Loop, when you speak of aesthetics, what exactly are you referring to? I don’t necessarily care to be have the ultimate pretty physique so to speak.
I am training for size, but size with the look of a bodybuilder, not just big in general. I don’t plan on keeping my weight and bodyfat down now that I’ve aborted my diet either. Does that make sense?
I can’t say I have ever trained for ‘aesthetics’ per se. I have trained to make everything grow and have hoped what grows, looks good.
My thinking is just that I don’t want any bodyparts to lag or not get enough work. I am not overly concerned about back or legs and mind you, they definitely won’t be neglected training Westside. I don’t typically train arms directly at all, and they’ve become a weak point relative to my torso now, so I am looking forward to the beatings my triceps will take. Calves? Not that worried. I’d rather put the extra volume somewhere else.
What I’m not sure of is what bodyparts get rocked, so as not to put any unnecessary extra volume on these parts. (ie shoulders perhaps?)
Yes, we do direct shoulder work. Front,side,rear delt work whenever you don’t work it on that day, or simply feeling good, and need to bring your delts up.
I typically will do my bulk delt work on ME days unless I’m doing a full rom movement as my ME exercise, but thats only every 3 weeks or so.
I also every once in awhile do overhead work. I actually really love overhead work, so I continue to do it on occasion. Just make sure your hitting your rear hard though, and jack those traps.
Lateral and rear delt raises. Not really any overhead pressing… Front raises every couple weeks, and only when I do a lockout exercise for my ME movement.
Sorry thunder, I must have been reading a phantom post that said something completely out of character.
I’ve read through them all several times now and have no idea where I came up with that…
Funny part is the post to jackass still makes sense.
Oh well, would like to see your squatting in action pic though. And nice to hear that the last 20 pounds or so you added did wonders for your quads. Mine are still making the colonel reach out from his grave and im up to 225 now, so sooner or later they have to do something I figure.
We do quite a bit of direct shoulder work over here, but the majority of it is for the posterior delts. Once a week or so we will do 3-4 worksets to hit either our anterior or medial delts, but it’s usually not much more than this. Overhead pressing is usually only done once every 3-4 weeks.
Have you measured your quads? I would like to know how big around they are at their largest point. I am curious about what you call small. They may bigger than you think.
Also, how much do you weigh, and how tall are you?
I’m more or less in the same boat as Thunder- looking for sculpted and balanced mass, but I’d like some serious strength to go with it.
I’ve been watching the debate between the Westsiders and the bodybuilders for a while now and have to say that I’m a little disappointed in the division on the form. I think Patricia’s idea may help close the gap a little between camps. I’d definitely like to see what you guys could come up with. Maybe a few of us could try it and post results.
I think rather then trying to put your bodybuilding workout into a Westide training template you would be better served trying to put your bodybuilding workout into a conjugate periodizaed or vertically integrated format. People forget that “westside” is really just a means of organizing training in the conjugate method and it’s focus is on building strength for powerlifting. I could come up with a plan that is still conjugate periodization that would look nothing like westside. But anyway, decide what training means affect hypertrophy. For example you might come up with strength training and training by the repetition method or several other training methods. Instead of shifting the program from phase to phase you’d address all types of training at the same time…but with a change of focus over time. In one block you might be dong a lot of heavy strength training, but still doing the other training methods as well. This would shift towards more repetition type training and so forth and so on.
Here’s part of a PM from Steve after I whined about some of the negative side effects (chest mainly) of Westside:
[quote]Westside IS the best of both worlds, hands down. I feel that as long as your nutrition is in order, the BBer goals are going to be attained to a degree with exactly what you’re doing now. We have a few guys here that could probably step on stage and win a BBing contest right now; no dieting even needed. These guys didn’t always look like this, either. It’s happened through hard work with the Westside template and sound nutrition (I can’t deny that some probably have a little extra edge, too, if you know what I mean). The fact of the matter is that your body comp. is not going to suffer so long as you don’t get out of control with your nutrition. I realize a lot of the PLers seem to scoff at nutrition and are, therefore, somewhat fat, but this is of their own doing. I’ve seen plenty of PLers who are ripped to the bone and strong as f*ck. It is very possible.
My advice to you at this point? Stick with the program, clean up and be a bit stricter with the diet, include some assistance work for “lagging” parts whether this be for aesthetic shudder or strength reasons, and keep on trucking. I think you are going to be pleasantly surprised with your body and your strength over the course of the next six months or so.
[/quote]
Kelly, you’re absolutely right. Conjugated periodization is the key in this for everyone, BBers included. My feeling is that since there is a ton of info out there on how to use the Westside template, it may just be easier for some of these guys to go with that for awhile and see how they do with altering their assistance work. It will save them a lot of research and time. If done properly in conjunction with an adequate diet, they should see strength and size gains anyway.
Patricia- more power to you if you want to help Thunder create something drastically different than the commonly used Westside template. If I was him, I would just try it for some time mixing in some calf, quad, and direct chest work into the assistance. I don’t see what really needs to be done other than this.
ZEB: Im 6’2", 225lbs (currently gaining), and 30 years old. Quads are 26.5 cold flexed.
Really the overall diameter isnt that horrid (its average, not big nor small), just the look of them near my knees is unimpressive, nearly smooth in transition. Contrast that to how thunder’s look with those big “lips” at their termination and the chicken reference fits right in.
Lazarus, where in MN are you? East metro or west, or are you in outstate someplace?
There seems to be a few vikings fans around here, but not enough to get a real t gathering yet.
He is right in some sence. However the westside routine is not actaully “routine” at all it’s an ever evolving system. This is why most love it so much. It is very easy to manipulate for your specific goals.
I do agree though that as much as we all knock bodybuilders there is a reason why they train the way the do.
Even though they do every rep to failure and damn near kill themselves you can’t deny the fact they have massive amounts of hypertrophy.
If you wanted to become the best bodybuilder in the world would you want to be trained by Louie and Dave or would you go to Charles Glass?
If you wanted to become a world class powerlifter I hope you wouldn’t get trained by Charles Glass or if you did I would hope I competed against you.
Anyway the answer lies like allways some where in between. What I do is use the westside template and the basic principals. From there I mix in hypertrophy training, which WILL make you stronger, I don’t care what anyone says. The biggest guy in each weight class at A PL meet is always atleast in the top 3.
So basically do the first 1-2 exercises of each day westside style the rest of the workout, work on winning the Hyper Trophy!
One final note using a few sets of 3,5 or even 8 reps for ME works great. See if you can do a few sets of 5 with the same weight.
Antiliberal- I’m “up north”. I was going to ask you if there was a T-cell in this state. I’m the only guy I know of around this area who’s even heard of T-mag. Sorry to hear there’s not much in your area either.
I’m already working on some ideas for a bodybuilding cross-over. How about dynamic work for each major plane of movement? We could also have a maximum effort week (or two) for the same planes. You got squats, deadlifts, benchpress. Now add- over head press (military) and mid grip rows (bent over or rack pulls). During this time you can only do a limited amount of supplmental work- dumbell tricep press, goodmornings (or make goodmornings dynamic/max and make squats/deads supplemental), GHRs, rear delt flys, incline press, and possibly some calve and grip work. After you work up to a PR in the max effort week you continue to do dynamic work for your main hypertrophy moves but add in more specific supplemental work for lagging parts?
