Announcing Outlift: Our Intermediate Bulking Program

Outlift Intermediate Bulking Program

After a few years of development and testing, we’re stoked to finally, finally announce our official intermediate bulking program.

This past year, while Jared was working on his general health and fitness program for skinny-fat guys, Outlive, Marco and I have been beta testing our intermediate bulking program, Outlift.

You can read all about it (and buy it) here: 

Outlift: Intermediate Bulking Program

It’s a 233-page guide that comes with four customizable intermediate bulking routines, each four months long, and all of them designed to help you become much bigger, stronger and better looking.

Illustration of a guy doing a barbell bench press.

Now, to be clear, this is a true intermediate program. And different people have different definitions of what intermediate means. We have a full article about how to gauge your lifting level, but briefly:

  • In terms of strength, people often classify intermediate lifters as people who see improvements from month to month instead of from week to week (novice) or from workout to workout (beginner).
  • In terms of technique, being an intermediate usually means knowing how to do the big compound lifts with good technique. We may not be professionally trained Olympic weightlifters, but we know our way around the gym.
  • And in terms of bulking, intermediate usually means that someone has gotten their newbie gains but hasn’t reached their genetic potential yet. An intermediate is someone who still has room on their frame for more muscle mass.

Long story short: to get the most out of this program, you should already know how to squat, bench press, deadlift, overhead press, and do chin-ups with weight hanging from your waist. And you should have already had at least some success bulking up.

Perhaps most of all, though, this program is for guys who have started to run into size and strength plateaus.

  • If you’re benching the same weight that you were last month, you’re probably an intermediate lifter, and you need a more structured training program.
  • If your muscles haven’t visibly grown in the past few months, again, you’re probably an intermediate lifter, and you need a more rigorous bulking routine.

An intermediate lifter is someone who has gotten the low hanging fruit and must now learn how to climb the tree. This stage is where most of our results will come from. This is where we’ll spend almost our entire lifting career. It’s a great place to be. But we need to be diligent with our training if we want to continue getting results.

Some people will reach the intermediate stage within 6-12 months of serious lifting, but most guys casually lift weights for years before getting to this point. Heck, some guys never learn how to squat deep, deadlift with a neutral spine, or bench without hurting their shoulders. 

If this sounds too advanced for you, you’ll do better with our Bony to Beastly Program. In that program, we’ll teach you how to lift properly, starting with easier variations and working your way towards the big lifts. We’ll teach you how to eat a diet that will get you lean and muscular. We’ll help you gain your first 20–30 pounds. By the time you finish Bony to Beastly, you’ll be ready for Outlift.

Johnny's intermediate ectomorph bulking transformation (before and after photos).

Here’s Johnny, one of our intermediate guys who did the Bony to Beastly Program. b2B still works well for intermediate lifters, so there’s no harm in starting there. It will give you a great foundation of size and strength. If you already have that foundation, though, then Outlift will help you build upon it.

Outlift isn’t a cookie-cutter program. It’s fully customizable to your own body and goals, as all intermediate programs should be. In addition to choosing between the four different workout routines, you’ll also be choosing your own main lifts and accessories. Plus, based on your performance in your final sets, the spreadsheets auto-calculate when you should (or shouldn’t) be adding weight to the bar, and how much.

We don’t just need to adapt our bodies to lifting weights, we also need to adapt our lifting to our bodies. For example, maybe your shoulders don’t agree with overhead pressing, or your chest is lagging behind, or chin-ups make your elbows hurt. No problem. As intermediate lifters, we should be doing workout routines that fit us like well-worn lifting belts.

On the other hand, building our own workout routines from scratch can be confusing and ineffective. Most lifters who build their own programs just wind up plateaued. Oftentimes years go by without seeing any meaningful progress.

I’ve been there myself, casually maintaining my progress for years at a time, never really getting any bigger, stronger, or looking any better. That’s the great and terrible thing about being an intermediate, right? We already look pretty good. Maybe not our dream physiques, but certainly better than the average man. We get stuck at this above-average point. It sucks, sure, but it’s not as distressing as being skinny or fat.

Going to the gym week after week without seeing any meaningful progress can be boring, though. It’s just going through the motions. I got tired of it. I wanted to start improving again. Maybe you’re at that point, too.

So we’re arming you with the four very best customizable template routines—all of them personally tested by us, as well as being refined over a full year of beta testing. The structure is there, but so is freedom. Using those templates as your foundation, you can choose all of your lifts from dropdown menus.

The main guide will teach you exactly how to tailor the templates—how to min-max your workout routine to get optimal results out of it. Not in a general sense, but in an individual sense.

Or you can stick with the defaults. We carefully chose those, as well. The program is designed to work right out of the box. No assembly required.

And keep in mind that these routines, as well as all of the customization options, are programmed by Marco Walker-Ng, BHSc, PTS, who has been doing this professionally for over a decade, with clients including doctors, dieticians, other personal trainers, and professional/Olympic athletes.

There are a few reasons why this approach is so effective:

  • Anthropometrics: you can adjust the program to suit your proportions and bone structure, allowing you to bulk up lagging muscles while taking advantage of your natural strengths.
  • Longterm results: you can choose the lifts that best suit your joints, allowing you to gain a ton of muscle and strength without suffering from aches, pains, and injuries—some of which can become chronic. (Even most chronic injuries can be rehabbed, but it’s a real pain.)
  • Matches your goals: you can choose the workout routine and lifts that best match your goals.
  • Matches your preferences: we all get excited by different routines and different lifts. If we’re lifting weights anyway, why not love it?

These workouts are spreadsheets. After many, many requests, we’ve built these routines as spreadsheets. Using Google Sheets (a free app) means that you can fill in the workout sheets on your smartphone at the gym. The sheet will tell you how much weight to load onto the bar, it will track your progress, and you can customize it using pre-programmed dropdown menus.

We’re also trying something new with our coaching community. This intermediate program is a standalone program and includes lifetime access to updates to the program—no recurring fees. But you also have the option to join our coaching community at the rate of 9/month (which you can cancel at any time). 

In the community, you can track your progress, and we’ll give you feedback and coaching as you go through the program. Perhaps best of all, you’ll be surrounded by guys fighting for similar goals. We’ll all help to hold you accountable.

For me, this has always been the difference between maintenance and progress. As soon as I do my official “before” assessment and announce my goals in the community, it becomes real. I become locked into my plan. I gain the focus that I need to succeed.

We’re gearing up for our favourite time of year: Resolution Season. It’s always the most exciting time of year in our coaching community, and we founders have gotten into the tradition of setting our own yearly lifting/health goals every January, too.

In fact, setting my own size/strength/aesthetics goals exactly one year ago is what spurred on the development of this new intermediate program. This program made me fall back in love with getting bigger and stronger. The structured workouts and clearly defined goals give me a purpose in the gym. And I’ve been getting results again—results that show no signs of slowing down.

We’ve been rigorously testing the routine this entire time, refining it over the entire year. You can read more about the development and beta testing process here.

The first version wasn’t perfect. Some testers found the initial version too difficult, others found it too easy. Some guys wanted to double down on their lifting, whereas others wanted a routine that would pair well with their busy lives. That’s why we developed the four different routines, each built for a different situation.

Having those four different routines also gives you the freedom to adjust your training every season. Maybe you want to lift harder during the winter and ease back during the summer, or vice versa—it’s up to you.

If you decide to buy the program, you’ll get all four routines, each four months long, and you can repeat them as many times as you like. They’re designed with replayability in mind, too. Each time you go through them, you can customize them to fit your ever-evolving goals. I spent a full year going through the program and I’m not even close to outgrowing it. (And I say this as someone who’s now gained over 60 pounds at 10–11% body fat.)

The same is true of Marco. He’s already at his goal size and strength, so he was supposed to test it on his clients, not himself. But he liked the structure of it so much that within a couple of weeks, he was doing it, too. Just for the sheer joy of it.

We also made an entire (233-page) guide revealing the nuances behind why it’s programmed the way it is, and about how to best customize the routines to suit you even better. This guide is brand new. Not even our beta testers have seen it. And we think you’ll really like it.

Of course, if you don’t like it, we have the same 100% refund policy that we have on all of our products. Just shoot us an email and we’ll give you every penny back. No hassle, no fees, no risk.

Outlift Intermediate Bulking Program

Check it out:

Outlift: Intermediate Bulking Program

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