From the time i start with the empty bar until i walk out. Near the end of a 12 week conjugate cycle i do some work with knee wraps and it takes longer to ramp up and to use the wraps. never longer than one hour and 45 minutes.
chris_ottawa
September 28 |
Are you talking about one hour from when you enter the gym or from your first work set? I hear some guys (Matt Wenning comes to mind) saying that their workout takes less than an hour but they don’t count all the warm stuff they do and all their sets working up to their top set. I take 1.5-2hours.
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jbackos
September 28 |
Last night I did my ME floor press, 3 sets dips, 3 sets DB bench,3 sets supported rows, 3 sets rear delts on a pec deck. Then band pull aparts, band pressdowns, and cable pressdowns. Completed in slightly less than an hour. An hour is all it should take if you’re training raw. Equipment - different…
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How long do you rest between sets? I usually rest about 3-5 minutes between work sets, except for CAT/speed work where it’s usually 1-2 minutes depending on how heavy and which lift, I rest less for bench. I move through warmups faster but I slow down as I get close to my working weight. If you’re strapped for time then I can see why you would want to move faster but otherwise I don’t want to rush myself and have to do less reps or less weight. Amit Sapir said he rest 10-20 minutes between heavy work sets (at least for squat) which sounds a bit extreme, but it looks like it’s working for him.
At the moment I’m training 4 days a week but for a while I was training 6 days a week and doing less volume and less exercises each day. I was able to get through workouts faster, but with such frequent training I don’t feel as motivated on some days and end up dragging myself through the workout and resting too long. I’m not really sold on one frequency vs. the other since 4 days a week means more fatiguing sessions that take longer to recover from, after my deadlift days (which is tomorrow) you might think was drunk.
Speed work 45 seconds for squat, 15 seconds for deadlift. max effort 3 minutes, repetition work 30 seconds
chris_ottawa
September 29 |
How long do you rest between sets? I usually rest about 3-5 minutes between work sets, except for CAT/speed work where it’s usually 1-2 minutes depending on how heavy and which lift, I rest less for bench. I move through warmups faster but I slow down as I get close to my working weight. If you’re strapped for time then I can see why you would want to move faster but otherwise I don’t want to rush myself and have to do less reps or less weight. Amit Sapir said he rest 10-20 minutes between heavy work sets (at least for squat) which sounds a bit extreme, but it looks like it’s working for him.
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In Reply To
jbackos
September 28 |
From the time i start with the empty bar until i walk out. Near the end of a 12 week conjugate cycle i do some work with knee wraps and it takes longer to ramp up and to use the wraps. never longer than one hour and 45 minutes. chris_ottawa September 28 | Are you talking about one hour from …
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There’s a ton of info out there about training density as a substitute for load. after training this way a meet is boring.
chris_ottawa
September 29 |
At the moment I’m training 4 days a week but for a while I was training 6 days a week and doing less volume and less exercises each day. I was able to get through workouts faster, but with such frequent training I don’t feel as motivated on some days and end up dragging myself through the workout and resting too long. I’m not really sold on one frequency vs. the other since 4 days a week means more fatiguing sessions that take longer to recover from, after my deadlift days (which is tomorrow) you might think was drunk.
Visit Topic or reply to this email to respond.
In Reply To
jbackos
September 28 |
From the time i start with the empty bar until i walk out. Near the end of a 12 week conjugate cycle i do some work with knee wraps and it takes longer to ramp up and to use the wraps. never longer than one hour and 45 minutes. chris_ottawa September 28 | Are you talking about one hour from …
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What sort of weights are you using for speed work? I’m not doing westside-style speed work, I’m following some of Josh Bryant’s stuff and I’m mostly using 70-80% for a bunch of low reps sets. If I cut rest periods down too much it would bury me. I’m also doing the speed work after a heavy top set. I see Mike Tuchscherer using the same thing with a lot of people these days, it looks like he got that from Josh along with a few other things he has been doing.
I have heard and read about that kind of thing but there are also other coaches like Eric Helms who are saying the complete opposite, you should rest longer because excessively short breaks will limit how much reps you can get in the following sets and you might also have to lower the weight, which is the main factor if you want to get stronger. As far as speed work or whatever sort of submaximal/low rpe training, I can see a good reason to rest less between sets since the point is to fatigue the fast twitch fibres, Louie has written about that. But at the same time you still want to be able to do the sets explosively.
I read one of Louie’s articles the other day about Jason Coker’s training, did you know that they now use 5 sets of 5 for speed work at Westside? I assume that they use different set and rep schemes as well, it looks like they are experimenting with different stuff. There is also a recent youtube video with Blaine Sumner and Mike Tuchscherer, you ight be interested to see it. Blaine recently spent a week training at Westside. One thing the said is that the band tension they used for speed work was way more than what most people use. When you hear that they are using 50-60% for speed work it sounds like ridiculously light weight, but with the band tension there is nothing light about it.
If you don’t use bands/chains (and I assume you don’t) then your percentges (according to Louie would be 75%, 80%, 85% for a three week wave. At 75%,80% you would do 24 reps (12 x 2, 8 x 3, 5 x 5) and at 85% you would do 20 reps (10 x 2, 7 x 3, 4 x 5, 5 x 4). The rest period would be 1-1.5 minutes in between sets.
I am using bands which add 44 lbs at the top for 50% (8 x 3), 55% (8 x 3), 60% (7 x 3) with 45 secods rest. Then 6-8 singles in the deadlift 60%, 65%, 70% with 68 lbs added band tension. After doing both the squat and deadlift back to back no conditioning is needed.
I read about the 5 x 5 at Westside. Louie always said to modify on the fly and try things out.
For example I will add or subtract weight as the set progresses. If I’m moving to slow, I’ll take some off. If my heels are coming off the ground (I’m more explosive than strong) I’ll add some. Last week was particularly good, I almost left the ground with 275 + 68 lbs of band.
The whole training density thing started with the Russian submax training. They found guys got the same training effect using lower weight. The first time I ever heard it used was in the 80’s by some of the guys in Ohio (I think it was Black’s health world, specifically Bill Ennis).
Bottom line is exactly as the GOAT says: if your lifts are going up dont change anything. If theyre not, experiment.
That sounds manageable, how come you rest less though?
To give you an example of what I’m doing, for my main squat day I worked up to 470 for a single, rested a few minutes and the did 5 sets of 3 with 370, 90 sec. rest. It’s hard to really use percentages since my squat PR is 480 but I probably could have done 500 and I’m stronger now, I’m just slowly moving up the top set weight in waves but doing more like a linear progression on the down sets/speed work. After that I did a few sets of high bar paused squats, good mornings, and ab wheel rollouts. It took me about an hour and 45 minutes. You make me sound lazy.
What I’m trying to do (on speed work) is keep the weight moving up each week until it seems too much to manage and then switch from triples to doubles and/or increase rest periods a bit, but no more than 2 minutes.
There is a guy who used to post here named Reed, he used to train with Sam Byrd. The way they trained the squat was almost exclusively speed work, 5x5x60% two days a week, one day was front squat, same weight every week but trying to move the weight faster and faster and resting less between sets. Sam has or had some world records, I think Reed changed up his training but he squatted 800 in wraps.
Nothing wrong with your approach. Singles and down sets were used by many old timers (jim Williams, John Kuc, Doug Young, Hepburn, etc.). Science now calls it potentiation. Basically the singles wake up the CNS and make the reps feel lighter. The way it works is as follows:
The real brilliance of Louie’s system is that it is NOT a program but a set of guidelines within you program your own training. The system has infinite variability. Don’t fall for the line that says: westside is just for geared guys or juice heads or whatever.
The system is really geared to the advanced (training age) lifter because the beginner has not clue how to alter the system to suit him. Even for advanced guys it takes up to a year to master the use of the guidelines.
That being said there are are many ways to skin the cat. Ultimately each lifter needs to learn to program for himself.
Dense training conditions and strengthens at the same time. The idea is to work fast and hard enough that your heart rate stays elevated for the entire session. Not easy at first, but you adapt.
I think the important thing is to learn how to adapt it properly to you own needs if you are training for raw lifting. In the recent video, Blaine Sumner said that the guys at Westside still compete in gear and they say that you can’t train like they do without taking steroids. On top of the 4 ME/DE days they do up to 10 extra workouts a week. But on the other hand, there is a guy named Mike Hedlesky (used to post here and StormTheBeach and make a thread all about Westside) who won a gold medal at IPF Raw worlds - in the deadlift, which Westside apparently neglects - while using the conjugate/Westside method. If you follow everything Louie writes word for word then there is a good chance it won’t work properly if you lift raw (like speed work with 50-60% and neglecting accommodating resistance) but obviously you an make it work if you use your head.
