Mar 27, 2025 8 min read Beginner

This is where I leave you: The end of LIFTOFF

Where you've been, where you should be, and where you can go from here.

On my forest wizard // Seamus McKiernan, August 2020

If you are one of the fine folks who picked up LIFTOFF around the start of the New Year, this is about the time you’d be reaching the end of Phase Three (yes, the program is only 12 weeks long). If that’s you: Congrats! You not only started a strength training program, you learned to eat to support your lifting; learned to use all the important equipment in the gym for maintaining full-body strength; and, with any luck, got a little bit stronger. Maybe your daily physical tasks are not longer so onerous; maybe you get through the day without quite so many aches and pains as before.

One feature of all of LIFTOFF’s Phases—the bodyweight phase, the dumbbell phase, and the barbell phase—is that, while they have suggested lengths, can be adjusted to last longer or shorter as you need. I’ve noticed that many people get self-conscious about how long each Phase takes them, or how much they have or haven’t progressed by the end. LOTS of self-consciousness about needing to pause the program for an interruption like an illness.

But what I need is for all of you to perk your heads up and notice that you are all doing this according to your needs, and that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work! You can run the program straight through. But it is also flexible by design, because we all need to be realistic about the demands of life, and how a strength program fits into that.

To that end, I polled some active and recent-former LIFTOFF students on how each of the Phases shook out for them, in length and experience. Here’s how they responded.

Phase One

A scant majority of people don’t take all three weeks with the first Phase. In their own words:

I was eager to get started and felt that I was ready to do the moves with at least low weight dumbbells.

I hate bodyweight exercises and I had a free trial membership to the gym. As soon as I could jump ship, I did. -Sara

Some even skip it! As one student wrote:

I was not afraid of weights and the book said I could skip phase one so I did. -Nikki

But nearly as many take the whole three weeks, and some take even more. As one student wrote:

First two sessions, my leg muscles hurt for 3 days after so I waited a week between. Did two full weeks as intended, then got sick on week 3. That's where I am at the moment, still a bit sick so i'm waiting to get better to start again. -Poppy

Another:

I was coming out of cancer treatment so I doubled or tripled all phases. -Vendela

(Safety and health and doctor’s orders first always, but I’ve heard from a surprising number of folks in cancer treatment who were recommended by their doctor to try strength training, and they have used LIFTOFF.)

Phase Two

For Phase Two, a significant minority of people don’t run it for the whole five weeks. As they said:

I skipped the last week because I was over 45 lbs, I was anxious to get to the barbell, and you sent a newsletter that I read as permission to move on at exactly the same time I was considering it! -Nikki

I struggled as the dumbbells got big and unwieldy. Since I had access to barbells, I used them when I could.

About four in ten, likewise, run it for longer than the suggested five weeks. Here’s what a couple of them wrote:

I tried a barbell for the first time at 6 weeks for squat and that went up pretty fast. It took 10 weeks to hit 45lbs for bench and OHP. It took longer than scheduled because I was working a seasonal manual labor job and was 1) very physically tired and 2) only made it to the gym twice a week after week 5. -GG

The transition from dumbbells to barbells was trickier than I expected. I was right at the cusp of Phase 2 and Phase 3 for a while (so ~40lbs WW, for about a year). I had to "restart" Phase 2 several times after long breaks from the gym due to illness or lack of time.

Some people also find that they can get to using a barbell earlier for some lifts than others, and this is also welcomed and encouraged:

I started using the barbell for squats and deadlifts after 5 weeks, but it took me 13+ weeks to be able to bench press the bar and 17+ weeks to overhead press it.

(If you stalled on OHP first and early: congrats, you are normal. There is a whole section on this in the book called "What to do if you stall (and a note on OHP)".)

Phase Three

The trend here is clear: The vast majority of people who do LIFTOFF end up running Phase Three for longer than the suggested four weeks. While LIFTOFF is a 12-week program, this is really more like a minimum effective dose. To keep building strength, students can keep repeating the cycle as written as long as they are enjoying it and are getting results from it. This could be as long as a year, or even more, depending on how quickly they work! As they wrote to me:

I kept doing phase 3 for several months. It’s as good a linear progression program as any so I just kept going with it, adding on a few accessories for fun that I would rotate through every 6 weeks or so.

Weights kept going up so I just kept going to maximize newbie gains. Plus I was indecisive about next program and people of Liftcord said it was fine to keep going for a while.

I've been in phase 3 for at least a year, through breaks short and long. The weights haven't stopped going up so I don't feel like I need to mix it up yet. -Helenmary

I did phase 3 for like a year-I did a full twelve weeks to count it as “completing” Liftoff and then kept going because I liked the program and felt like I had plenty of gas left in the tank for [linear progression]!

And what else did they have to say? Well:

I found doing phase 1 for the full 3 weeks frustrating - i wanna lift real weights! -but so rewarding to start lifting real weights with good form. -Emily

It’s a great program and I enjoyed my time! i also have come back to Liftoff a few times after a prolonged injury and in between other programs. Thank you for making it! -Serena

It really is a program you can adapt to where you are. It’s served me so well. I’m technically doing phase 2 atm because I’m having a fight with my joints and some meds. -Vendela

I still mostly do the Phase 3 workouts when I lift. I experiment with adding different things or changing things at times but it’s a very easy to remember and full coverage kind of workout. If I don’t want to think, just want to lift, I can always come back to it.

I am glad I took the Liftcord's advice to stick with Ph3 so long as it worked for me! The steady uptick of the numbers was very satisfying and I could take my time trying to figure out what my next step / program would be while getting very comfortable with the space and tools at my gym. -Kris

Where to go from here

As the LIFTOFF text notes, this can be where you part ways with lifting. The beauty of a program like this is that it will never take you as long or as much effort to get back to this level of strength and physical capability. Strength, once built, stays with you in some form forever, thanks to muscle memory. Even if you scale back, even if you change activities, even if you stop entirely. If you want, you can close the book on this project having learned something and built something entirely for yourself.

But!: If you do want to keep things going, there are many options for that, too.

If you want to keep lifting three days a week AND getting stronger

You can keep doing Phase Three of LIFTOFF for as long as you continue to enjoy it/get results from it. You just keep repeating the days/weeks in the same cadence as they are written.
If you are eager to try something else, programs that are popular with She’s A Beast readers include:

If you want to transition back to another sport, but also keep lifting

You can very easily scale Phase Three back to two days a week.

You just do Day A one day a week, and then Day B another day, with at least one rest day in between. Your lifting days might be Monday and Thursday, Monday and Wednesday, Tuesday and Friday, Tuesday and Saturday… you pick. You probably won’t continue to add weight to your lifts with this frequency, but it’s enough to keep maintaining your strength as you participate in other activities—climbing, cycling, running, skiing, pro-am curling, recreational cornhole, croquet, badminton (really, any of the classical lawn sports), horseback riding, circus acrobatics, luge—the world is your oyster.

And if this is where we part ways? Fair enough. I’m thrilled and delighted you gave strength training a shot, and hope you got some gains to take with you.

And if you've been reading these posts all these last three months, and HAVEN’T tried LIFTOFF yet—it’s the end of March now, which means if you started now, you could be done by June 19, just before the start of summer. As the proverb goes, the best time to plant a tree was two hundred years ago, but the second best time is now.