What is the best powerlifting program for beginners?
For beginners, most programs in some manner are going to work since this will be an entirely new stimulus, but there is definitely a good, better, best path to take here, which is where a coach can be very useful in guiding you in the optimal approach.
The first and most important part for a beginner program is that there is weekly progression built in. A beginners 1 rep max is going to be constantly changing, so the program needs to adjust for this. But unlike with many of my more experienced lifters, autoregulation and/or RPE based training probably isn’t the right approach, as beginners tend to have difficulty judging this correctly. Instead a percentage based approach combined with some form of APRE is more appropriate. The general idea of APRE is that the performance of a previous weeks prescribed set then dictates the linear increase of load for the following week. If you way outperform the standard, the more weight that will be added the next week, and vice versa.
The second big thing to take into consideration for a beginner is volume. Beginners do not need to jump immediately onto a ultra high volume and high frequency program, because they don’t need it! They will make gains with minimal work, so take advantage of that time and once progress starts to slow down, then it is time to slowly add more volume into the workouts.
Taking into consideration all of these variables, I created a FREE Beginner Powerlifting program, just clink the link below and scroll down to the 10 Week Beginner Program!
10 Week FREE Beginner Powerlifting Program