ESM or Max Acceleration?

Training Powerlifting
1

They say Ed Coan’s warm-up lifts looked just as hard as his max lifts because he followed the Energy Saving Method. He would conserve energy by exerting only enough force to complete the lift rather than exploding and wasting energy.

Now, some powerlifting programs call for maximum acceleration (I’m not talking about WSB DE days). They say to power through the sticking points on every heavy lift.

What is your guy’s take on these two methods? Is one more appropriate in one situation than the other?

2

In training, I treat every rep like it’s a 1RM. At a meet, I slow it down a bit on the warmups. Also, i’ve seen the ESM theory attributed to coan by other people, but i’ve never actually heard him speak about himself.

Personally i think ESM should be used sparingly. A guy like coan can get away with that kind of stuff, just like he gets away with doing linear periodization and only 1 or 2 worksets a week. I’m not ed coan.