The Westside Method Thread

Training Powerlifting
41

[quote]GruntOrama wrote:
Thoughts on using RE work instead of DE work for the bench press (i.e. WS4SB)? Maybe not complete replacing but say alternating each week?[/quote]

I have tried replacing DE completely and my bench dropped dramatically. The Dynamic bench work shouldn’t be too stressful and you shouldnt accumulate too much fatigue so just get it done as fast as you can then go to the RE work you want to do. If nothing else, treat it as an extended part of your warm-up.

There are thousands of studies that say using dynamic/explosive work before your main work improves performance. If you are feeling beat up, either drop the accommodated resistance that day, or use boards, or use reverse bands, or just do a bunch of explosive push-ups from different angles.

All three methods (ME, DE, and RE) are crucial to the success of the system and must be present.

42

[quote]StormTheBeach wrote:

[quote]Chicksan wrote:
Great thread. I actually signed up to T-Nation so I could contribute what little knowledge I have to this thread. I look forward to learning alot from yall. I get a bit tired hearing about how Westside isnt for the raw lifter. The best of luck to everyone[/quote]

I have a raw meet this weekend. I havent done one in a few years. This should be ridiculous.[/quote]

Some of the guys that I train with are driving to Dallas for a meet. One of the kids has only been powerlifting for about 3 months, he is doing raw, full power. Good Luck this weekend

43

[quote]StormTheBeach wrote:

[quote]VTTrainer wrote:
Any rough guidelines for those at commercial gyms with limited bars?

I’ve got plenty of bands to work with, but limited to Olympic bars, trap bars and another gym that has a cambered bar.

Right now I’ve been doing pull variations -trap, reverse, pull heights/deficits; changing box/stance on sqauts, FS, GM and zerchers. Also doing “Anderson” style versions of some of those too. Any input or thoughts on how to get away with this limited equipment would be awesome.

[/quote]

My best advice is to get creative. You sound like you have a good amount of variaiton in mind already. Taking one exercise and giving yourself three different grip width or foot stances can increase that lift to 3 different variations. Add chains, thats now 9 different variaitons for one exercise. Add bands, now its 18. Bands and chains, now its 27. Choas method, now its 36. See what I am saying? Talk to the owners and see what you can get away with as far as bands, chains, saving up some money and bringing your own bars in.

I had to train in a commercial gym for a few years between ending my undergrad and starting my masters. The gym I found was awesome. The owner was so jacked up that there were guys going there that wanted to lift heavy. We had a corner of the gym with all our bars, chains, box squat box, all kinds of shit. My training partners and I were often the headline in the gym newsletter. haha. I know some people arent so lucky but youve got to work with what youve got.[/quote]

I’m glad your response didn’t involve me being a fucktard -trying to do WS without special bars- haha. That helps a lot, thank you.

I did think about the bars, but the gym really doesn’t have a place for the bars. Plus, idiots would use the bars and prob kill themselves. Though, I’d love to help give out darwin awards…

Any good reads about the blocks/phases I can get my hands on until I pony up and buy a million books? This stuff is like crack, holy fuck…

44

[quote]StormTheBeach wrote:
2. When you do recovery work, you can’t think in terms of upper and lower body. Unless you feel you need to condition a certain area, then that should be the emphasis of your session. “Recovery” work is a means to return the body back to baseline before the next training session begins or before the meet starts. When you think like this, recovery then can be veiwed a function of nervous and hormonal activity. When you train, and for a long time period after if you train heavy, your nervous system becomes sympathetic dominant. This raises your heart rate, body temperature, and royally screws with your hormone secretions. This is why heart rate is a good measure of being overtrained. Pure recovery work should be geared towards returning the body to PARAsympathetic dominance. That being said, walking on an incline is good. Just don’t turn it into a “cardio session.” Personally, for recovery, I like dragging a light sled for 30 minutes, not going nuts in my extra workouts every once in a while, taking contrast showers, and doing long sessions of mobility work. I read once an old Russian weightlifting coache would put his athletes on a plane and fly them to a beach. They would just walk around and look at the water for a little while. His theory was this was the best way to return to parasympathetic dominance.
[/quote]

Thanks for the great advice. If I may followup, I am just wondering if this is a bit oversimplified. Indeed any exercise is a sympathetic activity but it is relatively agreed upon in research that there is no such thing as a ‘sympathetic or parasympathetic state’. Merely, your body’s response to stimuli involves a balance of parasympathetic to sympathetic innervation. So indeed during exercise and following exercise you have a shift towards sympathetic innervation. However, this is not neccessarily a horrendous thing - it encourages fat mobilization, protein synthesis (in times of surplus), release of androgens etc etc… So my impression was that while it is important to reduce the stress associated with increase sympathetic activity associated with increased heart rate, elevated cortisol etc… A huge component of the benefits of recovery is a simple physiological responses like a redirection of blood flow, a release of tight fascia, an increased rate of washout etc etc… This is why doing band pushdowns for 100 reps will dramatically help your triceps recover. Do you have a different knowledge base guiding your recovery work?

45

STB - what do you generally focus on for your mobility sessions? I’ve realize this becomes more and more important the more I get into westside mainly so that I’m not limiting my ability in the following sessions.

46

[quote]arramzy wrote:

[quote]StormTheBeach wrote:
2. When you do recovery work, you can’t think in terms of upper and lower body. Unless you feel you need to condition a certain area, then that should be the emphasis of your session. “Recovery” work is a means to return the body back to baseline before the next training session begins or before the meet starts. When you think like this, recovery then can be veiwed a function of nervous and hormonal activity. When you train, and for a long time period after if you train heavy, your nervous system becomes sympathetic dominant. This raises your heart rate, body temperature, and royally screws with your hormone secretions. This is why heart rate is a good measure of being overtrained. Pure recovery work should be geared towards returning the body to PARAsympathetic dominance. That being said, walking on an incline is good. Just don’t turn it into a “cardio session.” Personally, for recovery, I like dragging a light sled for 30 minutes, not going nuts in my extra workouts every once in a while, taking contrast showers, and doing long sessions of mobility work. I read once an old Russian weightlifting coache would put his athletes on a plane and fly them to a beach. They would just walk around and look at the water for a little while. His theory was this was the best way to return to parasympathetic dominance.
[/quote]

Thanks for the great advice. If I may followup, I am just wondering if this is a bit oversimplified. Indeed any exercise is a sympathetic activity but it is relatively agreed upon in research that there is no such thing as a ‘sympathetic or parasympathetic state’. Merely, your body’s response to stimuli involves a balance of parasympathetic to sympathetic innervation. So indeed during exercise and following exercise you have a shift towards sympathetic innervation. However, this is not neccessarily a horrendous thing - it encourages fat mobilization, protein synthesis (in times of surplus), release of androgens etc etc… So my impression was that while it is important to reduce the stress associated with increase sympathetic activity associated with increased heart rate, elevated cortisol etc… A huge component of the benefits of recovery is a simple physiological responses like a redirection of blood flow, a release of tight fascia, an increased rate of washout etc etc… This is why doing band pushdowns for 100 reps will dramatically help your triceps recover. Do you have a different knowledge base guiding your recovery work?[/quote]

I’ve read all that shit too. I think THAT is way too over simplified. I have yet to find a study that examines nervous system activity after a max deadlift or after an entire day of competing or after continous years of training. I think it goes from being less of a balance between sympathetic and parasympethetic to being a one way street of one or the other. You basically trigger a fight or flight repsonse everytime you lift something heavy. The only way to mimic such a response is in life and death situations. Nervous adaptations take place just like muscular adaptations take place from exercise. Constatnly triggering that fight or flight week after week, the sympethetic response is going to get stronger and the parasympathetic response will get weaker and harder to control.

I don’t have any science behind that… because there isn’t any. The closest thing we have right now of understanding any of that is practical application data with the OmegaWave. Google that thing if you want to have nightmares for a few weeks. I saw it used once at a seminar and that was some crazy shit.

I once read the last person to break the world record for the hammer throw, whenever it was last broken, took almost a month to return to baseline. One throw put one of the top level strength/power athlete out for a month. The only conlusion anyone could come to was the hightened state of his sympethetic nervous system activity for that time period.

This really is just splitting hairs. If something you do helps you recover between workouts or before a competition and it translates to bigger numbers on the platform, then it is good for you. Agreed? haha.

1 Like
47

[quote]LiquidMercury wrote:
STB - what do you generally focus on for your mobility sessions? I’ve realize this becomes more and more important the more I get into westside mainly so that I’m not limiting my ability in the following sessions.[/quote]

No real progression or anything like that. I just work the hell out of stuff that feels awful until it feels less awful. Usually, its my medial hamstrings, hip adductors, claves (which I need to do more of but don’t because it hurts like hell), internal shoulder rotation (that I think is just tight pec minors), and tons, TONS of capsule stretching. The biggest problems with my mobility seems to come from my right femur being slighlty out of the capsule, because my left leg is an inch longer than my right, and my right humerous sits a little bit internally rotated. Find movements and drills that hurt and do them until they don’t hurt anymore.

48

Is there any good videos with mobility drills/exercises?

49
50

StormtheBeach,
I would like to give the Westside Method a try but only have three days a week to train. How would you combine days so that I train DE, ME, and RE for upper and lower all in one week?

ps-I really like the blog. Keep writing!

51

[quote]Razamataz wrote:
StormtheBeach,
I would like to give the Westside Method a try but only have three days a week to train. How would you combine days so that I train DE, ME, and RE for upper and lower all in one week?

ps-I really like the blog. Keep writing![/quote]

Obviously wait for storm to answer, but heres my two cents; run your three days and then start it over the following week. Example:

Mon: Upper ME
Wed: Lower ME
Fri: Upper DE
Follwoing Mon: Lower DE

This was taken from “The 8 Keys” written by Dave Tate

1 Like
52

[quote]Chicksan wrote:

[quote]Razamataz wrote:
StormtheBeach,
I would like to give the Westside Method a try but only have three days a week to train. How would you combine days so that I train DE, ME, and RE for upper and lower all in one week?

ps-I really like the blog. Keep writing![/quote]

Obviously wait for storm to answer, but heres my two cents; run your three days and then start it over the following week. Example:

Mon: Upper ME
Wed: Lower ME
Fri: Upper DE
Follwoing Mon: Lower DE

This was taken from “The 8 Keys” written by Dave Tate[/quote]

The other options I could think of would be to combine the DE days so you would do speed work for your squat and bench, maybe deadlift, then do assistance work to target problem areas.

53

[quote]Chicksan wrote:

[quote]Razamataz wrote:
StormtheBeach,
I would like to give the Westside Method a try but only have three days a week to train. How would you combine days so that I train DE, ME, and RE for upper and lower all in one week?

ps-I really like the blog. Keep writing![/quote]

Obviously wait for storm to answer, but heres my two cents; run your three days and then start it over the following week. Example:

Mon: Upper ME
Wed: Lower ME
Fri: Upper DE
Follwoing Mon: Lower DE

This was taken from “The 8 Keys” written by Dave Tate[/quote]

I have an upcoming busy semester of school, and I’ve been tinkering with trying this approach myself. I’m neck deep in exams, but I’m hoping to give this set up a go afterwards. I’m hoping the added rest will help me feel awesome all the time ( wishful thinking?), but I personally think this set up could work well.

54

^ Wondering the same!!
Also, thoughts on putting speed work AFTER ME work? Did it today and I actually felt faster after working up to heavy singles because of the contrast and how light it felt. I mean after getting in the strength work, why not strip some weight and focus on technique and explosion on ME days? I guess I don’t completely understand why it’s generally always done before ME. I know Louie puts speed work first and on a separate day but what’s everyone’s personal take on this?

55

[quote]Chicksan wrote:

[quote]Razamataz wrote:
StormtheBeach,
I would like to give the Westside Method a try but only have three days a week to train. How would you combine days so that I train DE, ME, and RE for upper and lower all in one week?

ps-I really like the blog. Keep writing![/quote]

Obviously wait for storm to answer, but heres my two cents; run your three days and then start it over the following week. Example:

Mon: Upper ME
Wed: Lower ME
Fri: Upper DE
Follwoing Mon: Lower DE

This was taken from “The 8 Keys” written by Dave Tate[/quote]

This is exactly what I would do if I were in your situation. Extra workouts will become CRUCIAL with this set-up though. Think of it this way, you will be at a one workout deficit a week so you need to fill the gap in total work and volume with extra workouts whenever you can fit them in. A big positive to this set-up is that you can completely murder yourself on every exercise you do and probably feel great when you train that are again. haha. Give it a shot. After you do it for a few weeks, post an update on here and let me know how its going.

56

[quote]Chase44 wrote:
^ Wondering the same!!
Also, thoughts on putting speed work AFTER ME work? Did it today and I actually felt faster after working up to heavy singles because of the contrast and how light it felt. I mean after getting in the strength work, why not strip some weight and focus on technique and explosion on ME days? I guess I don’t completely understand why it’s generally always done before ME. I know Louie puts speed work first and on a separate day but what’s everyone’s personal take on this? [/quote]

Speed requires you to be at 100%. This means zero fatigue. After your heavy lifting you are fatigued, or at least you should be!

In order to truely work on explosive strength, bar speed must be as fast as possible with the given weight so that the maximum amount of force you are capable of is produced in the shortest time possible. That is why speed work is ALWAYS first. Doing speed work in a state of fatigue means you are not going as fast as you can. Which means force is not as much as it could be. Which means you are moving too slow. Once any fatigue has set in, you are no longer working on speed, you are working on hypertrophy/muscualr endurance.

This is a huge problem I have with most sport training. “Speed work” is always done at the end of a workout and it is just basically running the athletes into the ground. “But we are sprinting, so its speed work, right?” Watch how fast the kids are running by the end of your “speed work” session and you tell me if that is the speed at which you want them running in games. Sorry, a little rant there…

Anyway, Dynamic Efforts need to be done fresh to ensure the most force is produced. You might want to take a look at your warm-up and make sure it is extensive enough if you felt fast after your Max Effort sets. If your warm-up isn’t very good, that could be why you felt that way.

57

With accumulation is the set up I mentioned still pretty good as long as I address my weaknesses more i.e. in my squat it’s hamstring strength so I’d hit more hamstring volume and in bench its my triceps/shoulders so I’d spend more time on those?

58

[quote]StormTheBeach wrote:
Speed requires you to be at 100%. This means zero fatigue. After your heavy lifting you are fatigued, or at least you should be!
[/quote]

Whats your opinion on the first half of this program where it has speed lifts 2nd?

Also for raw lifting, are box squats the only thing used in DE lower or is there something else that might be better if raw squats don’t get a good carryover from box squats?

59

Storm (or anybody else who may be knowledgeable), what do you think of just using bands for extra workouts?
For example, right here in my dorm room I can foam roll, do tennis ball work, stretch, do mobility stuff, etc, and then throw in some band face pulls, tricep pushdowns (loop the band around the top of my lofted bed), and even some bicep work, which I rarely do in the gym, among other things.
Is this optimal for a mini workout, or should I just get in the gym for 20-30 minutes and do what you’ve already outlined?

60

[quote]StormTheBeach wrote:

[quote]arramzy wrote:

[quote]StormTheBeach wrote:
2. When you do recovery work, you can’t think in terms of upper and lower body. Unless you feel you need to condition a certain area, then that should be the emphasis of your session. “Recovery” work is a means to return the body back to baseline before the next training session begins or before the meet starts. When you think like this, recovery then can be veiwed a function of nervous and hormonal activity. When you train, and for a long time period after if you train heavy, your nervous system becomes sympathetic dominant. This raises your heart rate, body temperature, and royally screws with your hormone secretions. This is why heart rate is a good measure of being overtrained. Pure recovery work should be geared towards returning the body to PARAsympathetic dominance. That being said, walking on an incline is good. Just don’t turn it into a “cardio session.” Personally, for recovery, I like dragging a light sled for 30 minutes, not going nuts in my extra workouts every once in a while, taking contrast showers, and doing long sessions of mobility work. I read once an old Russian weightlifting coache would put his athletes on a plane and fly them to a beach. They would just walk around and look at the water for a little while. His theory was this was the best way to return to parasympathetic dominance.
[/quote]

Thanks for the great advice. If I may followup, I am just wondering if this is a bit oversimplified. Indeed any exercise is a sympathetic activity but it is relatively agreed upon in research that there is no such thing as a ‘sympathetic or parasympathetic state’. Merely, your body’s response to stimuli involves a balance of parasympathetic to sympathetic innervation. So indeed during exercise and following exercise you have a shift towards sympathetic innervation. However, this is not neccessarily a horrendous thing - it encourages fat mobilization, protein synthesis (in times of surplus), release of androgens etc etc… So my impression was that while it is important to reduce the stress associated with increase sympathetic activity associated with increased heart rate, elevated cortisol etc… A huge component of the benefits of recovery is a simple physiological responses like a redirection of blood flow, a release of tight fascia, an increased rate of washout etc etc… This is why doing band pushdowns for 100 reps will dramatically help your triceps recover. Do you have a different knowledge base guiding your recovery work?[/quote]

I’ve read all that shit too. I think THAT is way too over simplified. I have yet to find a study that examines nervous system activity after a max deadlift or after an entire day of competing or after continous years of training. I think it goes from being less of a balance between sympathetic and parasympethetic to being a one way street of one or the other. You basically trigger a fight or flight repsonse everytime you lift something heavy. The only way to mimic such a response is in life and death situations. Nervous adaptations take place just like muscular adaptations take place from exercise. Constatnly triggering that fight or flight week after week, the sympethetic response is going to get stronger and the parasympathetic response will get weaker and harder to control.

I don’t have any science behind that… because there isn’t any. The closest thing we have right now of understanding any of that is practical application data with the OmegaWave. Google that thing if you want to have nightmares for a few weeks. I saw it used once at a seminar and that was some crazy shit.

I once read the last person to break the world record for the hammer throw, whenever it was last broken, took almost a month to return to baseline. One throw put one of the top level strength/power athlete out for a month. The only conlusion anyone could come to was the hightened state of his sympethetic nervous system activity for that time period.

This really is just splitting hairs. If something you do helps you recover between workouts or before a competition and it translates to bigger numbers on the platform, then it is good for you. Agreed? haha.[/quote]

Hahahaha… agreed! Thanks for the interesting discussion though. Certainly has made me think about what I am doing!