a very volatile lift when you are doing it every single week—some deadlift days go amazingly well and others seem to go terrible. However, you should track the RPE and record it in your training journal to ensure you are progressing.
Finally, the individual training days are labeled as sets x repetitions.
Week 1:
- Day 1: 5×3 at 75%
- Day 2: 5×5 at 70%
- Deadlifts: 10×3
Week 2:
- Day 1: 5×3 at 77.5%
- Day 2: 5×5 at 72.5%
- Deadlifts: 10×2
Week 3:
- Day 1: 5×3 at 80%
- Day 2: 5×5 at 75%
- Deadlifts: 10×1
Week 4:
- Day 1: 5×3 at 82.5%
- Day 2: 5×5 at 77.5%
- Deadlifts: 10×3
Week 5:
- Day 1: 5×3 at 85%, plus a max-rep set (do as many reps as you can)
- Day 2: 5×5 at 80%
- Deadlifts: 10×2
Week 6:
- Day 1: 3×3 at 87.5%
- Day 2: 3×5 at 82.5%
- Deadlifts: 10×1
As you can see, in the last week of the program the volume drops. This will allow you to begin recovering from the training fatigue your body as accumulated by that point.
For the accessory exercises, you should use the RPE strategy discussed earlier to progress in every single lift. You should be writing down every single number in a training journal; when you get ready to hit your accessory lifts, you can take a look at the previous week to make sure you do either more sets, more repetitions, or more weight.
For a list of accessory exercises, you should stick with the 8 week powerlifting program accessory exercises as they provide an excellent starting point for your first training cycle. If one of them causes pain, however, definitely swap it out for another exercise. By changing up the movements, you will take advantage of conjugate periodization (switching up the style of stimulus your body is exposed to in order to cause constant adaptations).
If you aren’t in off-season training and are actually prepping for a meet and want to absolutely maximize your results, there is one final step.
After the 6 week powerlifting program, it is recommended that you take a one week deload and then enter the two-week Bulgarian training cycle mentioned earlier.
This will send your strength gains into overdrive as you adapt to heavy weights in final preparation to hit a new personal record.
The truth about supercompensation, plus strategies for pre-competition nutrition and supplementation.
Does Supercompensation Work?
A lot of the information you read about peaking for a competition revolves around 'supercompensation.' You dramatically increase training volume and intensity for 7-14 days then, one week out from the competition, you bring training stress way down and increase carbs to supercompensate. This leads to an increase in performance.
Sounds sciency and smart. But does it really work?
Well, it depends. If you're an endurance athlete, it might. It seems to work pretty well for swimmers. But if you're a strength athlete, it won't do anything. It'll give the illusion of working, but it really doesn't.
Here's Why
First, when we talk about supercompensation we're really talking about increasing glycogen storage in the muscles. The theory? By dramatically increasing training volume and reducing carb intake, the body will upregulate the enzymes responsible for storing glucose.
When you flood your body with tons of carbs and reduce volume for 3-7 days before an event, the body will store more glycogen than it normally would if you had not done things to 'deplete' it.
In theory, by storing more glycogen (supercompensation) you have more fuel available for your event and you'll perform better. This can work if your sport is dependent on the amount of stored glycogen you have.
4 Week Powerlifting Peak
Endurance sports might benefit from higher glycogen storages, and glycolytic sports certainly would. But strength sports like powerlifting and weightlifting are not at all dependant on glycogen stores for performance since the main fuel in these sports is ATP-CP.
While glycogen supercompensation might help the bench press and possibly the squat by providing an increase in passive joint stability – as noted in Question of Strength 58 – it's certainly not the main driver of performance.
Does That Mean You Shouldn't Deload?
No, you should. But you must understand what the deload will do so you can plan it properly. It also means you shouldn't do a stress week or two (7-14 days) prior to the deload to create a supercompensation effect.
You can't supercompensate the nervous system. You can't supercompensate the endocrine or your muscle mass. Just because you're trashing those systems by training too much for a short period of time, it doesn't mean that these will rebound even higher. The nervous and endocrine systems don't function like your glycogen storage.
Here's what happens during a deload and why it can give the illusion of supercompensation of neurological resources.
Powerlifting Peaking Programs
First, You Need to Understand Two Things
1. The connection between cortisol and adrenaline
Cortisol increases the conversion of noradrenaline into adrenaline. The more cortisol you produce, the more adrenaline will increase.
Four main training variables can lead to an increase in cortisol (thus adrenaline) during training. Those are...
- Volume: The more energy you need, the more cortisol you release.
- Intensiveness: The closer to the limit you're pushing your sets, the more cortisol you produce.
- Psychological stress: Mostly related to the amount you're lifting.
- Neurological demands: Learning new exercises, using more complex movements, or doing a complicated workout structure.
2. Beta-adrenergic downregulation
When you overstimulate the beta-adrenergic receptors, they downregulate. In layman's terms, this means when you're producing a boatload of adrenaline that connects to the beta-adrenergic receptors, these receptors can downregulate. As a result, you respond less and less to adrenaline.
Since adrenaline increases strength, speed of contraction, and motivation (among other things), if you respond less to it, strength and power will go down. On the other hand, the more sensitive your receptors are, the more strongly you respond to adrenaline and the more force your muscles will be able to produce.
Now Let's Connect the Dots
If you dramatically increase training intensity and volume (stress week), you produce more cortisol. This leads to a very high level of adrenaline. This high level of adrenaline can downregulate the beta-adrenergic receptors, decreasing strength potential.
After that stress week, you feel like crap and your performance drops. Then you deload, reduce volume, intensity, and maybe even frequency. You drop assistance exercises, which decreases neurological demands too.
This all leads to a decrease in cortisol levels, and in return, a much lower level of adrenaline. The beta-adrenergic receptors now become much less stimulated and they recover their original reactivity. Now you respond to your adrenaline again. You regain your strength and motivation. You think, 'My deload worked, I supercompensated!'
No, you didn't. You just recovered the responsiveness to adrenaline that you lost by doing too much!
A study by Fry et al. (2006) found a 37% downregulation of the beta-adrenergic receptors after only two weeks of very high intensity/high frequency work. By doing one or two weeks of high demand work prior to a competition, this downregulation will cause a significant drop in performance (5-10%).
But why would you cause this downregulation on purpose, only to have it brought back up to the normal level during your deload? There are no benefits and you actually risk not being able to fully recover the receptors' responsiveness completely. You also risk getting injured during this phase of high volume/high intensity.
On top of that, there's a good chance that even prior to the stress week(s) you already have some downregulation going on. And the stress of the upcoming meet will also increase cortisol (psychological stress) which will further jack up adrenaline – leading to more desensitization.
My recommendation is to deload so that you'll get the beta-adrenergic receptors as responsive as possible, but do not precede that with a period of dramatically increased training stress.
Here's How That Would Look
Just do your regular program and one week out deload like this:
Assuming this is a Saturday meet, drop all assistance work one week out.
- Saturday (seven days out): Work up to your opener on squat and bench press. Do three singles at 90% of your opener on the deadlift.
- Sunday (six days out): OFF
- Monday (five days out): Squat 3 x 2 using 90% of opener, bench 3 x 2 using 90% of opener, deadlift 3 x 1 using 80% of opener.
- Tuesday (four days out): OFF
- Wednesday (three days out): Squat 3 x 2 using 80% of opener, bench 3 x 2 using 80% of opener.
- Thursday (two days out): OFF
- Friday (one day out): Activation – squat 3 x 1 using 70% of opener, bench 3 x 1 using 70% of opener.
- Saturday: Meet
For the deload, we have:
- Extremely low volume
- • Zero complexity (minimalist workouts)
- • Low intensiveness (everything leaves 3-4 reps in the tank)
- • Low psychological stress
- • Low neurological demands
You'll minimize cortisol response as much as possible, lowering adrenaline and increasing beta-adrenergic receptor reactivity.
Nutrition and Supplementation Strategies
Here are some strategies you can use to maximize the reactivity of those receptors:
Training Days
- Rhodiola: Take two capsules (200 mg) in the morning. As an adaptogen, it makes the body better at responding to stress. It does this in part by balancing dopamine, serotonin, and adrenaline.
- Power Drive®: Take one serving in the morning. It'll keep your nervous system optimized. Often during a deload, dopamine decreases and the nervous system, even if it's rested, is more sluggish. This may cause performance to drop. Power Drive will help a lot.
- Plazma™: Take one serving pre-workout. There's no need for more than that because the volume is so low. You're using it mostly to lower cortisol production. Pre and intra-workout carbs lower cortisol production during the workout.
- Magnesium (or ZMA®): Use it post-workout and in the evening. Magnesium will decrease the binding of adrenaline to the beta-adrenergic receptors. This calms you down but also makes it easier for the receptors to re-sensitize. The less adrenaline binding there is, the quicker the upregulation will occur. Try 500 mg of magnesium; it's enough for that purpose although you can go as high as 1000 mg in the evening.
- Glycine: Use it post-workout and in the evening. Glycine inhibits (calms down) the nervous system decreasing cortisol and adrenaline. As an amino acid it also increases mTOR activation post-workout, which can increase protein synthesis and muscle repair. Take three to five grams post-workout and in the evening.
Off Days
Only take the Rhodiola, Power Drive®, and magnesium or ZMA® in the evening.
Note: Creatine could help you, mostly by increasing cell volumization, which can help with passive joint stability, making you stronger. If you're already taking it, continue right through the meet. If you're not taking it, but have in the past, and didn't have any adverse reaction, add 10 grams per day for the pre-meet week.
If you've tried it and had gastrointestinal issues, don't take it. If you're going to be very tight on the weigh-in, you might want to skip it since it might increase your body weight by two pounds.
As for your food intake, it really depends on where you are relative to your weigh-in. Ideally you'd keep carbs high during the week both to help decrease cortisol levels and to keep glycogen stores full. Fuller glycogen stores will help create passive stability, especially at the shoulder joint and should help you bench and squat heavier.