Google “Mythical Strength” and it should show up.
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Read it, it is, of course, excellent. I already like pressing, but you got me thinking for sure.
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Much appreciated dude. More and more I find focusing on the press to be the right call.
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I have no doubt it has been mentioned elsewhere, but when you talk about assistance movements to help get the press up, what do you have in mind?
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Nothing in particular. I use a whole bunch of different ones based on circumstances. Dips, chins, rows, raises, Kelso shrugs, press variations, pulldowns, pull aparts, etc.
It’s just about building the muscles for the press.
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So probably a lot of the stuff I would otherwise do, but with a more specific focus.
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The vector is the key. We aren’t doing these things to simply do them now but to make the press go up. So if you added 20lbs to your chins and nothing to your press, do something else. Either drop the added weight and really flush the body with reps or try some pulldown with different hand spacing. Or hell: maybe your back is already strong enough and you can just drop that work and use that time for more delt and tricep work.
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I suspect in my case, I would need to target a lot of upper back stuff specifically, I think that is where my most obvious weaknesses would be.
But great food for thought. I have to figure out how to work this in,
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This is where I always have a hard time with how 531 fits into that premise. Obviously it works in practice, but in theory shouldn’t doing strict BB press using 531, then BBB for (assuming no variation) just get you better at that movement versus bigger and stronger?
I
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There’s always room to change the supplemental exercise to a press variant (log, trap bar, keg, etc) in 5/3/1 so long as you establish a TM for it. Jim has said as such a few times. Most folks simply only have access to a barbell.
With BBB specifically, I find doing the same movement for main and supplemental helpful as the main work creates fatigue you have to fight though on the supplmental work
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As someone who does the supplemental lifts twice a week, I can definitely attest to the fact that the ones done immediately after the topset are Tough As Balls, nearly as hard as the topset itself, where the same ones done a couple days later are easy peasy.
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Gee, great, more inclines in my future.
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It’s weird to me that there’s zero back work there. I feel like the back is one of the major contributors to a big press, and tends to be one of the most neglected factors as well.
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If you want an explanation CT is the author. Its from an article of his about client assessment and exercise selection.
I also feel like there are other ways to detect weaknesses. Like, strength ratios might indicate an issue. When I look at the equivalent table for the squat it’s not evident that my weakness is my core but ask me to front squat 75-85% of my back squat and I absolutely cannot deliver anything close to that and when I try it’s my core that fails.
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There ya go.
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@T3hPwnisher thanks for the shout out man, and love the blog post. Really pulls a few things that had been floating around my mind together. I have to say, I feel a little pressure now to be proof of concept in mortals, which can only be a good, if unintended side effect.
@aldebaran pwns blog is gold, without wanting to sound like a fan boy. I highly recommend having a dig through his back catalogue if you find the time.
@TX_iron , this is why I’ve switched to “same but different” exercises for supplemental. Hopefully hit a few different angles and avoid overuse injuries. We’ll see at Christmas how it’s gone.
@Cyrrex you’re convinced you’ll persuade me to do BBB aren’t you?
@Voxel I actually have those charts saved on my phone, and I agree on the squat thing. It’s pretty clear to me that my legs can easily move the weight, if only my core could stabilise it.
@Frank_C front squats do, legitimately, suck. I’m genuinely curious what kind of madness is making me consider paused front squats.
Work for today:
Squat:
3 x (5 x 1) @ 120kg
Giant set (2 rounds):
- 20 hip belt squats @ some weight
- 20 back extensions
- 20 V-ups
Notes:
- The first @anna_5588 style formula monstrosity is saying 3 sets of clusters, 5 singles in each, with a ~20s rest. These were more time consuming than I thought, so I’ll have to plan better, but I definitely feel like they’ll be useful to get better technique at heavy weights, and simply to get acclimated to having heavier stuff on my back.
- Decided to switch it up for assistance today and do hip belt squats, as suggested by @T3hPwnisher. These are absolutely brilliant, I can’t recommend them enough as a bilateral quad builder @Frank_C. With a bit more time, I think I could have tweaked the set up to make it more effective/less uncomfortable so that’s the plan for next time. Leaves me in a bit of a quandary because I now have 3 potential supplemental squat movements that I see value in, front squat, paused squat and hip belt squat.
- Severely underestimated how long the cluster sets were going to take, so had to cut assistance short.
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I’ve considered building a couple of boxes for my gym. My initial purpose was to do seal rows. I’d put my bench on the boxes. With the thought of hip belt squats, I could use the same boxes. Now I have two reasons to build them…
But, I’m doing minimal leg work and I’m fine with my Training Maximally approach. I could do the hip belt squats for the volume work.
Weekly tempo progression is where it’s at.
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Maybe I’m mis-naming them. I was squatting by simply putting the bar in the corner, landmine style, then clipping one of the weights to a dip belt. Lean back and squat, really lights up the quads pretty quick. I’ll try and video next time, if I have time and I haven’t had to take my shirt off.
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