This strength training program is designed specifically for intermediate lifters.

I would recommend starting this program when linear progression on this strength training program for beginners or any strength training program that’s geared towards beginners is no longer possible.

Not being a novice lifter any more means that it’s no longer possible to add weight every workout anymore, even after you tried to deload to break through this strength plateau. Thus, you must switch to a more advanced strength training program with more advanced programming.

This will eventually happen to all of us if we lift long and heavy enough. With this intermediate strength training program, you will still be performing full body workouts. It will however learn you valuable and more complex skills like programming, deloading, non-linear progression and most importantly, varying training intensity in order to recover adequately. These skills are all vital for making progression as an intermediate lifter.

The biggest difference in this intermediate strength training program compared to my beginner strength training program is the non-linear form of periodization. This means that the amount of sets, reps, and weight being added is not constant and will vary from workout to workout. Instead of adding weight to the bar every workout to get stronger, we’ll try to hit a new 5 rep max each Friday. Our volume days on Mondays and recovery days on Wednesday are calculated based on our hopefully new weekly 5 rep max.

The workouts of this strength training program for beginners only consists out of compound exercises to maximize strength gains. As compound exercises use multiple muscle groups at once as opposed to isolation exercises, which only trains one specific muscle at a time.

Remember, it’s a strength training program for beginners. So I wouldn’t suggest this training program if you are looking for a pure bodybuilding, hypertrophy based workout program or if you are an advanced lifter. But don’t worry, you will gain some size following this strength training program if you eat and sleep well.