It won’t be as effective for hypertrophy. You can gain some muscle still, but you have to push close to failure for a significant hypertrophic stimulus.
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You know if he has those posted on their main web site?
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If you want to use them for hypertrophy, exaggerate the eccentric a bit and focus on building tension as much as possible. The muscle damage needed for hypertrophy mostly occurs on the eccentric so if you just drop down as fast as possible, what’s typical for dynamic effort work, there isn’t really enough time under tension. Slowing down the eccentric should fix that though, that’s actually my preferred way to approach DE training.
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From the west side site, today.
TAKING A PERCENTAGE
by Westside Barbell on June 21, 2019
FAQs
“I see in the newsletter you guys are running 5’s now as opposed to 2’s. My question is what caused the shift?”
We’ve found by keeping to a 3 week wave using 5x5’s has turned into a higher level of SPP for our lifters. We keep the percentages the same 50-55-60(wk1-wk2-wk3) w/~25% accommodating resistance at top.
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He does, just look under “articles”, see the ones from this year and 2018.
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Blockquote[quote=“chris_ottawa, post:18, topic:257988, full:true”]
Yeah, they do 5x5 sometimes now, and for deadlifts too. Breaks are longer too, I think 2-3 minutes usually. See some of Louie’s recent articles. He said he increased volume for DE deadlifts because of Boris Sheiko’s advice.
[/quote]
To some extent, “speed work” doesn’t work the same for all, and this is why Westside has been moving away from the traditional sets and reps and moving more into the sets of 5, although I would say they low volume rep sets are still there for those who actually need to get faster. This has been going on for a little while now. They were experimenting and just not saying anything. It started out with bench, some of the guys who would take a while to grind through their contest reps decided they needed to add reps to DE day to mimic the time it took to lock out. It’s now filtered down to all the lifts although I haven’t seen them do 5 on deadlift where they seem to hover around 2-3. Ironically, I see they’re back to low volume singles on deadlift on DE day again, but I suppose they just cycle through up an down reps. The take away point here with DE work is, and I think Dave Tate has mentioned this a few times as well, speed work didn’t transfer to everyone…it was needed for a time when most of the lifters at Westside were slow, but when guys became fast, they needed to get “strong” again, and that’s why the rep ranges have changed to suit the lifter to some extent. So, the takeaway point on DE work to me is that if you’re slow, it probably would be smart to train fast for a period of time, but if if you’re slow to lockout, you may want to take a hard look at expanding your reps per set to help mimic that TUT which ultimately increases SPP.
Louie mentioned this in an article, they now do 5’s for deadlifts. But like you are saying, maybe not everyone is doing the exact same sets and reps.
I think this is true. Christian Thibaudeau had an article here on CAT work (which is essentially speed work, just not Westside style) and he said that the people who would benefit most from it are those who aren’t naturally explosive. Seems to me that he is right, because my squat used to be real slow until I started doing CAT work (now it’s not) but CAT for bench didn’t seem to help much, and I’m pretty explosive on bench. I still do some CAT benching now and then to mix things up, right now most of my pressing is for higher reps, I have found that training like that can make my bench slower but I’m doing some CAT work to counteract that and it looks like it’s working well at the moment.
As for CAT/DE for sumo deadlifts, for whatever reason it never seemed to pay off for me. Seems like hard, high RPE sets are what I need for my deadlift, although I have also had success with including singles around 80-90% after a top set. My guess is that is has to do with the fact that with sumo it’s hard to get the bar off the floor but easy the rest of the way up, with lighter weights there is no challenge at all and you are accelerating through a ROM where you wouldn’t be getting stuck anyway.
On the other hand, you have guys who rarely pull anything heavy and just do speed deadlifts and make progress. I wish it was that easy for me.
What does this really mean? It seems like Westside has a different definition of these things than what I have read from Russian sources. From what I understand, you have the competition lift, variations of that are SPP exercises (special physical preparedness), and GPP (general physical preparedness) exercises are stuff like conditioning and bodybuilding-type exercises, anything that is not a variation of a comp. lift. When Louie says GPP he is talking about conditioning and aerobic capacity.
So what does it actually mean to increase SPP?
GPP can be different muscles, moves or energy systems than comp lift
SPP is same muscles, same energy systems and similar motions to comp lifts, but still different “lifts.”
8 x 8 Dumbbell tricep extensions or long duration sled drags for GPP.
Getting stronger on close grip bench or deficit deadlifts could be SPP.
That still doesn’t sound right to me. If I set a close grip bench PR then my bench SPP has increased? I could be wrong, but I get the feeling that Louie has redefined some Russian terms.
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[quote=“chris_ottawa, post:27, topic:257988, full:true”]
Increasing SPP in this context would be in relation to the time it takes to lockout a max rep which is specific to the contest/competition. If I match the time it takes to lockout my 1RM Bench Press with my DE Bench training, that becomes Specific and not General. GPP is just general fitness or strengthening. Strengthening my rotator cuff muscles through sled work for Bench would be an example of increasing GPP.
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Exercises can be both General and Specific, but what’s important is the concept. In general terms, GPP activities have nothing to do with the contest whereas SPP is specific to the contest.Using the CG Bench example, if you set a 1RM record on a ME training day, that activity is Specific because it’s mimicking a contest rep. Setting a rep record on CG Bench after your DE/ME training is General because it has nothing to do with the contest.
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I get what you are saying, but like I said, it seems that Louie has slightly different interpretations of certain Russian terms.
You’d have to provide an example because I’m unaware of anything written or in video where Louie has been crossed up on SPP/GPP topics. The whole GPP/SPP concept is easier to understand when you look at another sport that isn’t strength sport. But with regards to Louie and his terminologies, he’s right in line with Verkhoshansky, Medvedyev, Siff, etc.
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The US won the cold war and most of those Russian dudes have passed on, so Louie can say whatever he wants.
First of all, I just want to mention that this is basically an argument over semantics, I’m just continuing so that you can’t say I’m full of shit. But basically the differences are minor.
I haven’t read Supertraining, maybe that book has different explanations. Sheiko has explained all these terms (at least the way he uses them) in articles and on his forum. In the few minutes I spent looking around I haven’t found anything that explicitly defines GPP and SPP, but here are some excerpts from Sheiko’s interview (on a site called liftvault) that give an idea of what this is about.
The Soviet system has something called light athletics which is like track & field. Heavy athletics is where you throw stuff or pick up heavy weights. Eventually you see an even transition throughout that development where at the end, international class lifters will do 90% of their session work with actual specific heavy weights and only 10% of it will be warm ups and plyos and stuff lke that, which is considered general prep.
So the job of the coach is to detect the errors of the technique or the weaknesses of the lifter, to pick the right special preparatory exercises to make sure to fix those weaknesses in the best way possible.
A really good side benefit for beginners and intermediates, when you do a lot of this 4 or 5 rep exercises with slightly lower weight in the special preparatory movements what you get is a really good increase in hypertrophy which is also beneficial . Basically don’t be fooled by the process of when an athlete starts to exhibit technical perfection at these lighter weights due to this inclusion of special preparatory exercises.
Note that according to Sheiko SPP exercises can be done for higher reps with lighter weights, despite the fact it has “nothing to do with the contest” as you say.
Now, I found some other stuff on his forum:
…general developmental exercises, such as hyperextensions, reverse hypers, exercises for the abs, exercises for the pectorals, lats, arm muscles, or leg muscles. And what about incline bench presses, shoulder presses, dumbbell bench presses, etc
So I can’t find it at the moment and I have other things to do with my life so I wont bother, but according to Sheiko SPP is variations of the competition lift and GPP is all other exercises that are not a variant of a competition lift, and that includes cardio/conditioning and such.
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That’s what Putin wants you to think. You forgot he used to run the KGB.
The best way I can explain SPP is the Bulgarian WL era. Abadjiev dropped nearly every exercise outside of 8 exercises: Snatch, Clean and Jerk, Clean, Jerk, Power Snatch, Power Clean, Front Squat, and Back Squat. Everything was trained at 90%+ for singles to mimic the contest as much as possible. This was in stark contrast to the Soviet era which trained with much lower percentages, used special assistance exercises, and general fitness. The Bulgarians did none of that, it was maxing all the time with no breaks, and this epitomized SPP.
Yeah, I get exactly what you are saying. The thing is that Sheiko uses the terms in a slightly different manner, like the competition lifts don’t count as SPP even if done lighter and for higher reps, they are the “competition exercises” which is a different category. I seem to remember reading something from some other Russian coaches/scientists that was in line with Sheiko. But anyway, there isn’t much more to say on this topic.
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Yes, competition lifts done for higher reps don’t count as SPP in what Sheiko is referring to, but in the Westside example of DE work, it’s the energy system timing that is being trained which makes it specific, not the actual lift itself.
That’s exactly my point from the beginning here, what Sheiko considers to be SPP is not the same as what Louie considers it to be. Based on what Sheiko is saying, he would probably consider energy system work to be GPP.
But anyway, it’s all semantics like I said.