I just finished my third full cycle of Candito's 6-Week Powerlifting Program and wanted to share what I learned and how it worked out for me.
Background
Played hockey for 11 years (2005 to 2016) so I am already familiar with form
Working out and seriously weightlifting since August 2021 (couldn't even do a push-up at this point, I was extremely sedentary for 5 years cause competitive sports traumatized me lol)
I weighed around 165 lbs @ 5'5
I used a leather lever belt for squat and deadlift
I consume between 100g to 150g of protein a day
I don't use creatine and I use pre-workout only on days when I am both squatting and deadlifting heavy
Excellent variety of accessory workouts. Each "bench" day allows for 1 horizontal pull, 1 vertical pull, and 1 vertical push of your choosing
Excellent recovery management. The program tapers off the volume and replaces it with intensity as you advance through the weeks. At the end of each cycle, I included a deload week to really play it safe.
Trains your through all rep ranges on the big three lifts (i.e. 1 rep maxes all the way up to AMRAP [as many reps as possible] sets).
Not time-consuming as it ranges from 5 to 3 days a week, but if you can only make it to the gym 4 days a week (like me) you won't suffer because of it
Gym sessions typically last 50 to 90 minutes (including warmup)
Candito 6 Week: Cons
Many people complain about the lack of bench volume, as you are only ever benching max 3 times per week and usually only 2 times per week. I don't find this a problem but its worth noting.
Going from a deadlift PR on week 6, to the next cycle in Week 1 (even with a deload week) is really taxing. I found it led to me not being able to complete my deadlift sets Week 1 of a new cycle cause I was still recovering. For my 4th cycle, I will not be testing a 1RM on deadlift and just sticking with a 97.5% load and aiming for 2 to 4 reps and adjusting my training max as necessary.
Adjustments
The only major adjustment I made was testing my 1RM on Week 5 and treating Week 6 as a deload week. During my first cycle, I found my strength peaked at Week 5 and by the time I was ready to test my 1RMs on Week 6 I was too exhausted.
Results
Disclosure: I'm not an actual powerlifter and just enjoy training squat, bench, and deadlift. So my lifts might get red lights at meets (i.e. touch and go bench and wearing straps for deadlifts)
@camo320 One other question. Did you find it boring doing the exact same exercises on all the upper body days? On the spreadsheet I have for the Candito program, for all upper body days it's bench, dumbell row, military press and lat pulldown on every single upper body workout. Even if there are 3 per week. I usually have 2 upper body workouts per week but they both have different exercises. Like if I did dumbell row on a Tuesday then I'd do a different type of row on Friday like seated cable row or something.
@godislove32 I constantly mixed it up, I just made sure I did a horizontal row, vertical pull, and shoulder movement each bench press session.
For horizontal row I rotated between chest supported row machine, bent over barbell row, single arm dumbbell row, seated cable row, and t bar row.
For vertical pull I rotated between chin ups, pull ups, mag grip lat pull down, traditional lat pull down, uni lateral lat pull down, and the Hammer Strength lat pulldown machine.
For one shoulder movement, military barbell shoulder press or seated dumbbell press.
@camo320 Ah OK. I like that approach From reading Johnnie's instructions for the program I thought they had to stay the same throughout the program and only the 2 additional optional isolation exercises could be changed week to week or whenever. I'd get so bored doing it that way!
@godislove32 Like you, I get bored doing the same movements. At the end of the day, a fun program you can stick too is much more effective than a boring one you can't stay consistent with
@camo320 Great write up! Did you alter the program to make the 5 day weeks a 4 day split? I’m curious as I’m looking for new intermediate programs but I only lift 4xs a week (anything more and my body revolts a bit.)
@elissanjuice Ya, i also can't make it to the gym 5 days a week. What I did was just complete the workouts in their prescribed order, and if Workout 5 bled into day 8 or 9 I wouldn't worry about it.
I was also super anal before about squeezing my workout into a 7 day split, but now I focused more on recovery days.
For example, I like to have at least 2 full rest days between squat/deadlift days and at least 1 day of rest between bench days. So on Week 1 of the program, my week might look like this:
@camo320 Thanks for this write up! You made great progress. I usually stick with GZCL programs but I've been considering this one for a while. Only thing for me is I prefer 4 days a week so wasn't sure I'd be able to do the 5 day part of the program properly.
I think I'll give this a go when I finish this GZCL cycle.
@godislove32 I also can't make it to the gym 5 days a week! I just proceeded as normal and essentially completed the workouts when I could.
I went to the gym 3 to 4 days a week and my progress didn't suffer at all.
I basically took fewer rest days between the high volume weeks (weeks 1/2, 0 to 2 days), and more rest days between high intensity weeks (weeks 4/5, 2 to 3 days) and stopped trying to cram everything in between Monday and Sunday.
I've also had the itch to try GZCL, looks fun and high intensity.
@camo320 So you just did the workouts in order? Even if it sort of spread into the next week? That's not a bad idea actually! I could make that work. I'm so rigid usually with my gym days (I'm a creature of habit lol) - Mon squat, Tue bench, Thu deadlift, Fri OHP. Could be good to have a change up.
@godislove32 This is what I usually do. If I need an additional rest day or kid won’t go to bed so I don’t have enough time to work out that day I just pick up the next day. Often takes me around 7 weeks to actually finish the program.
@godislove32 Yupp. I just did the workout in order. I def have preferred nights to workout (Sunday evening ), but sometimes life gets in the way so I just aimed for 4 days a week.
@camo320 Cool! I think you'll like GZCL. You'd be past needing the linear program (GZCLP) - that's what I originally started with. These days I typically run the vanilla 4 week program on repeat but I've done the Rippler on 3 occasions and loved that too.
From reading Johnnie's instructions for the program I thought they had to stay the same throughout the program and only the 2 additional optional isolation exercises could be changed week to week or whenever. I'd get so bored doing it that way!
