nSuns 4 Days LP — a powerlifting program review
Takeaway
The program is a high volume, but not all of its effective.
For athletes that the rate of adaptations slowed down to a crawl, the volume might not be sustainable.
For a powerlifting program, it’s not overly specific — a lot of the effective reps are reached through fatigue from higher rep ranges.
It’s pure linear progression with no thought long-term.
Best suited for novices and early intermediates.
Advanced athletes could use it as a shock mesocycle for 4 weeks, but not longer.
Introduction
For quite some time now, I’ve been trying to develop a quantitive way of analyzing different training programs. So far I’ve only worked on my own, but I figured, I should try it on someone else’s. As it turnouts out, most of the programs cannot be directly compared due to too much variation, weird and complicated structures, abstract guidelines (no RPE/1RM%) and so on.
But I found one that my methods seem to work on. It is also a popular one too. Enter nSuns templates which according to liftingvault.com are the most popular programs in their database. For those who are not familiar with this program — it’s Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 condensed variation (instead of progressing through months, you progress through weeks). For my purposes, I chose nSuns 4 Days Linear Progression. It seemed simple enough, and it had all the numbers I needed.
Methods & Assumptions
- eReps—I use an effective reps model to quantify effective volume vs non effective one. The cutoff of point is 5 RIR (Reps in Reserve).
- INOL — I use Intensity x Number of Lifts to count total volume. Formula goes: Sets x (Reps / (100% — Intensity%)). You can read more about it here.
- WPS — Work per stimulus is my way of counting how much work we need to do for 1 effective rep. The less, the better. Math: INOL / eReps. I also try to compare SPW (eReps per 1 INOL) which is just the reverse division.
- Set Specificity — How specific the set is. For example, a set that starts at 14 RIR and ends at 0 RIR (to failure) has 5 eReps but a specificity score of 10%. Any set that starts at less than 5 RIR always has a specificity score of 100%. Formula is: (Each Rep at less than 5 RIR x It’s RIR) / (Each Rep x It’s RIR).
- Rep Frequency — I extrapolate where all the reps done land. For example, if a set of 8 reps is with 3 RIR, that means we had 1 rep each with 10 to 3 RIRs. After the first rep, we were at 10 RIR, after the last rep — at 3 RIR.
- Set-set-set drop-off — Unless sets are taken to absolute failure, from my observations, an athlete usually losses around 0.5 rep each set (with adequate rest period). For example, if someone does 5x8 with the same weight and the first set is at 5 RIR, the last will be at 3 RIR.
- 1RM percentages — I use Epley formula (calculator), since it seems to work better for powerlifters, who, in general, are poor with high reps.
Basic stats
For my quantitive analysis, I will choose only Benchpress. Reason being — it’s done twice a week and has no variations, unlike Squat and Deadlift. If there’s demand, however, I can do the analysis on them too.
One thing to note about the above chart. Negative (red) sRIR doesn’t mean much in AMRAP (As many Reps As Possible) sets (bold). But for the set with above 5 reps, it can be used to determine the actual number of reps possible. You can see in the last set according to Epley 1RM percentages we should be able to do 19 reps. But since sRIR is -4, we probably will be able to do only 15. This is theoretical, of course, and based on the assumption that we lose 0.5 rep every set.
Now, what do these numbers mean? Well, for starters, eReps are in the moderate to high range (13+15.5=28.5/weekly). You can certainly get a lot more effective reps with different schemes. And a lot less.
INOL, on the other hand, is very high (1.84+1.71=3.58/weekly). Look below at the daily/weekly guidelines.
As you can see, the author did not lie saying that this is a high volume program. It is true, and I’d venture to say it’s not very sustainable. Especially taking into account the progression one needs to follow. If your adaptations are slower than the load increase, you will experience even bigger INOL, which pushes you into the area of “brutal” for daily and “Are you out of your mind?” weekly. Trust me, that’s not something you can handle for a very long time.
As for the last parameter — WPS, well it’s not great, not terrible. 0.14 and 0.11 respectively for Day 1 and 2. Remember, the smaller it is, the better, because you are looking to put as little work as possible for every effective rep. And not like INOL, if you can’t keep up with the load progressions, WPS improves by 10–15% or so.
Advanced Analysis
Here’s where things get interesting. Assuming one can increase the weight by 2.5 kg every week which is probably what most could do since the program uses 90% of 1RM, we can see at what Reps In Reserve most of the reps are performed. And depending on how much you improve (or fatigue), there’s a shift towards the lower RIR. You can also look at this as 1RM% (chart in the beginning). What it tells you, is at what percentage most work is done.
One thing that really stands out is how many light reps are being done. I mentioned that an effective rep is less than 5 RIR (~86% 1RM). That doesn’t mean 10 RIR (~75% 1RM) are useless either. In fact, 75% is just outside the territory of Strength-Speed in the Force-Velocity Curve.
And many will agree that it’s good for hypertrophy (and somewhat for strength). So, having some of that is great. But if we go below we are venturing into Power zone so I’m not sure about higher RIRs (11–19). It is a powerlifting program after all — maximal strength is what we are trying to develop. What use to us are those reps? There’s a difference between adapting for power and for maximal strength (muscle fiber type changes is one example). Thus, I’ll allow myself to consider these higher RIR reps as junk and even having the potential to interfere with strength adaptations.
Here, look at how exploded reps look each week each day each set. It doesn’t mean that this graph is necessary accurate, but it’s a good visual to see where’s what.
As you can see, the pattern is weird. First 2 sets feel like they are warmups, but then again the rep count is a tad too high for that in my humble opinion. Regardless, there’s a climb up the intensity and then backing off with a last set as an AMRAP to finish. I will not debate whether this approach to sets is good or bad, but I have one parameter that interests me a lot. That’s Set Specificity (the most right column).
The principle of specificity dictates that if you want to get good at something, you must do THAT something. So, if you want benchpress the biggest weight possible, you have to train with the heaviest weights possible. That doesn’t mean you have to keep doing heavy singles all the time. There are other factors at play that need to be taken into account and proper programming addresses them.
For our purposes, I want to consider 5 RIR cutoff point where specificity is lost completely. Arbitrary, same as for eReps, but based on a sound logic that about this weight 100% of muscle fibers are being activated. Why not use eReps then? Well, which is more specific, 5 eReps from a set of 15 taken to failure or 5 eReps from a set of 5 taken to failure? I’d wager, the latter. Given this, I figured I can check whether the set is specific or not (not taking into account eRep counts, though). So, if all the reps are in less than 5 RIR (vertical line), it’s 100% specific, if not, well, you see the numbers. Overall, in this theoretical moderate adaptation 4 week scenario, nSuns specificity lands at an average of 34%.
Comparing to other programs
Some numbers I discussed mean little on their own. We need to compare it to some other program. But the only other where I did this kind of analysis is of my making that goes by the name of The Smile Protocol. Unfortunately, it is quite different. I use periodization and deloads, which mess up the averages. What I can do though is take a 3 week minimal adaptation nSuns numbers and compare averages to different mesocycles in my program. It’s not accurate, but it’s something and by accepting that there will be almost no gains (or fatigue masks them) I can check both programs without the worry of accounting for it.
A note: If a program has very little eReps it might be better to compare SPW than WPS because the latter skews the averages to a very high degree and even fails if eReps = 0.
As you can see, if we take nSuns as a standalone 3 week program, it beats M1 and M2 of The Smile protocol in terms of effective reps. INOL, on the other hand is very high and hardly comparable (or sustainable). WPS/SPW and Specificity is only better than M1. But then again M1 was not designed to be specific for powerlifting. More for hypertrophy and an ease-in to later mesocycles (trust me, it’s needed). But we shouldn’t delve too deep in that. As I’ve said before — nSUNS does not have periodization, so it’s unfair and pointless comparison. As for “good” (< 10 RIR) reps, while there are less in The Smile Protocol, practically all reps are “good” reps. In other words: no junk volume.
Conclusion
Looking at all the numbers short term, for beginners and intermediates, it’s a great no nonsense program.
But athletes should be vary of the high volume. Especially the stronger ones and to whom adaptations don’t come as fast as it used to. It can be potentially used as a shock mesocycle for advanced lifters, but personally I don’t like it. It doesn’t have periodization, and the volume is just too damn high ALL THE TIME. That just doesn’t work for advanced powerlifters. It requires more intelligence if one wants to keep increasing their total.
I also believe this program could be improved by dropping the first set from Day 1 and starting last set with heavier weights on both days. This will remove some junk volume and increase the specificity.
