hold on there, no one is saying there has been way more success with the pendulum than westside, the idea might be better for athletes in that it is more flexible and allows more focus on a specific quality if needed, but as far as powerlifting, and if you look at it they are very closely related in their theories, seperation of qualities(limit strength ME days, speed DE days)As for the pendulum in my particular case Ive found little need for a structural week as my greates size gains have come from the speed/limit strength training, beyond a deload of the cns(which im debating as there are 3 day breaks at the end of my training week along with ultra low volume, something like 10 total reps per workout session).
I still see no need to break up specific phases into different weeks. You wouldn’t train your legs one week, and then take a week off, why train different strengths each week?
Train for your speed, for your strength, and for reps every week. It just makes too mcuh sense to me…
I enjoy experimentation where physical fitness is concerned. I understand that Louie has developed a system that works without inducing overtraining. I’ve been lifting westside for the psat six months with some great gains to show for it. CT’s article intrigued me and I wanted to experiment with the idea. Using a pendulum system, I’ve found I can do a lot more volume on my ME/DE days for three weeks and then use the hypertrophy weeks to unload. Whether or not this will translate to good strength gains remains to be seen. I’d rather try and fail (or maybe succeed) than just take Louie’s word for it. Even though Louie is one of the greatest strength coaches of all time.
Good Luck ACE and let us know in the future on how it turned out. I for one is intrigued by CT’s methods too and want to try them. We can only do so many methods at a time. I can see why CT developed pendulum training to include all the methods. Still waiting on CT’s version of pendulum for athletes…
GreekDawg: thats a rookie mistake in my mind, especially you you are saying that in general terms (as opposed to just powerlifting).
When training rugby players (back in the day) we basically followed are rotating 2 week cycle (hypertrophy(or stregnth depending on needs)-> power → speed) each for 2 weeks then moved to the next phase. This worked very well during the stupidly long seasons these guys had (some of them had a 42 week season). If we tried to get them doing everything, they wouldn’t see out the first 12 weeks let alone make finals.
Personally i think pendulum idea could be even better way of working with in season athletes. Westside is absolutely fantastic for “General Prep (off season)” to get strength and size up, but can be very demanding if cardio, skill sessions, GPP and games/competition are happening in the same week.
Ofcourse all that i talk about here refers to athlete training not PL.
PL’s can just stick with tried and true.
if you dont train at westside your not training westside…bm
Big Martin, spoken like a true hardcore
I cant beleive this has turned into a westside vs. pendulum training debate. Is either one more superior than the other? No. They use alot of the same ideas. The fact is if you didnt make serious gains off either one then you did them wrong. So if neither one is superior what should I do? Im going to use both. I just started reading about pendulum training so I will be experimenting with it and see how it goes but it will be with westside methodology. So if anyone wants to know what I plan to do you can contact me any way you want and we can toss some ideas around. But to say westside methods dont work for any other sport than powerlifting is ridiculous. That remark may not have been from this thread but I had to work that in there.
Now that I reread the original question Im not so surprised this turned into a westside vs. pendulum debate but i stand by everything else I said.
This is actually a question in regards to the original post, during the first hypertrophy week, what percent of one rep max did you use for the isometric holds?