Powerlifting: How often to train

Beginners should try to get into the gym three days a week. Once this consistently happens to move to five days a week over a period of one to three years.

What is your why

Before we go into the details of how often you train to be successful in powerlifting, let me ask you a couple of questions:

Why do you want to powerlift
Why do you want to change your body
What happens when you do what happens if you don’t

These questions are essential to your personal success. They will determine how driven and dedicated you are. Research shows that people who write down their goals and reflect on them are more likely to achieve them. When was the last time you did this? Many people go about their lives like this:

What do I want
How do I get it
Why do I want it

This is a pretty good way of getting nowhere. What you want will change hundreds of times a day depending on who you are with, what you see and where you are. What you want is not always best for you. You want that chocolate, another episode of Game of Thrones or a shiny new item in Fortnite. Do these things bring you closer to your life goals? Probably not. Something interesting happens when you flip the order of these questions on their head:

Why do you want something
How do you get it
What needs to be done

This way the things that really matter take center stage in your life. Your actions and thoughts will become more connected. As a result, success will follow. If you want to know how this works on a psychological basis, read Daniel Kahneman's thinking fast and slow. Simon Sinek's TED talk on the golden circle will change your life.

For me, it all started with keeping a journal. The best one I could find is the self journal from best self. Since I use it my marriage has improved considerably and our combined salaries have increased significantly.

What are your goals

Deciding on how many days to train for powerlifting fronds entirely on your routine and goals. As a general rule the more ambitious your goals, the more you will need to train. This cannot be continued indefinitely as your body will need rest to recover and grow. Among elite lifters, training ranges from three days a week to every day. Andy Bolton is an example of a lifted who claims to only have trained three times a week and managed to pull 1000lbs in a deadlift suit. On the other end of the extreme is Chris Duffin who challenged himself to squat 800 pounds each day for thirty days.

Volume and intensity

An important concept to understand to get better at powerlifting is Volume. Volume in powerlifting means how much weight is moved over a certain amount of time. Ultimately the more weight you can move in a shorter amount of time the stronger you are. Let’s take two simple examples of one ton of weight moved over a week:

Sets/reps/intensity

Example 1

1 day a week

1x10x100kg

Example 2

2 days a week

5x5x20kg

Both examples have the same volume but in example two you went to the gym two times a week. Beginners will also mostly not be able to bang out a set of ten at 100kg. Over time though your most important goal to get stronger is to be able to move more volume in the same amount of time. Different powerlifting programs play with ideas on how to distribute volume over weeks and months to yield optimum results. This is where coaches are helpful. You might miss the big picture with having good and bad days under the bar while a good coach will track the overall fatigue and volume levels.

Focus

What many beginners often get wrong is the focus. A new year comes around or some other event happens that makes you want to change your body and it all kicks off.

I will improve my diet
I will work out every weekday
I will do two days of cardio
I will do three days of lifting
I will drink no alcohol on weekends
I will reduce my sugar intake
I will reduce my caffeine intake
I will sleep more
I will get up earlier

And all of these things at once. Inspired by fat loss shows you get to work and do everything at once. While I applaud shows like the biggest loser for inspiring people to take action this is the bit that irritates me. They have support from professional coaches, the pressure of the camera and also probably the benefit of taking days off from their usual work as they get some extra income from the show itself. That is not the usual scenario to change your habits. And many contestants go back to what they were one to three years after the show.

You are lucky if you get a habit established that covers only one of the points I mentioned. If you do all at once you will crash and burn. If you want to lose weight, start with cutting out sugar out if your diet. That will keep you busy for three months to change your life and diet.

If you want to improve your fitness, start with cardio. That is the easiest way to see quick and impactful changes.

The main point is to focus on what matters most to you and only focus on that one thing until it becomes part of your life. It is better to exercise two days a week for ten years than biting off more than you can chew and exercise seven days a week for only one week and then quit.

I recommend starting slowly and increasing your better habits overtime, repacking the old harmful ones.

I am now at a point where I train five days a week. I get up before 5 am even on weekends and prep my meals for the week. I only consume alcohol once a month compared to once a day in the past. There are no fizzy drinks in the house and the last time I looked at a Nutella glass I can not even remember. However, this was a five-year process. It did not happen just because I woke up one morning and did all of that at once.

Getting up early

If there is one habit to get into to improve your fitness it is getting up early. If you do not know where to start, start here. Try to move the needle to get up two hours earlier than you would normally. The time you gain in the mornings can at first be used to start the day more relaxed. After you increased the time you can start doing something productive like reading, cooking or exercising. Here is a schedule for you to improve in the mornings.

If you currently get up at 7.30 am

Week 1

Get up at 7.15am

Week 2

Get up at 7.15am including the weekend

Week 3

Get up at 7.00am

Week 4

Get up at 6.30 am

You have now gained about 12 hours a week in which you can exercise. If you lack sleep, skip the last leisure activity the night before. For example, watch one Netflix episode of [fill in the blank] less.

If you are really ambitious repeat the process to push your alarm to 5.30. My first alarm goes at 4.45 and I have to be at work at 9 am.

1 day a week

Most programs are not laid out for one day a week for good reason. One day a week usually does not give the stimulus to see remarkable results over time. It is still better than nothing. If you feel like you can only train once a week has a critical look at your schedule. There is definitely some time which could be spent more productively.

2 days a week

Two days a week for powerlifting is a good schedule when your focus is a different area of fitness and you just want to maintain strength or ramp it up slightly.

This is a good variation for martial artists and endurance athletes who already have a busy schedule with circuit training, sports specific exercise and recovery activities.

3 days a week

Three days a week is a great template for beginners fully commutes to strength development. Most beginner and intermediate programs are laid out for three days a week schedule. Some examples are:

Starting Strength
Stronglifts
Texas method
Madcow

This is a solid routine which can fit in most diaries after they have been cleaned up or you get into the habit of getting up earlier.

4 days a week

Four days a week can be an option for athletes which are between Intermediate and expert level or intermediated who need to stretch a program that is usually done in three days in the four. A good example of a four days a week program is Jim Wendler 531 if you do it by the book.

5 days a week

This is a schedule that many committed powerlifters use. You exercise for three days, take one day off, exercise two days, take one day off. This shows serious commitment and will show results.

6 days a week

This can be a schedule which was intended for five days and has been stretched due to time constraints. The other possibility is that a solid five-day program is enriched by one extra day that addresses specific weaknesses of the lifter with very targeted exercises. Examples can be:

Workouts with chains
Workouts with bands
Partial movements
Grip work
Hypertrophy work
Focused training for smaller muscle groups

7 days a week

Some report great success with seven days a week. However, more often than not it is not recommended as the body also needs recovery from the hard training for its positive effects to take hold.