I spend most of my time outside of work and testing beauty products training for powerlifting competitions now that we are back in the gym, and the program I’ve been following for training is Stronger By The Day. It’s is a 4 day a week workout program created by MegSquats that is focused on strength and powerlifting movements. It’s $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year for the in-the-gym program. It also includes a full at-home workout program, an extra workout day every week, warm ups, and access to a Facebook group with other lifters running the program. For transparency, I did win a free year of the program in 2019 but have become a paying customer since then.
I did a 90 days in review of this program in early 2020 after I had recovered from a back injury and was beginning to prep for a powerlifting competition. As happened with most things in 2020, the competition got cancelled, the gyms closed, and we had to figure out something else for the last year and a half. Luckily Stronger by the Day added a home workout program, and we also discovered the amazing home HIIT workouts from The Team Plans. Because of that, we didn’t start from zero going back into the gym in June, but I was definitely a long way off from my pre-COVID lifts (as you can see from day Day 1 numbers here).
| Day 1 (lbs) | Day 120 (lbs) | |
| Squat | 115 | 226 |
| Bench | 75 | 115 |
| Deadlift | 135 | 270 |
| Total | 325 | 611 |
The 120 days numbers are from my competition on October 2nd, which was the USA Powerlifting 2021 Washington State Championship. I placed 5th, which I was incredibly excited about given it was my first meet and there were some amazing competitors there. I’m really proud of what I was able to accomplish after only four months of training, which included a few weeks off for vacations and other things, so I ended up doing exactly 50 sessions in those 4 months. I can’t believe I added over a hundred pounds to both my squat and deadlift in that time, and almost doubled my total. I was able to add almost 6 pounds to my total every single workout session. I know I can credit the Stronger by the Day program for that success, and I couldn’t have hoped for anything better given the amount of time I spent training.
Beyond the incredible strength gains, I really love that there’s a ton of variety week to week and block to block so you avoid getting bored. There’s still enough consistency to actually make progress, but it stays fun. I also love how many substitutions are offered to make it easy to work with whatever is available at the gym. And because I’m always wary of getting another back injury, I appreciate that there are core and mobility movements included in every workout, which I find help keep my back feeling great.
However, as I noted with my last review, I still struggled with peaking for my meet since it’s not personalized to you and doesn’t account for things like having a meet coming up. I had switch up some of the sessions to try and prep as best I could (which honestly still worked out just fine!). I also found that the blocks in these months focused way more on squat and deadlift progress, so I made way less progress on my bench than on those lifts. So if you’re prepping for a meet, I don’t think this is necessarily the best program for you unless you’re on a budget. Even with this issues, the program is still definitely one of the most affordable while still being very effective.
I also can’t wait for the team to launch their app which will make it so much easier to use than having to copy everything into the Strong app. I know that’s coming out as soon as they have it ready, and the sneak peaks have made it look amazing. I’m still planning on using the program to prep for my next meet in December, app or no app!
Is there any fitness gear or program you want me to test? Let me know in the comments below, and thanks as always for reading!
LiftBakelove 