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Sheiko Prep Cycle

Advanced 3 days/week 4 weeks Very high volume Powerlifting

A four-week preparatory cycle built to Boris Sheiko's method, and the highest-volume program in the library by a distance. It is built into Ægir Iron and free to load.

What makes it Sheiko

Four things, and they are all unusual. The competition lifts are almost the only lifts: squat and bench are trained on nearly every day, and bench is usually trained twice in the same session at two different intensities. Everything lives between fifty and eighty five percent in sets of two to five, apart from the last day's openers, a double at ninety, so there is no rep-out, no top single and no grinding in any week. Every working block is walked up to rather than jumped to, a set of five and two sets of four walked up before the work, every single time, starting from fifty and sixty percent and from higher on the heavier days. And the assistance is small and is the work Sheiko programs, good mornings, flyes, triceps, rows and abs, rather than whatever is fashionable.

Day 1 Bench · Squat · Close-grip bench · flyes · good mornings Day 2 Squat · Deadlift · rows · abs Day 3 Bench · Squat · Paused bench · dips · triceps Week 1 builds · Week 2 is the volume peak · Week 3 is the intensity peak · Week 4 unloads into openers

What this is, and what it is not

Sheiko published numbered routines, #29, #30, #31, #37 and the rest, each a specific table of sets written against a specific preparation. This one is a preparatory cycle built to his published method and loading conventions, which is what makes it useful as a built-in that anyone can load against their own maxes. If you are running a numbered routine out of the book, use New Program and then Upload Program instead, and Ægir Iron will follow it exactly.

At a glance

Discipline	Powerlifting
Experience level	Advanced, and with the time to train three long days a week
Length	4 weeks
Training days	3 per week
Equipment	Full power gym
Loading	Percentage of a competition best. Sheiko is explicit that his tables should not be run off an inflated max.
Price	Free for individual lifters and rostered athletes

Free for individual lifters and for athletes on a coach's roster. Coaches pay only for roster tools.

How it works in Ægir Iron

Every set is priced off your squat, bench and deadlift, and the bench variations, close-grip and paused, price off your bench rather than asking for maxes of their own, so the whole cycle needs only three numbers. Nothing is flagged all out, because nothing in a Sheiko cycle has open reps: it ends by testing, not by inferring. If the full volume is more than you can absorb, the reduced option trims a working set from the two build-up weeks, which is the usual first concession for anyone who is not a full-time lifter. It never trims the ramp, because cutting the ramp would make a reduced cycle harder than a full one.

This is a lot of work. Treat the volume option as a real choice rather than a lesser version, and do not add a second program on top of it.

Original source

Ægir Iron's template is built from this source. Under it is what the template takes from it.

Sheiko BI (n.d.). Sheiko powerlifting method and numbered routines. Method; set out in English in Sheiko BI, Powerlifting: Foundations and Methods (2018).The preparatory cycle built to his method: competition lifts nearly every day, 50 to 85 percent of a competition best, sets of two to five, walked-up warm-ups

Start Sheiko Prep Cycle

Open Ægir Iron, go to Program and choose New Program, then the Program Wizard. On the first screen pick Powerlifting, then choose Sheiko Prep Cycle from the cards under WHAT DO YOU WANT TO RUN? It is free on iOS, Android, and the web, with your data synced across all three.

Load Sheiko Prep Cycle free →