At some point in your powerlifting career, you may have asked yourself “when do I need to change my training?” Whether a lift has plateaued, injury inhibits your progress or training has become stale when and how should we adjust our programming? In this article, we touch on a few things to keep in mind and give a rough outline of what to do.
Goal Setting and Timeline
Before we talk about making any changes, we should evaluate two domains of this process: goal setting and timeline. First, clearly defining our goals will provide the framework for our decision-making. Take for example, the overzealous beginner who wants to lose weight, gain muscle, compete in a powerlifting competition and run a half marathon in 6 months. Or take the weight-loss client who is focused on the unchanging scale but fails to see the looser-fitting clothes, increased energy, and improved sleep. In both examples, there is a component of unrealistic timing and goal-setting that is evident. Being strict about our goals within a given timeline will keep our efforts focused, but also allows us to clearly define our successes or shortcomings.
How does this specifically pertain to adjusting powerlifting training? When we evaluate if our training needs to change, we ultimately should ask ourselves why? There inherently is a goal that is not being reached or that has changed. For example, the classic saying, “meet did not go as planned”, seems to be thrown out competition after competition. However, this trend oftentimes arises from continuously moving the goalpost and perpetually expecting a slightly unattainable goal. As we get stronger, so too do our expectations on meet day. Another reason why clear goals are important is when lifters inappropriately assign failures and shortcomings. For example, take a lifter who is post-injury and should be focused on returning to pain-free movement but is too fixated on their previous strength or previous goals. We should not change our current training because we are using our previous strength or goals as the measuring stick. However, if this lifter’s goal of pain-free movement is truly not being met, then training should be changed. Finally, after changing said training, we should use this same goal to objectively reflect if our new training was fruitful or not.
The second domain to define is your timeline. With any well-made goal, there should be a timeline that further outlines our focus. Defining a reasonable timeline prevents making mistakes like the beginner who is eager to meet multiple goals within 6 months. Specific to powerlifting, our decision to change training should be guided by our timeline. How long have we been utilizing our previous training? How long do we want to experiment with this new training? Moreover, what training phase should we be prioritizing? Are you in meet prep or off season? Are you prioritizing hypertrophy and weight gain or balancing injury recovery with a small cut? If you’ve been trying something new for the past 2 weeks, is this truly a plateau? Does changing your training at this time make any sense in the context of your timeline? SMART goals are an acronym to keep in mind when assessing the need to change training (Figure 1).
Figure 1. SMART Goals
Training Variables
Now that you’ve defined your goal and timeline, ask yourself should I change my training? If you think some action should be made, then let’s talk about exactly what changes to make.
Let’s say your incremental progress for a given lift has stalled. The most common and easiest variables to manipulate include: volume, intensity, and frequency. Oftentimes, a good place to start is understanding that volume and intensity are oftentimes underdosed. For hypertrophy goals, a plethora of research recommends at least 10-20 weekly sets per given body part or movement and handling intensities between 60-80% of a given 1 rep max (1RM). However, for accrual in strength, a strict evidence-based recommendation is hard to give. Research has shown that handling intensities at least 75% of 1RM and greater will bias strength gain. Using this as a framework, how can you adjust training?
Increase volume to ensure you’re performing a movement -or- stimulating a given muscle group for at least 10 sets a week. From there, increase the weekly sets until you see an improvement. It will take some time but eventually you will hit a number that is too fatiguing, so stay shy of that number.
Increase intensity to ensure you’re handling some intensities >75% (not every session needs to be >75%). Increase the intensity between 75% and 95% and stay shy of weights that become heavy to handle.
Rinse and repeat steps 1 and 2 over multiple months and track how your progress reacts.
One important note to make is that the above recommendations are under the assumption of underdosed volume and intensity. If you’re already performing >20 sets or multiple sessions of >75% intensity, it would make sense to instead decrease and see how your progress reacts. One last important consideration is the balance between stimulus and fatigue. 10 sets of bench, 10 sets of dumbbell press and 10 sets of triceps per week may be too much for one person but just right for another. The biggest takeaway with managing these training variables is that there is a Goldilocks range for everything and finding that balance takes time and experimentation.
Technique and Form
Technique is an important consideration to make when deciding to change trainin. A couple takeaways regarding technique:
Although it can hinder progress, technique probably is not as important as proper programming so long as your technique is “good enough”. We’ve seen time and time again people with “inefficient” techniques who can still lift massive weights. This is partly due to the fact that form is highly individualized (think of extreme wide stance squatters or very narrow grip benchers) and partly due to the fact that our bodies are highly adaptable. Given a particular task followed by adequate recovery, our bodies will improve our ability to perform said task.
Technique ebbs and flows. “My squat has never felt the same since my meet.” Or, “my sumo deadlift has never felt this good,” are frequent comments when it comes to technique. There will be no perfect technique, but it may worsen and improve given different contexts like weight gain/loss, fatigue, exercise variations etc.
So, you may be asking what technique is “good enough”? I recommend using the REP scheme (Figure 2) as an outline to answer that question.
Figure 2. “REP” Scheme
Barbell Medicine explains further in detail here:
Still, you may still benefit from structured form critiquing. One obvious option is to have a discussion with your coach. However, learning more never hurts, so simply searching Youtube will yield many tutorials and tips. Secondly, form checks performed by Barbell Medicine, Calgary Barbell, Alan Thrall or even certain discord/Reddit/Facebook groups may provide better insight.
Variations and Accessories
Lastly, if you’ve found that your progress has stalled and you have already tweaked other variables like volume, intensity, frequency and technique, consider some changes to your variations and accessory selection.
Try to find accessories and variations that will fortify weak or slow areas of your lift. Weak lockout on deadlift or tipping forward in squat? Train more upper back, hip extension, and consider high bar squats. Or, missed bench right off your chest? Train more chest and consider paused Spoto bench. Another consideration is to take a generally weak area and progress it over time. Instead of using a specific range of motion or body part, sometimes lifters will have under-developed movement patterns as a whole. Some examples: pull-ups, push-ups, dips, glute-ham-raise, reverse or front foot elevated split squats, hanging leg raises, single leg work. Incorporating one or two of these movements in your overall plan will pay dividends later down the road. On the same note, you should also incorporate increased range of motion variations to develop overall strength. Larsen press or close grip bench instead of block press, deficit deadlifts or tempo RDLs instead of block pulls.
Final Considerations
As mentioned in our previous post regarding fatigue, there is a fine balance between stimulus and recovery in powerlifting. This is the main balance that should be maintained in order to make progress. Therefore, if you are experiencing overwhelming mental or physical fatigue, separate from hitting a plateau, changing training is a good idea. It is important, however, to differentiate between “overwhelming” mental or physical fatigue with normal powerlifting changes. Heavy weight is supposed to feel heavy. You’re supposed to feel a little beat up at the end of a block. On some occasions, you might even want to get out of the gym as fast as possible. I would argue that in these situations, changing training is not necessary. However, if any of these indicators become too extreme, that is evidence for the contrary. Moreover, I recommend having a daily or weekly counter to better rate your soreness, mood, health, joints, excitement to train etc.
Citations
1.Baz-Valle E, Balsalobre-Fernández C, Alix-Fages C, Santos-Concejero J. A Systematic Review of the Effects of Different Resistance Training Volumes on Muscle Hypertrophy. Journal of Human Kinetics. 2022;81(1):199-210. doi:https://doi.org/10.2478/hukin-2022-0017
2.Ralston GW, Kilgore L, Wyatt FB, Baker JS. The Effect of Weekly Set Volume on Strength Gain: A Meta-Analysis. Sports Medicine. 2017;47(12):2585-2601. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-017-0762-7
3. Israetel M, Hoffmann J, Davis M, Feather J. Scientific Principles of Hypertrophy Training.; 2021.
4. Is your technique a problem? - Barbell Medicine. deal.town. Accessed January 20, 2024. https://deal.town/barbell-medicine/is-your-technique-a-problem-P3A3PGPC4
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