20 year old male college student. I began a skinny 150 lb 5' 10", with little athletic experience outside of baseball for many of my early years. I began lifting just over two years now and have been addicted to the progress ever since. When quarantine hit in spring of 2020 I scrambled nearly all of my money from working at my local grocery store into getting 300 lbs of weights and a squat rack/bench. My first year was a combination of Stronglifts/nSuns, and the rest of that time was occupied by 5/3/1 and its many variants. I have always focused on strength and aesthetics, but I never had experienced a powerlifting focused program. I received a remote internship offer and thought that this could be the best time to push my lifting without school interference (as I only took one course this semester).
The Program
The program can be found at https://www.strongerbyscience.com/newsletter/ . For background, the 28 free programs consists of specific programs for the squat, bench press, and deadlift. Each of the three lifts has a varying frequency (1x, 2x, 3x) and then a varying experience (beginner, intermediate, and advanced). This results in 27 programs with a bonus one for bench.
The first block I ran the 3x beginner bench, 2x int Deadlift and 2x int Deadlift for my squat. I used the deadlift program for my squat because I hadn't been as comfortable putting up heavier weight for lower reps. This turned out to help me a ton. After the first block I went to the 3x intermediate bench and kept the squat and deadlift the same. I jumped the shark on the third block and tried the 3x advanced bench but began to ran into an issue with my chest (more on this later). As a result, I finished up with the 3x beginner bench once again. Here are the results block by block:
Modifications
For the squat secondary lift, I ended up doing SSB as my gym had that and I wanted to try it out. Ended up really enjoying this and have been missing it since being home from school. I have been using romanian deadlifts for my deadlift accessory as these seem to have large carryover.
When it comes to accessories, I decided to split the 3 programs amongst a 6 day program. I ran an Arnold Split in combination with PPL so it ended up looking something like the following:
Legs with Squat Day 1 and RDLs
Chest/Back with Bench Day 1
Shoulders/Arms with Bench Day 2
Rest
Legs with Squat Day 2
Pull with Deadlift Day 1
Push with Bench Day 3
This allowed me to get a lot of volume in for my vanity parts. My back had really blown up going from my home gym to the college gym as I started using a variety of different back machines+cables. I've started to find substitutes I can use while at home but I certainly miss these too lol.
In the third block, I ran into an elbow and chest pain on my right side that would often appear after my second bench day. At first it was just a sore elbow, but as time went on it began to be a painful ache for a few days following. The chest also had some issues, I noticed especially on cable flies it felt as if the area between my chest/shoulder was being pulled apart and it was very painful. As a result, I tapered down the volume in both accessories and main lift. This seemed to fix the issue for now.
Results
Weight: 202 lbs to 216 lbs
LiftBefore ProgramBlock 1Block 2Block 3Block 4
Bench240x1250x1260x1265x1265x1
Squat345x1350x1380x1390x1405x1
Deadlift340x1350x1365x1395x1405x1
EDIT: Finally got the table formatted correctly lol
My total went from about 925 to 1075, however my squat and deadlift had some technique changes along the way. I switched from AtG high bar squat to low bar, and my deadlift technique was really unlocked around block 3 when I started learning to pull the slack out of the bar properly.
Here are some of the videos I took of my progress:
380 Squat: https://imgur.com/a/FR5UtU8
405 Squat: https://imgur.com/a/g5Ih4RJ
240 Bench: https://imgur.com/a/SVQk6Kt
260 Bench: https://imgur.com/a/jRPILga
365 Deadlift: https://imgur.com/a/QMpqOl7
405 Deadlift: https://imgur.com/a/47FoQxa
I have been really satisfied with these programs because they had gotten me comfortable with pushing myself on heavier sets (the triples on squat/deadlift and then the AMRAP on bench). I realize that this was some of the best progress I made as I had everything in check. In addition to the total, I also had satisfactory results physically as well. These are my physiques before and after the program:
https://imgur.com/a/6wHfQQ0
Nutrition/Recovery
Because I had an internship, I essentially devoted most of my time to that and lifting/eating. Most of my days were planned around my workouts and then whatever I would have to do nutrition wise such as cooking, eating, etc. I don't go out or drink very much, so during that time I drank only 3 or 4 times. Isn't my cup of tea
My diet would usually consist of a bagel breakfast sandwich (eggs, cheese, ham), 12 oz chicken and 4 cups of rice spread across two meals, and then greek yogurt, french toast using egg whites, and occasionally oatmeal and then a lot of snacks. Throughout the day I would eat a lot of cashews and fruits, but I also included some things I really enjoyed like muffins and Rice Krispies to get the rest of the calories in. I was eating about 3300 calories a day.
For recovery, I had a massage gun and foam roller that I would use semi-often, but I really found that low intensity cardio was great for soreness and recovery. I would just do fifteen to thirty minutes on the treadmill 2-3x a week and that seemed to do the trick. In the future I want to focus on cardio more as I have a backpacking trip coming up and I am not exactly prepared for it.
Takeaways from the program:
Getting used to the heavy weights was huge on this program, especially on the squat. The 4x3 seemed undoable in some of my later blocks, but I quickly realized that I could do it if I put my mind to it.
My technique improved especially on the lower weights when it came to bench press. Doing this helped keep my technique consistent across all weights and made benching the heavier weights a bit easier
Deadlifts had some technique flaws before. It skyrocketed my pull, and I am excited to find more nuances to my technique that will allow me to pull heavier weights this coming year.
Definitely need to be careful with my accessory work; I have a bit of an upper limit when it comes to benching and chest accessories on top of it
While I liked maxing every month in the beginning, it began to take a bit of a toll. I think the program could possibly be better for me long term if I kept it to an AMRAP, or just added weight after each cycle similar to 5/3/1 (maybe 10 lbs upper body, 15 lbs lower body instead?)
Next steps:
Going to cut down to sub 200 while also running SBS for the program party- I started a bit earlier than intended at the beginning of this week but excited to see how the program is! I'll be doing a 6x/week frequency with a mix of the RTF Strength and RTF hypertrophy programs.
After that, I am going to go on a backpacking trip this summer so I will definitely begin to bring up my conditioning. I plan on trying some of u/MythicalStrength's options, and while I am going to die at first I can't help but feel excited for it.
Thanks for reading!!!!