How to: Powerlift With Less Than 5 Hours/Week in the Gym

Case Study: Adding 139lbs to a lifter’s total who struggled with feeling fatigued and stagnant in their powerlifting training.

What if you want to have a life on the weekends but get DUMB strong?

Simple: you train like a powerlifter anyways. 

Nico managed to nail some huge hikes while he built a 139# PR total in just 3 months. This article will outline some of the strategies we used to get him there without spending endless hours in the gym so that he could not only get stronger, but also have time (and energy!) to spend with his friends as he went dirt biking and mountaineering on the weekends.

One of the biggest challenges that Nico faced was simply wanting to have a life outside of the gym. As an avid mountain man, there were lots of hikes, time spent on his dirt bike and overall that meant by the time Monday rolled around he was actually carrying a good bit of fatigue. 

Now, most people would feel like they had to choose between lifting heavy and having fun, but instead we found a sweet spot with total weekly volume management and frequency changes, especially on his squat and deadlift that allowed him to have the best of both worlds, landing him with a: 

💪 52 lb squat PR (457)

💪 18 lb bench PR (293) while rehabbing a pec

💪 67 lb deadlift PR (519)

Because of the sheer variety of activities that Nico liked to partake in, he needed a way to progress on his lifts without getting too fatigued from the gym. If he was too beat up from heavy lower body work, his hikes would suffer. Similarly, if he went for a big day in the mountains on the weekend, he’d start to get recurring hip issues if he went in to squat and deadlift heavy early in the week.

We took a pragmatic approach to designing his program where we:

  • Examined his capacity for training (both time available to train in the gym as well as how much his body could actually tolerate) to set an upper and lower limit. This gave us a “window of progression” where we knew as long as we stayed within it, he would be able to progress and also see time outside of the gym too
  • Scheduled active recovery workouts earlier in the week – his lighter lower body work was scheduled for Tuesdays on most weeks which gave him 1-2 days to recover from the mountains. This in turn served as a way to “ramp up” to the heavier lower body work later in the week (on Thursday or Friday)
  • Alternated weeks of squatting and deadlifting, meaning he would seldom do a heavy squat and heavy deadlift on the same day. Because he needed to be in good shape for his “fun” time on the weekends, 2 big lower body lifts would lead him to feeling beat up and even stagnating on his squat and deadlift numbers, so spreading out the workload over a 2-week rotation instead of the conventional weekly frequency for heavy work allowed progression to happen while still being able to walk the next day 😉

If you’re finding it tough to manage fatigue while getting stronger and are starting to feel trapped in the “lifetime intermediate” zone, let me know your #1 question HERE and I’ll personally reach out to give you the best answer possible.

– Coach Matt 🙂

1. Follow me on Instagram (@strongeryoupt) for free lifting advice, programs and more powerlifting content. You can DM me the word “BENCH GUIDE” and I’ll get you a copy of my bench variation PDF that outlines the programming style we used to add 40+ lbs to JR’s Bench.

OR

2. Apply to join my “Platform-Ready Blueprint” and become a case study. We’ll work with you 1-on-1 (in-person or online, depending on location) to consistently increase your PRs.

It takes less than 60 seconds to apply HERE in order to find out more information and see if you’d be a good fit.