A couple questions actually… I just changed over from a bodybuilding program (the last 5 years). To a westside influenced powerlifting program. I start with my dynamic effort exercise (squat, dead, or bench) 8 sets, approx 1 - 1:30 rest times.
Then move on to Max Effort, today I did bench so I started with the bar and work up to my max currently 255 (I have never benched with a barbell before) I was doing around 5 reps till the weight gets heavy then 2 reps up to my 1RM.
I’m planning on changing my dynamic and max effort exercises every 3 weeks.
After my max effort I’m doing my assistance stuff. Is this correct? any Tips? My main questions are:
how long should I be resting in between max effort sets?
How many sets of Dynamic Effort and how long should I be resting?
[quote]surfninja311 wrote:any Tips? My main questions are:
how long should I be resting in between max effort sets?[/quote]
as long as you need to in order to get the next set. On warmups i personally dont rest any longer than it takes to change plates. Once i finish my warmups and im onto my top set i rest as long as i need. sometimes this is 3 minutes, sometimes 5. im sure i’ve rested as long as 10 min on days when ive been with a training crew and there were a bunch of us going
8x3 in bench, 8x2 in the squat. you should know this if you’ve read tate’s 8 keys or any of louies stuff on dynamic work
again as long as you need to. this’ll probably be short, maybe a minute, but no need to get out the stopwatch. dont be afraid to take a little longer in between if you htink a little more rest will allow you to move the bar faster.
surfninja311 wrote:After my max effort I’m doing my assistance stuff. Is this correct?
yes
surfninja311 wrote:any Tips? My main questions are:
how long should I be resting in between max effort sets?
as long as you need to in order to get the next set. On warmups i personally dont rest any longer than it takes to change plates. Once i finish my warmups and im onto my top set i rest as long as i need. sometimes this is 3 minutes, sometimes 5. im sure i’ve rested as long as 10 min on days when ive been with a training crew and there were a bunch of us going
surfninja311 wrote:How many sets of Dynamic Effort
8x3 in bench, 8x2 in the squat. you should know this if you’ve read tate’s 8 keys or any of louies stuff on dynamic work
surfninja311 wrote:and how long should I be resting?
again as long as you need to. this’ll probably be short, maybe a minute, but no need to get out the stopwatch. dont be afraid to take a little longer in between if you htink a little more rest will allow you to move the bar faster.
[quote]Ghost22 wrote:
surfninja311 wrote:
Donut62 wrote:
Perhaps I read this wrong, but are you doing dynamic effort and max effort in the same workout?
Ya I am but different muscle groups, ie dynamic deads with max effort bench on the same day.
Why?
Dynamic effort and Max effort are both designed to tax the CNS heavily.[/quote]
I don’t find it to taxing on my CNS whatsoever… If I start to run into overtraining problems i’ll cut it back however I don’t see that happening.
[quote]KBCThird wrote:
surfninja311 wrote:
Donut62 wrote:
Perhaps I read this wrong, but are you doing dynamic effort and max effort in the same workout?
Ya I am but different muscle groups, ie dynamic deads with max effort bench on the same day.
oh i didnt realize that. any particular reason? how do you have the split set up if every day is now a total body day?[/quote]
I have it set up like this because I need my fourth day for strongman events.
[quote]All2ez wrote:
your not doing westside so dont call it westside.
are you saying on ME lower day you do DE bench?
how many days a week are you doing ME for one body part if you have completed ME and DE for your entire body in 2 days?
sounds like your heading straight for overtraining.[/quote]
I called it “westside influenced” which it is… please go to the gym instead of nitpicking my title
My lifts are bench 255, squat 365, dead 340 its just not that taxing on my CNS yet… I’m not pulling 600 on my ME days or box squatting 300 on my DE days… You obvioulsy don’t have the sense to take this into account… and lack the proper knowledge to give advice on the topic.
[quote]surfninja311 wrote:
All2ez wrote:
your not doing westside so dont call it westside.
are you saying on ME lower day you do DE bench?
how many days a week are you doing ME for one body part if you have completed ME and DE for your entire body in 2 days?
sounds like your heading straight for overtraining.
I called it “westside influenced” which it is… please go to the gym instead of nitpicking my title
.
[/quote]
What’s with everyone getting so defensive these days? You might wanna re-read your title. Nothing about “influence” there. And after 5 years of training, even if they were “bodybuilding” style, I think it’s fair to assume a decent level of basic strength.
Soomething one of my traning partners has had good success with is this sorta job…
Day 1: DE Bench + assistance
Day 2: Deadlifts/Rack Pulls (sets of 3-5 reps, moving up in weight each week), drop bakc and do speed deads with 50-60% 8-10x1-2
Day 3: Heavy (not ME) bench
Day 4: Squats/Box squats + assistance
Main point of this post being, dropping back and pulling speed deads after heavy deads has worked for him, I’ve tried it out a bit and it seems to work for me too. And recently I’ve noticed the guys in Supertraining Gym seem to be doing something similar too. So think about it!
I am actually going to go against what i’m guessing is going to be the grain of this thread: I dont think this (mixing ME lower upper with DE upper/lower) is a terrible idea. I myself have had decent success with total body routines for strongman. It might be worth doing a search for some of the Joe Kenn Tier System stuff. I’ve done that and I’ve also done 1 day events, 1 days deadlifts and back adn 1 day squats and pressing. There are really only 2 pieces of advice that I would give you
Have a good reason for anythign you do (or dont do) in your routine in terms of exercise selection. Eg, board presses are incredibly important to a powerlifter. So would argue they’ll help build tricep strength for your lockout on overheads ,but i havent included them in a while, and I dont think its terrible. Alos, a lot of the older westside stuff only includes raises for shoulder work. I believe this is because daves shoulders were already f’ed up when he was writing a lot of the articles, and for whatever reason, westside doesnt do a lot of overhead. As a strongman YOU NEED TO DO THIS.
you list 4 days as part of your training week. unless you’re doing an 8 day week, this means at one point you’ll have 2 days back to back. I’d recommend against this unless your event days are going to be mostly movement and conditioning based. (eg you do more keg relays than you do 18" deadlifts. You do 3 leg medleys instead of a max log.)
I also don’t think it’s a terrible idea. What I disagree with is the setup. He’s maxing 3 times per week, doing dynamic stuff 3 times a week, AND doing a day of strongman events. Overkill. Will it harm you? Hard to say, different strokes, etc. But I can’t see how it would be necessary or optimal. And since he wants to train for strongman and not powerlifting, I’d say there’s a lot of tweaking that should be done.
Westside guys combine squats and deadlifts into the same day for a reason. Essentially, they work the same muscles. Pick one for a few weeks and then switch. Who cares if you don’t squat every week? You’re still building that lift by pulling and doing assistance for the lower body. And vice versa. You’re building your deadlift by squatting and doing assistance.
I’d recommend doing RE stuff instead of DE stuff. You’ll benefit much more in strongman competitions. DE stuff gets you fast, but RE stuff mirrors strongman events better. You’ll have to do a lot of events for reps in a given amount of time. RE work will prepare you for that much better than DE work.
And for your upper body ME days, you should probably focus more on overhead than bench. Strongmen don’t generally compete in the bench press. Overhead presses, log presses, push presses, etc. are all very important. You should also focus on these lifts for RE work. Also you can and should use olympic lifts for ME and RE movements from time to time, as well as or assistance other times.
It probably seems like I’m recommending a lot of different things. That’s because strongman is much more varied than powerlifting. Keep in mind that you don’t have to include everything every week. Look at the big picture/long term rather than single weeks of training. Rotate through a list of different lifts that you feel are important for your main lifts, use supplemental lifts to build those main lifts, and choose accessory and prehab work based on your weak points and to correct any imbalances.
I’d recommend watching the Westside Seminar DVDs, but always be asking yourself how you can adapt Dave’s training advice for strongman (RE vs. DE, different lifts, etc). In the end it won’t be Westside at all, but you will have borrowed heavily from their proven approach to building massive strength.
People have already hit on what I’m thinking so I’ll be brief.
I don’t think you’re set up is bad, but I know I couldn’t do that four days a week. Either drop day or spread it more. I don’t know, maybe you can handle that workload.
Also, if you plan on competing in strongman, you definitely need more overhead work. You could drop some of the bench work and replace it with overhead variations.
On the suggestion of most (and did alittle more reading Eight Keys, I can’t believe I missed that collection of articles) I’ve decided to drop my ME DE Deadlift day and combine it with my squat ME DE days.
I do have one question though, I’m rotating my exercises every 3 weeks, how often should I use some kind of deadlift (speed deads, rack pulls etc) or does it even matter if I include deadlifts at all? I’m also thinking about throwing thick bar deads in on my strongman day, heavy weight for medium to low reps.
I guess its more of a phsycological thing, I just feel like I should be pulling something off the ground at least once a week.
I do a TON of overhead work on my Strongman Implement day (logs, sandbag, and unilateral work.
Thanks for the input, I was glad to see some positive helpful responses.
Do you want to be a powerlifter or a strongman? Again, maybe you can handle it, but 5 days is really, really hard to do. Unless you’re just half-assing your workouts. Seriously, four days a week is plenty to get strong. My advice is to drop one of your lower body days in favor of the strongman day and use one of your bench days to focus on overhead work.
Something along these lines:
Day 1
ME Bench
Day 2
ME Squat/DL
Day 3
Overhead work
Day 4
Events
With the above set up, you have the groundwork and you also have a lot of freedom with your training. You can go all out with whatever your focus for the day is, and you can add assistance in any way you see fit. If you feel you need more lower body speed/DE work, there’s nothing wrong with doing it on one of your pressing days.
[quote]surfninja311 wrote:
Ghost22 wrote:
surfninja311 wrote:
Donut62 wrote:
Perhaps I read this wrong, but are you doing dynamic effort and max effort in the same workout?
Ya I am but different muscle groups, ie dynamic deads with max effort bench on the same day.
Why?
Dynamic effort and Max effort are both designed to tax the CNS heavily.
I don’t find it to taxing on my CNS whatsoever… If I start to run into overtraining problems i’ll cut it back however I don’t see that happening.
[/quote]
If any part of de or me is not taxing your CNS then you are doing it wrong.
oh for goodness sake, enough with the cns stuff. Yes, it is possible to overstress your neural system. most people never get near that. they have an off day and its “whoo, my cns is fried. my adrenals are over fatigued” This is definitely an instance where more knowledge is not better. People hear about these various maladies and afflictions and become training hypochondriacs, convinced that this new scourge is why they’re not making progress.
He’s a beginner, and he is coming from a BB background, he is probably not that neuromuscularly efficient with his muscle, but he will learn. Until then dont fill his head with nonsense and give him a complex that if his brain isnt hurting then somehow he’s doing something wrong in some way, but who knows what. Its crap like this that gets beginners to just throw in the towel.
To the OP, there is one criteria and one criteria only for whether or not your training split works: ‘are your strongman events going up’ that’s it, period