Alright guys, any help greatly appreciated. Totalled 555kg at 90kg in my first meet (raw) a few months back (170/140/245), 22 years old. Ive been doing 5/3/1 for almost 9 months now and Im looking to change it up. Its done my bench no favors but my squat and deadlift have come on pretty well.
I was thinking of doing something along the lines of the following;
ME Lower:
Squat/deadlift to a 5 or 3, single if its feeling good
deadlift/squat 3-5 x 5-10
GM 5 x 10
abs 5 x 10
(reasoning behind this- I ll squat for 2-3 weeks first and deadlift light second, then swap over. this way i ll always get to do both lifts but one will be easier/lighter and i ll be able to hammer the form and get the bar moving quickly).
DE Upper
Bench 5-8 x 1-3
military press 5 x 10
upper back stuff
Assistance lower?DE Lower?
not too sure about this. I could box squat a little wider than usual and go with something like 6-8 x 2-3, reasoning being i can use whatever stance i want as im not trying to mimic a squat here. Or I could do some RE type stuff. **** knows. I ll likely do some Oly stuff here too
ME Upper
bench/floor press/rev band/foam press 5 or a 3
assistance lift - extension, db press etc
upper back
This is roughly what I think id go after. This way I will still squat bench and dead every week. I may rotate deads with rack pulls occasionally if I feel like it. Id keep the main movement for more than a week initially I think, id judge it on whether I felt i could make progress on it the next week or not.
I have no experience of this type of plan really so id hugely appreicate any help anyone could give.
Try the articles FAQ on EFS. It gives a daily breakdown. I’m learning the program myself, I think it’s not supposed to be planned too far in advance, stay off competition lifts for the most part, and don’t ME the same exercise for more than two weeks. Other than that, do what works, just make the numbers go up.
You definitely need to read through all of the articles on EliteFTS, but this book has multiple Westside-based templates already laid out. I’ve set up my own in the past by reading and putting in the time. I wish I would have bought this book first.
Ive done a fair bit on the template, ive got a decent understanding of it, I guess im just loathed to not squat and dealift every week as its what ive always done.
You should squat and deadlift every week. I squat and deadlift twice a lot of weeks. Your DE lower days is when you get in your squat volume. You need to setup the DE lower day right to be successful (eg, 10-12 sets of 2 for squats and deadlift after). Do you have bands or chains? I honestly haven’t seen too many people successfully implement a Westside template without at least one of them.
Wild_Iron would you still recommend Dave use bands and chains even though he is competing RAW. I thought the bands and chains were to maximise the strength curve of equipped lifters because they get so much support in the hole from their equipment.
Our raw lifters use bands and chains. The key is raw lifters should use less band tension or chain weight. Every 4th week we take away the bands/chains to deload and let the body recover. Even as a multi-ply gear whore my training is going better than ever and most of it is raw. Over 12 weeks getting ready for a meet:
DE squat is ~30 raw
ME squat/deadlift is 80% raw
DE bench is 100% raw
ME bench is 75% raw (50% the last 4 weeks)
Bands/chains do two things. On DE day they force you to apply max force through the whole lift which is important. On ME day, they let you handle over your max at the top which makes you stronger faster.
Yeah, minis doubled are good for bench. For deadlift, you should quad the minis. For squatting, the light bands are good. Just make sure you choke them around something big enough that there’s tension in the hole. If the band is slack in the hole, then you’re not going to get the real benefit from the bands. You can use the light bands for reverse band bench and deadlift too.
[quote]Wild_Iron_Gym wrote:
Yeah, minis doubled are good for bench. For deadlift, you should quad the minis. For squatting, the light bands are good. Just make sure you choke them around something big enough that there’s tension in the hole. If the band is slack in the hole, then you’re not going to get the real benefit from the bands. You can use the light bands for reverse band bench and deadlift too.[/quote]
Cheers mate. Ive done the rev band benching and deadlifting a fair bit before and liked it a lot. I ll give the light bands a go for box squatting.