I am going to get flamed for this, but…
I have done a lot of reading on westside and I have found it to be a set of principles, and not a program. There is a standard template, but you are supposed to modify it to make it work for you and your goals using those principles.
You could make it work for a raw lifter. You would just need to emphasize the main lifts for your max effort work, and implement repetition effort work more than the standard westside template does.
Westside works for raw lifters. Like any good program - tailor it to what helps you the most. WS is more about principles than programming or exercises. Look at the most basic principles - max effort, rep effort, speed effort.
Dynamic work is moving a weight fast and explosive, whether you do it at 50% or 90% - percentages don’t matter as long as the weight is moving fast. Speed work is not always triples on the bench and doubles for squats. I’ve done deadlifts for triples for speed work w/ a guy who trained at WS for two years.
Max effort is just that - the most amount of weight you can move that day for whatever rep range you decide in the 1-5 range. And don’t think the WS gym lifters are maxing 2 days/week consistently. They are not.
Rep effort - do some reps. Bodybuilding stuff. Do it for time, 5x10, 3x5, to failure - whatever it is you need.
Everything you see written by Louie is a GENERALIZATION. It is not gospel. The only thing gospel is those three methods when it comes to getting stronger. There are other methods used (GPP work, training weaknesses, etc.) - but those are the three that mean the most of what we talk about here.
WS is very very simple. It makes you think about what you need to do to take your lifting to the next level. We all like things wrapped up in a nice and neat little box. If you are that lifter - then WS is probably not for you.
To expand on what Osu has written, I’ve seen many variations on ME and DE work and just about an infinite number of possibilities on RE work. I’ve also seen Westside periodized. Even in the book of methods, they explain what basically an off season looks like. More conditioning, less specific exercises, higher volume, and more pre/re-hab work.
Like for ME work, I’ve seen a recommendation from an IPF world deadlift champion to work up to a 5, 3, or 2 at an RPE of 7-9 and then follow the lower-middle range of prilepin’s table for that weight. So you’re still getting some strain in the lift… or not if your beat up, but still getting the extra volume that seems to help raw lifters. I’ve also seen that lifters will sometimes take a week off ME work and do repetition work like number of db presses in a minute and try to beat the previous record, or do heavy sled work instead ME legs.
For DE, I’ve seen a wide range of options. I’ve seen 10 sets of 5 at 50 percent with 60s rest in between sets for conditioning and building mass. I’ve also seen the lactic acid cycles like for box squat, that could be 60 percent of that squat variation for 20+ sets of 2 with 15-30s rest inbetween. You don’t even have to use the box. Personally, I think the box does help for raw lifters if you use a relatively wide stance and sit back relatively far, granted free squat practice is still needed at some frequency. This is how I’ve always had the fastest squat progress and best form. How often depends on the individual it seems.
There’s so much variety with RE work so I’ll just leave it as work on weaknesses even if that is your everything, and don’t go above a 6-7RM. Otherwise it’s too close to ME work.
[quote]Paul33 wrote:
[quote]emskee wrote:
[quote]tylerkeen42 wrote:
So you’re saying that you think westside is a bad program because it’s mainly designed for geared lifters and you’re a raw guy?
Thats like saying saying you don’t care that a baseball coach can get your batting average up because you’re a football player. [/quote]
Is it really like saying that? Just like saying that?
I’m sorry, I’m not part of the above argument, but that was a really bad analogy and even if it were good, arguments by analogy are fallacious by definition.
No offense, but argue the point if you must argue at all.
Again, I am on neither your side or his.[/quote]
awwwww cmon you must be sorta on my side!pretty please?[/quote]
Okay, a little. Why not. I’m basically a nice guy (+/-).
I think I started all this and I attribute it to a misunderstanding of what I wrote. I should have written “…at some gym in Columbus.”
Louie is an empiricist.
He draws people in and he experiments with them.
He started with Prilepin and went from there. (re the article “Training by Percents” in Powerlifting USA sometime around 1990 I believe) Further, Louie stated that his choice of rep schemes ala Prilepin were to ensure that bar velocity remained the same for all reps. He proposed that the lifter should push into each rep with maximum acceleration. He converged on a bar speed range between 0.8 and 1 meter/second (as I recall).
His gym, where he does most of his investigations happens to be dominated by a certain type of lifter.
That type of lifter may be capable of enhanced recovery and so can do more work per unit time than another type of lifter who has average (or in the case of older people like me, shitty) recovery ability.
A lifter with an average capacity to recover could benefit from select principles popularized by Louie.
Further, Louie’s gym may be dominated by lifters using a certain equipment set. The raw lifter does not use these equipment.
So, a raw and/or drug free lifter could certainly use the Prilepin tables and other components of the techniques, movements, mixes which Louie has published or verbalized.
Most of my competition years, as a drug free lifter were spent taking Louie’s distillation of Prilepin to the letter. I still use my form of the Prilepin concepts as originally popularized by Louie.
Look at the coan/Phillipi 10 week Deadlift Routine and see if it does not present a form of Prilepin and ME with lots of assistance all rolled into a single day.
If you don’t wear a million ply suit, maybe box squats won’t mean much to you.
If you don’t wear a chain mail bench shirt, then maybe board presses are not needed. Maybe bands and chains require a second look also.
If you recover slowly (join the club) maybe you do ME, if at all, once every 2 weeks, once ever 9 days, whatever.
Like the gentleman said earlier and as we say in my field “whatever works is the right answer.”
[quote]tylerkeen42 wrote:
[quote]Paul33 wrote:
i am SO sorry…
the guy is more than likely raw. as are about 90%+ lifters. therefore westside is a bad choice. is that simple enough?[/quote]
No sarcasm there at allâ?¦ If my comparisons don’t make sense then call me on it and if I’m wrong explain why but a little respect goes a long way. Theres a little life lesson for you[/quote]
your comparison wasent neccesarily bad but it was very easily misinterpreted. ive heard too many retarded gear/raw analogies ie the high jump one, so i took it the wrong way. i always fnd that one amusing. yes they are different sports, but the fact that geared guys never qualify a geared lift as geared 99% of the time, high jumpers WOULD get pissed off if pole vaulters said “i jump -----” height, put fail to mention the pole. guys saying “i squat 1100 pounds” no you dont.
[quote]Paul33 wrote:
[quote]tylerkeen42 wrote:
[quote]Paul33 wrote:
i am SO sorry…
the guy is more than likely raw. as are about 90%+ lifters. therefore westside is a bad choice. is that simple enough?[/quote]
No sarcasm there at allÃ?¢?Ã?¦ If my comparisons don’t make sense then call me on it and if I’m wrong explain why but a little respect goes a long way. Theres a little life lesson for you[/quote]
your comparison wasent neccesarily bad but it was very easily misinterpreted. ive heard too many retarded gear/raw analogies ie the high jump one, so i took it the wrong way. i always fnd that one amusing. yes they are different sports, but the fact that geared guys never qualify a geared lift as geared 99% of the time, high jumpers WOULD get pissed off if pole vaulters said “i jump -----” height, put fail to mention the pole. guys saying “i squat 1100 pounds” no you dont.[/quote]
I agree that I probably should have elaborated more in the original post. Also, it is odd that people have to actually specify that their lifts are raw instead of the other way around. It’s probably just because of the popularity geared lifting used to have, I wouldn’t be surprised if it switched soon because of the increase in popularity of raw lifting.
I got real excited for a second.
My activity log said that bartl posted in here.
That is a name I haven’t heard in forever on this forum.