Joegramming

If one were interested in starting out Powerlifting, one of the first things one does is seek out a Powerlifting program. There’s so many available, you could literally use a different program every few months and probably never have to repeat one. I’ve used quite a few, but was never satisfied with any of them. I should point out that many programs are general strength programs often used by would be Powerlifters. These are not ideal. If you’re going to Powerlift, look for an actual program designed to improve your Powerlifting total. After deciding I needed to focus on pure hypertrophy training, I took the Henselman PT Course to get all the evidence-based info I could, designed my own hypertrophy program, and did make some gains, particularly in underdeveloped muscle groups, until those gains stopped as well. What I enjoyed most about training in this way was that the “program” I was using was mine. I selected the exercises, how to organize them, progress them and execute them. I didn’t realize the power of this at the time, but in retrospect it’s as clear as when I said recently that everyone should individualize their diet for their specific goals and needs. Just as my current diet is called the Joe Diet, my hypertrophy program was a Joe Swole program.

After deciding to return to Powerlifting with my slightly more muscular body, I started out using Izzy’s Programming to Win program because A: It’s a Powerlifting specific program, and B: I had good results using it before when I did the Mock Meet back in March 2019. It was fine to get started, but it didn’t take long before I wanted to make changes to it. I started looking at other programs until the light bulb illuminated above my skull and I realized I needed a Joegram. I wanted to make my own program, but I didn’t feel I had the skills to put something together that would be effective and could change as my needs changed. Thus began the perusal of Reactive Training Systems approach to Powerlifting, because it’s not a program, but a method of creating programs, testing them, determining if they were successful and proceeding from there.

RTS is very generous with their time and knowledge, and they share a ton of information on their YouTube channel and podcast. I consumed a lot of content and started putting together my RTS inspired program. I felt as if I had a good handle on it, but it felt a little like being on the surface of a system without seeing the guts of it; without having been on the inside at the ground floor when the system was being assembled. It was an expensive decision, but I dropped the cash and signed up for the RTS Classroom to get fully immersed in what they call Emerging Strategies programming. I’m not crazy about the name, but that’s okay, because what I will actually do is Joe Lifts Strong.

I won’t review the RTS Classroom yet as I’m only a month in to what is a 15-month class, but I can say that the pace is unnecessarily slow. One 25-30 minute video each week focusing on one specific topic will try a man’s patience. Nonetheless, I have watched the first five videos several times, read some of the ongoing discussions on their Discord channel, and some concepts are starting to develop more clarity. I’m moving below the surface finally, and I can only assume this will continue.

My favorite part of programming this way is what I thought it would be: it’s mine. I choose the loading parameters, the exercises, and organization of the split, just as I did with the Joe Swole program. Doing it this way has confirmed what I discovered when hypertrophy training after taking Menno’s course: I can’t just do someone’s cookie cutter program any more. I can look at a program and quickly see the area where it wouldn’t work for me, or where I just disagree with the methods or the exercise selection. The best part of using the RTS system is that if after assembling what I think is the best way to train, if it doesn’t work, I can and will change it to try something else. It’s using the Scientific Method for Powerlifting. Start with a hypothesis, design the experiment, run it and collect the data, analyze the results.

I haven’t been doing it long enough to see one of their key concepts develop; that of the Time to Peak. Allegedly, everyone will plateau at some point as the body adapts to the stimulus and further adaptation ceases. I don’t know if I buy that as I can’t see why the body would stop adapting, but I’m happy to play it out and see for myself. The Time to Peak concept is a key component of the RTS strategy as once someone knows their Time to Peak, they can work backward from a Meet date and start a block of training to Peak on Meet Day. I love that idea, but again, I haven’t seen a peak for myself yet.

These are the results from my current block of training, and as you can see, so far so good. This would be a great time to point out that the RTS training log, which they also give away for free, is hands down the best training tracking system I’ve ever seen. It blows away any spreadsheet or other means one can develop to monitor their training, and comes complete with reporting that provides a plethora of data to analyze to know what works well, and what doesn’t. As I said, they are very generous.

In this first block, I have selected Block Pulls, Pause Squats and 2-Board Bench as my Assistance Lifts, or what RTS calls Special Developmental Exercises (SDE) and Good Mornings, Front Squats and Close Grip Bench as my Supplemental Lifts, or what RTS calls Special Preparatory Exercises (SPE). I chose these for my specific needs. I’m not particularly weak at the bottom of the Deadlift, but my technique needs work, especially as I get the bar above the knees. Hence the Block Pulls. I don’t have any particular weakness in the Squat that I’ve identified yet, so I chose Pause Squats to force me to hold my position at the bottom and to give me confidence I can get the weight back up without the stretch reflex/bounce out of the hole. I am weakest at the top of the Bench Press, so I chose 2-Board so I can load up more weight than I can on a full ROM Bench and try to strengthen the top half of the movement. Those are my SDE movements. I chose the SPE movements based on muscles that do the lifting: Hamstrings/Glutes, Quads, Triceps. See what I mean? A Joe-Specific program. Is this program ideal for anyone else? Only if they have the same issues I do and like the same movements and want to use the same RPE’s, rep ranges, split, etc.

If the Time to Peak thing is real, and I have no reason to doubt the fine coaches at RTS, I’ll know it because my progress will stall, or actually start to decline. When that happens, I stop the block, complete what they call a Pivot Block, which is a kind of deload/washout/general training kind of block, then start a new Developmental Block with new paradigms: Different load, rep ranges and RPE for the Competition Lifts, different SDE and SPE with they own load, rep range and RPE parameters, and take it for a spin. After doing this for a while; Development Block, Pivot, New Development Block, Pivot, etc. you will accumulate enough data to know what works best and plan the pre-Meet block based on the best tools you have available with your Time to Peak timing and it should put you in the best possible position for a good performance on the day that actually matters; Meet Day.

With all the tinkering, data tracking and analysis, Faithful Readers can see why I would be drawn to such a method. It’s right in my happy zone.