PHUL in Durata: two rules, one program, six weeks

Finding it

The finder asks three things: goal, experience, days a week. Answer powerbuilding, intermediate, four days, and PHUL comes back at the top of the shortlist. It is the classic answer to wanting both strength and size without running two programs.

The program page lays out the week before you commit to anything: Upper Power, Lower Power, Upper Hypertrophy, Lower Hypertrophy. Every muscle group is trained twice a week, once heavy and once for volume.

Four days, two jobs

Upper Power is the barbell bench, a barbell row, the overhead press and arm work. Lower Power is the squat and the deadlift, then leg press, leg curls and calves. The two hypertrophy days come back to the same muscles with lighter weights and more reps: incline bench, flyes, cable rows, dumbbell rows and lateral raises upstairs, front squats, lunges, extensions and curls downstairs.

There are no training maxes to work out. Every lift starts from a working weight you can currently handle, so the start sheet asks for one number per lift, 100 kg on the squat and 75 kg on the bench on this run, and the app takes it from there.

Pick a start date and the whole cycle's session dates flow from it onto the History calendar. PHUL is a repeating weekly template rather than a fixed-length block, so it runs until you stop it.

Two rules, running at once

This is the part that makes PHUL awkward on paper and easy in the app. The power lifts and the hypertrophy lifts progress differently, and the app runs both without you tracking either.

On the power days the big lifts are linear. Three sets of 3–5 reps, and when you get 5 on all of them the weight goes up next session: 5 kg on the squat and deadlift, 2.5 kg on the upper-body lifts. Miss the target and the weight is held, not pushed. Miss twice in a row and the rule cuts it 10% and restarts the climb from there.

On the hypertrophy days everything runs double progression instead. The rule chip spells it out on the exercise: climb the rep range session by session, and once every set reaches the top of the range the weight goes up and the reps reset to the bottom. No percentages, no maths, and no need to remember which lift is on which rule.

Each lift also carries its rule where you train, on a chip you can tap. That matters in a program where the same muscle is trained under two different schemes in the same week.

The climb, while it lasts

The squat comes round once a week on Lower Power, so the linear climb is weekly: 100 kg, then 105 kg, then 110 kg. Five kilos a week is a fast climb, and that is the honest appeal of linear progression. It works, and then it stops working, and a good program has an answer for the second part.

The estimate on the exercise moves with it, 116.7 kg after the first session and 122.5 kg after the second. The session tallies itself when you finish, every set, the reps and the volume moved.

110 kg bites

Then 110 kg goes on the bar and the reps are not there: two on the working sets instead of five. In a linear program that is a failed session, so the app holds the weight rather than pushing it. Come back the following week, miss it again, and now there are two misses on the same weight.

The rule chip is a button, and this is when it earns its place. Tap it and the app shows its case: the evidence from this exact slot's own history, and the law it is judging that history against. The last completed session counts as miss one of two. Two misses at this weight and the rule cuts it by 10%.

That is worth reading carefully, because it is the difference between a program and a spreadsheet. The app is not guessing from your best-ever squat or from some rolling average; it is reading the sets logged in this slot, in this program, and applying the rule that this program carries.

The app backs you off, then rebuilds

The second miss trips the rule and the engine cuts the squat 10%, from 110 kg down to 100 kg. You did not calculate it, decide it, or have to be honest with yourself about it at the end of a bad session. The program did it.

Then the climb restarts from there and the next appearance is back at 105 kg, with 110 kg waiting again. That is the whole point of the deload: you get a run at the weight that beat you, with a couple of easier sessions behind you rather than a third grinding failure.

Six weeks in, the squat has been to 110 kg, been cut, and is on its way back at 105 kg. The block ends mid-rebuild, which is what six weeks of an honest linear program usually looks like.

Six weeks from above

Twenty-four sessions across six weeks fill the History calendar, four days a week with the power and hypertrophy days alternating. The squat's own estimated 1RM chart is the shape of the story: climbing, flattening through the stall, dipping at the deload, then climbing again.

The strength view ranks the lifts by estimate, the squat's 122.5 kg above the deadlift, the bench at 90.7 kg and the row at 78.8 kg, with weekly volume alongside. The lifts that moved over the six weeks are visible next to the ones that did not: the bench went 75 kg to 80, the barbell row 65 kg to 70, the barbell curl 7.5 kg to 10, and the leg curl on the power day climbed 7.5 kg to 17.5. The deadlift held at 130 kg the whole way, which is normal for a lift trained heavy once a week.

The payoff: a ceiling found, and a route past it

Six weeks of PHUL did not just add 5 kg to a squat. It found the weight the squat could not hold, proved it twice, cut it without being asked, and set up the second run at it. That is the useful output of a linear block, and it is the part a spreadsheet makes you do to yourself.

Meanwhile the hypertrophy days were adding reps and weight on their own rule the whole time, on the same muscles, in the same week, with no bookkeeping from you. Two rules, one program, and the only thing you had to bring was the effort.

Session 1

100 kg → 105 kg

+5 kg, after a cut

The squat, start to finish: 100 kg to a 110 kg ceiling, two misses there, an automatic 10% cut, and the rebuild back at 105 kg with the estimate at 122.5 kg.

Week 6