Jonnie Candito's 6 week intermediate program

is it good? Does anyone have any experiences with it?

I have heard lots of positive feedback, but I haven't done it myself (yet). Week 2 squats will kill you though.

It's a very good program, I made a lot of gains on it. Squat went from 460 to 526 on it, bench went from 275 to 340. Granted this was after doing about 6 cycles of the program.

The 2nd week will make you want to die with the squats though, just warning you. The first two weeks in general will be really tough if you're used to doing lower rep ranges

wow dude those are insane gains. Can you tell me more? What was your diet like? Is the routine in general enjoyable? I have heard about the infamous second week but ive done high volume squatting before so its nothing out of my realm. Also, this is very exciting to hear my stats are almost identical to your starting stats. 440/285/285

*485 dead

The routine in general is enjoyable because you know what you're doing every week, and it's always variable. I should also mention that those 6 cycles were over the course of about a year and then some, with multiple starts/stops, doing different things to mix things up. So yeah, I gained a lot, but it wasn't over a short time frame. I also weighed about 210 at the end of the whole thing.

My diet was just me eating a lot to be honest because of how fucking difficult everything was. Normally I have a big protein shake in the morning, chicken/rice/beans for lunch, protein bars, eggs when I got home from work, I'd eat during workouts, and then pasta after.

I'm sure you've done high volume squatting before, but this is something else. Soon enough you'll get to a point where you're squatting near 4 plates for a set of 10, and then you do 5 sets of 3 with a weigh slightly below that.

Best of luck my friend. You'll do well with those numbers on this program, I'm 100% sure of it!

solid program

I did 2 or 3 cycles and it boosted my squat from 335 to 405. My other lifts increased more modestly. There's a lot of volume in the first two weeks but it's not that bad imo

Great program, starting my 3rd run now. Went from 335x1 high bar to 325x5 on my first run. Week 2 is absolutely brutal but won't be so bad if you have a good cardio baseline, something I learned after incorporating biking for 30 minutes post workout. Deadlift went from 365-405 conventional, hookgrip, on just the first cycle alone. Highly recommend.

I was on it for a year and it's the best powerlifting program I've ever done.

It's genius in the way it uses squats to build up deadlifts. You pull rarely, but your CNS is recovered and ready, while your leg strength is built up by squats.

For bench press, I made solid, but not impressive gains. It was always the hardest one for me to increase. I suggest you include auxiliary lifts that target chest.

Second week squats are brutally awesome.

6th week isn't really necessary, because 5th is close enough for you to know what your max is. Also, it gets very taxing.