Back sooner than normal for a look at my first non-5/3/1 review on this Medium. This my first time stepping outside of Jim Wendler’s popular program in two years and I did Power Hypertrophy Upper Lower by Brandon Campbell for the prescribed eight weeks.
After programming almost exclusively around Jim Wendler’s philosophy for years, I decided to go for something different with P.H.U.L. The program falls under the trend/portmanteau of “powerbuilding,” a combination of powerlifting and bodybuilding. While the term is relatively new, the idea of using bodybuilding to help powerlifting (and using powerlifting to help bodybuilding) is not.
There’s some powerlifting here, so it makes a little sense to talk about 1RM movement. But I didn’t test my 1RM, nor do I plan on it. This makes talking about the strength aspects of it a little tough, but I end this program just exhausted and sore, I don’t feel I would get a true 1RM until after at least a week’s rest and then another week to test 1RM and I’d honestly just do a deload week and get back into training more than test.
That said, I honestly expect a bit of regression in strength because of the complete lack of volume I had on the big four. I went from a 5/3/1 anchor (God is a Beast) that had 33+ reps a week for each of the big 4 to, at most, 20 reps a week on bench, squat and deadlift and only 18 on overhead press. So, I’ll simply assume regression occured.
