Westside Results

I’m doing a Westside routine this summer with 3-week cycles. I would like some opinions from experienced and relatively new Westiders about their gains.

  • Other than strength, how much muscle mass did you gain on a 8-12 week cycle? Is it a good program for gaining LBM?

  • Did your explosive power improve (in terms of power cleans, cleans from the block etc) ?

  • Did you a follow a specific diet, if any, for the routine

I’ll appreciate any info.

I’ve been doing westside for about a month/month and half and have had some noticable strength gains. I’ve benched 215lbs for a triple where my previous max was 200lb 1rm. May legs havent had as much of a gain because I took 2-1/2 weeks off leg training because an un-diagnosable pain in my groin/hip muscles. I have been eating basicly matanaince calories keeping my protien high and have lost 3lbs with the strength still going up. I think this shows gaining muscle mass shouldnt be a problem if you eat extra calories and are fit enough to maybe throw in extra workouts for your lagging body parts.

I just finished the 8 keys basic program a couple weeks ago. I gained about 15 lbs, not all lean tho. My lifts all went up except bench, my bench sucks. But my squat went up 45 lbs, and DL 35 lbs.

I just finished my first westside. None of my lifts really made any huge gains, although I think i did them with better form. And I dont believe i gained any new muscle mass, although I believe that both of those can be contributed to the fact that when I eat when I want instead of when I need to I have the appetite of a 14 year old girl. With a program like westside im lucky I didnt lose more weight. I’m revampign my diet, hopefully that’ll help

westside program is by far the best i have ever used. Its tough to do the program properly if you haven’t actually seen how they do it (i.e. the videos) because it seems far more complicated on paper. i wasn’t really competitive before but my gym best three months ago in the deadlift was 450 and now it’s 545. i have also found the bands to work unbelievably well. i have the iron woody intermediate set, and yes they are just like jump-stretch minus dye.

  • Did you all include any chains and bands in your routine?

  • Anyone tried the Westside program with an emphasis on bb during supplementary exercises? If yes, what was your routine?

Man, “Bodybuilding” exercises pretty much make up all the acces. work in the “Westside” style program. Most of this work is done with the repetition method. Just remember that strength athletes use a modified repetition method which means we stop 2-3 reps short of failure on each set where as the standard “bodybuilding” method is to go to failure. All accessory work is done to strengthen the muscles used in the classic lifts. Adjust the volume to what you are trying to achieve.

Sorry about making another post, but this is my opinion on the chains and bands. Chains and bands are just two more weapons in your battle to gain strength. I think too many new lifters want to do everything and use everything at once. When begining, go ahead and cycle some chains in, it will help with lockout weaknesses. But the best advice on bands came from Chuck V., he said that you should not use bands until you have completely stopped gaining from straight weight and chains (for most people, this is longer than you think). That way by the time you get to the point where you need to use bands, you already have a solid training base and the bands will get you jump started to even bigger numbers. The problem is when you have people who have just started training and are nowhere near any type of plateu, trying to get under band tension without a solid base. Even with that said early on you can still use bands but dont do them all the time and use lighter tension, so that the body will not adapt to them.

Okay this is crazy , but Jim Wendler just posted a great article on what I was talking about earlier.Go to elitefts and in the Current Article section, it is titled “Force Training” This is the same thing that Chuck told them and Jim told me.

Barbender, you made a good point about chains and bands. There is a disadvantage in jumping too soon into these.

However, bands are not too bad for light weight and repetition based recovery sessions.

What do you think?

Man, if you are looking for a recovery, bands are the last thing you want to use. The accelerated eccentric will tear you down. “Light Weight” is a relative term. If the weight is too light, then the movement is useless no matter how explosive you are (think wiffle ball). The weight should be the heaviest weight that still allows you to be fast. Try to get hooked up with a TENS unit.

In response to the premise of this thread… Westside is, among others things, about focusing on your weak points and choosing lifts that will strengthen your weak points.

Most, if not all, of the people at westside are elite lifters who are already at about the weight they want to be at. If you are 155 llbs, 6’1", and want to eventually be in the 275 class, then I would without a doubt say that your weakness is that you have no muscle mass. If you have no solid base in repetition training (less than year), I (and dave said this once I believe) would skip dynamic work and instead do work for hypertrophy, and do a lot more 3-5 rep maxes on ME days. Think about it, speed work trains your muscles to fire efficiently and be explosive, but if you dont have enough muscle to begin with, it loses much of it’s effectiveness. Throw in dynamic sets every other week to work on form, until you get stronger.

I know this from personal experience; If you’re benching 225 and you’re stuck there for 5 months, something is wrong and you must do work to bring up your weak points.

As for the last response, did you mean doing band leg curls and band pushdowns? Those are fine as a beginner for restoration, but definetely dont use them on a barbell.

Anyway, as you asked:
Lifts after 6 months gym experience (unorganized bodybuilding):
Squat: ~200
Bench: 175
Deadlift: 275

Lifts after 1 year Westside:
Squat: 420 (and rapidly climbing)
Bench: 245
Deadlift: 500

dont make the same mistakes i did with my bench! if you’re too small, get big!

Sorry for a misunderstanding, but realting to bands, I was talking about the major lifts.But if you are a beginner, do you want to waste a lot of your time doing band extensions and the other little exercises? In the begining, that was what I did, and I couldnt figure out why I wasnt gaining like I wanted to. It wasnt until I read some stuff from Paul Childress, that I needed to bust more ass in the gym with more compound type movements and stop messing with 5 sets of 20 reps on band extensions or whatever it was that I was doing.

Another topic, beginners can and should do speed work, does this mean they should bench in a ballistic fashion, since some people think that is the only type of speed bench? No. You bring up weak points with your accessory work, not your main movement. Now this last thing is for those with powerlifting goals. I think it is okay to go for a 3 rep max every now and then, but dont let it become a habit. You need to feel real maximal weight for a single rep to see how you hold up. Now if you are another type of athlete I wouldnt suggest doing a 1 rep max all that often because you are not a powerlifter, you are first and foremost a football player or whatever you may be.

Great discussion guys, keep it up.
Keep an open mind and have a good time!

I have been on a true Westside program for 6 months now and I absolutely love it. My progress in the squat and Deadlift has gone from barely squatting 225 to hitting a 325 low box squat on Monday. I also recently pulled 365 from the pins just below my knees. The bench however has moved more slowly for me. I don’t know if this is a cyclical thing for me or if I have just trained the squat and dead harder. Anyway I have also packed on muscle pretty steadily over the last 6 months and by adding in some GPP work have also stayed in shape.

Great input by everyone. It helps so much to hear from people with experience specially in a WBB like routine.

I totally agree with most of you guys, if you lack muscle mass then WBB is not for you (atleast try to gain some mass). I think Joe DeFranco also touched on that in his article “Westside for Skinny Bastards”.

Now, I’m on the first of my 4 3-week cycles of Westside routine. Every three weeks, I will change some movements for ME and DE days. I usually only go for 3-5 RM max on ME days except on the last week (3rd week) of a cycle when I’ll do some 1 RM work.

My concern is regarding DE work and how to include some BB work. I do couple of exercises per workout for supplementary work targeting my weak points. These are typically 2-3 sets x 10-12 reps.

Here are some numbers:
5’11, 188 lbs
bench: 225, DL: 255, squat: 250

I don’t think my numbers are too low to do a WBB routine but maybe I need to include more hypertrophy work.

My goal is to gain strength and lbm. However, I’m not really training with any PL competition in mind.

I’ll appreciate any comments.

[quote]RepubCarrier wrote:
In response to the premise of this thread… Westside is, among others things, about focusing on your weak points and choosing lifts that will strengthen your weak points.

Most, if not all, of the people at westside are elite lifters who are already at about the weight they want to be at. If you are 155 llbs, 6’1", and want to eventually be in the 275 class, then I would without a doubt say that your weakness is that you have no muscle mass. If you have no solid base in repetition training (less than year), I (and dave said this once I believe) would skip dynamic work and instead do work for hypertrophy, and do a lot more 3-5 rep maxes on ME days. Think about it, speed work trains your muscles to fire efficiently and be explosive, but if you dont have enough muscle to begin with, it loses much of it’s effectiveness. Throw in dynamic sets every other week to work on form, until you get stronger.

I know this from personal experience; If you’re benching 225 and you’re stuck there for 5 months, something is wrong and you must do work to bring up your weak points.

As for the last response, did you mean doing band leg curls and band pushdowns? Those are fine as a beginner for restoration, but definetely dont use them on a barbell.

Anyway, as you asked:
Lifts after 6 months gym experience (unorganized bodybuilding):
Squat: ~200
Bench: 175
Deadlift: 275

Lifts after 1 year Westside:
Squat: 420 (and rapidly climbing)
Bench: 245
Deadlift: 500

dont make the same mistakes i did with my bench! if you’re too small, get big![/quote]

I have done Westside training in the past and did not gain much strength or size. I am not saying that the Westside approach does not work, I have just had better results with other programs. I think that when you look at any programs success with other people you must try to account for all of the variables that my cause one’s success with that particular program. I have read articles in the past that lead me to believe that anabolics play a role in the Westside system.

[quote]chints wrote:
Great input by everyone. It helps so much to hear from people with experience specially in a WBB like routine.

I totally agree with most of you guys, if you lack muscle mass then WBB is not for you (atleast try to gain some mass). I think Joe DeFranco also touched on that in his article “Westside for Skinny Bastards”.

Now, I’m on the first of my 4 3-week cycles of Westside routine. Every three weeks, I will change some movements for ME and DE days. I usually only go for 3-5 RM max on ME days except on the last week (3rd week) of a cycle when I’ll do some 1 RM work.

My concern is regarding DE work and how to include some BB work. I do couple of exercises per workout for supplementary work targeting my weak points. These are typically 2-3 sets x 10-12 reps.

Here are some numbers:
5’11, 188 lbs
bench: 225, DL: 255, squat: 250

I don’t think my numbers are too low to do a WBB routine but maybe I need to include more hypertrophy work.

My goal is to gain strength and lbm. However, I’m not really training with any PL competition in mind.

I’ll appreciate any comments.
[/quote]

Well, If I were you I’d focus more on my posterior chain than my bench. Usually when someone who trains their entire body has a 225 bench, they can deadlift over 400 and squat almost 400 (raw). Go insane on ME SQ/DL and DE Squat days, do your main movement, then go rep deadlifts till you feel like passing out, do high volume compound movements and eat a lot of food. This will change as you get better, but to start with… I am currently someone once who had never lifted the lower body before, and had barely done anything for the upper body. He had a 155 squat, 115 bench, and i dont know what deadlift. after 3 weeks of crazily high volume, he benched 135, squatted 225 (parallel box), and deadlifted 265. Its been 4 more weeks, and he just did good morning’ed a triple with 250 on the cambered squat bar. His deadlift is over 300 now. And we are talking 6 weeks of heavy training. Just go kill yourself, annihilate your weakpoints and your strength and size will explode.

When your progress starts slowing down, take a smarter approach. I know this is very general but it’s the best advice I can give without being at the workout with you… sorry this is the 3rd time saying this in the post, but do more rather than less for your lower body with #s like that, and dont worry about not being “strong enough” for westside, it’s fine.

Man , I dont want to start a bunch of crap but where are these article saying that the success of “Westside is due to anabolics.” There are steroids used by many people who are on many different programs. Just look at all the stuff coming out now about Olympic athletes and steroids. It just goes to show you that the playing field was more level than people thought during all of those years when the United States got their ass whipped by the Soviets. It wasnt due to steroid use, it was do to a better training system. And for anybody that doesnt know, the “Westside Program” is not a magical pill that came out a few years ago, it is just another type of periodization. It is based on the conjugate method. Many colleges and professional teams use this system and see great results. All of the college and professional athletes cant be on steroids. I can personally say that conjugate periodization has worked great for me. Just as HIT or progressive oeverload works well for others. If someone is on a HIT program and is making great progress, I dont automatically say, "Well he must be on roids. The Soviets were doing things in sports science 30 years ago that we still cant top today with all of our money and great facilities. So please lets get off the “Westside only works for those who use steroids.” Do the homework baby!

RepubCarrier:
I’m aware that my posterior chain is quite weak compared to my quads. It’s the result of ignoring hams over a long period of time.

What kind of supplementary exercises do you guys do on ME and DE lower body days? I don’t have access to GHR or Reverse-Hyper machines. So, my supplementary lifts are lunges, speed DL, Dimel DLs, pull-throughs etc.

And also, what kind of volume on these exercises.

thanks,

[quote]RepubCarrier wrote:
chints wrote:
Great input by everyone. It helps so much to hear from people with experience specially in a WBB like routine.

I totally agree with most of you guys, if you lack muscle mass then WBB is not for you (atleast try to gain some mass). I think Joe DeFranco also touched on that in his article “Westside for Skinny Bastards”.

Now, I’m on the first of my 4 3-week cycles of Westside routine. Every three weeks, I will change some movements for ME and DE days. I usually only go for 3-5 RM max on ME days except on the last week (3rd week) of a cycle when I’ll do some 1 RM work.

My concern is regarding DE work and how to include some BB work. I do couple of exercises per workout for supplementary work targeting my weak points. These are typically 2-3 sets x 10-12 reps.

Here are some numbers:
5’11, 188 lbs
bench: 225, DL: 255, squat: 250

I don’t think my numbers are too low to do a WBB routine but maybe I need to include more hypertrophy work.

My goal is to gain strength and lbm. However, I’m not really training with any PL competition in mind.

I’ll appreciate any comments.

Well, If I were you I’d focus more on my posterior chain than my bench. Usually when someone who trains their entire body has a 225 bench, they can deadlift over 400 and squat almost 400 (raw). Go insane on ME SQ/DL and DE Squat days, do your main movement, then go rep deadlifts till you feel like passing out, do high volume compound movements and eat a lot of food. This will change as you get better, but to start with… I am currently someone once who had never lifted the lower body before, and had barely done anything for the upper body. He had a 155 squat, 115 bench, and i dont know what deadlift. after 3 weeks of crazily high volume, he benched 135, squatted 225 (parallel box), and deadlifted 265. Its been 4 more weeks, and he just did good morning’ed a triple with 250 on the cambered squat bar. His deadlift is over 300 now. And we are talking 6 weeks of heavy training. Just go kill yourself, annihilate your weakpoints and your strength and size will explode.

When your progress starts slowing down, take a smarter approach. I know this is very general but it’s the best advice I can give without being at the workout with you… sorry this is the 3rd time saying this in the post, but do more rather than less for your lower body with #s like that, and dont worry about not being “strong enough” for westside, it’s fine.
[/quote]