Welcome to the Baker Barbell Podcast. I'm your host Andy Baker, owner of Baker Personal Training in Kingwood, Texas, and co-author of Practical Programming for Strength Training with Mark Ripeto, as well as the Barbell Prescription, training for Life After 40 with Dr. Jonathan Sullivan. My co-host today is Coach Dan Flannick, owner of Scan Strength in upstate New York. Thanks for listening today, and let's get started.
Welcome back to the Baker Barbell Podcast. Once again, I'm with Dan Flannick, and we are going to go over today, kind of where we left off on episode two, which is a little bit of a discussion on concurrent training, Westside Training, Conjugate Training, all of those terms get thrown around quite a bit. So we were going to start the show today by kind of just discussing what some of those terms are, because people can flate them a little bit. It's not that critical of a thing, but I think it is helpful when you're going to have a discussion.
It's a discussion of this type of training program to really have a good understanding of the terminology. So I want to start off, I think most commonly people, when they think of the kind of training that we're going to go over today, they really think of it as Westside Programming. That's probably the most kind of popular term thrown around. It can be a little bit confusing. I always tell people that Westside Programming is really whatever they're doing at Westside on a given day, or at a given time with a given day.
They train a lot of advanced lifters there. So usually guys that come into the Westside Barbow Club that work with Louis are not beginners. So they're already pretty advanced strength athletes. And a lot of people don't realize too that at Westside Barbow Club, they train a lot of athletes other than just power lifters. They train a lot of track and field people. They train MMA guys. They train a lot of different types of people, kind of using the same methodology. So it's really, you know, I think everything that they do there, and I don't want to speak for Louis for sure, or for
the Westside guys. But I would think that they would probably agree that there's not just like one program that they all follow there. Everything's hyper individualized. It's very much when you're working with a guy that comes in and is already very, very strong. You're not just going to put him on a generic template. You're going to look at what, you know, kind of where he's at, how he got there and kind of look at the reasons why he stuck. Try to find his individual kind of weaknesses that are holding him back and then then design a program for him that's going to kind of get him to the next level. So I hate to, I really hate to use the term
you know, we're doing the Westside program because it makes it sound like I have some kind of inside track to Westside, which I certainly don't. But we just kind of use that terminology a bit because it's familiar to people. And so if you're reading articles or listening to podcasts or YouTube videos, you've probably probably heard that thrown around. But really, you know, we're just going to say for now that the Westside Barbell program is whatever they're doing at the Westside Barbell gym in Columbus, Ohio under Louise direction. And we'll we'll kind of leave that it there. But this but the system that they use there is
very much something that's been written about a lot by Louis and by others. And it is, you know, it is, it is a template that others can adopt and have adopted, you know, with a lot of success, including, you know, including me and a lot of my programming. And that system is really what we would call a concurrent training model. Okay. So we're going to talk a little bit about what concurrent training means. And then we're also going to talk kind of talk about what the conjugate method means because they're not exactly the same. Okay. So,
the concurrent model, let's actually let's back up a little bit and let's kind of talk about what the concurrent model, how it, what it's different from and kind of why people might use it. A lot of traditional strength programs, powerlifting programs use a system of training known as block periodization block programming. Similar in some ways to kind of what we call the kind of the Western traditional model of periodization. Some slight differences there. But let's just talk kind of generically without getting too deep into the numbers that a block training system.
Is is exactly that it's one that's organized into these little chunks of time or training blocks. And within each block you're trying to train or at least prioritize a certain physical quality. And so in the context of let's just say powerlifting because people are going to be familiar with that.
You know, we're going to talk about a guy that's let's say he's got a meat coming up in several months. And so if he's a long ways out from that meat, he's going to write out his program, his block program. And the first block that he might do is might be a hypertrophy block, okay, or a muscle building block will say.
And the kind of the characteristics of that is that it's going to be as you as you might think about a hypertrophy training block might look a little bit more, you know, kind of bodybuilding-ish. It may have some exposure to the main lifts, the squat, the bench and the deadlift. But a lot of guys prefer to do things a little more non specifically train some training focus on lifts that maybe aren't the competitive versions of the lifts. So maybe instead of maybe instead of, you know, the competition low bar squat, they train with a high bar squat.
Maybe they do more stiff legs or something like that instead of regular dead lifts, you know, maybe a lot of dumbbell benching or something like that and lieu of a lot of barbell benching. But basically you're going to you maybe be a little bit more non specific. Your focus is really on muscle building and hypertrophy. Your rep ranges might be a little bit higher.
So instead of the, you know, the one to five range or training a lot maybe in the eight to 12 range overall volume might be a little bit higher. And you might organize a training program there that's, you know, anywhere from four to eight weeks in length focused on muscle building and muscle hypertrophy. And then as the meat gets closer, you'll start to switch maybe after that block is over into more of a strength block.
And that might be a little bit more specificity in terms of exercise selection. So a little bit more squatting, benching and deadlifting. The rep range has come down. Maybe a lot more work in kind of a four to six range. So kind of your more traditional strength training range. Maybe your assistance lifts get a little bit less isolation based.
Maybe a little bit more barbell type supplemental and assistance work. The rep ranges on those might also come down as the weights get a little heavier on those. You might organize that block into say a four to six week, four to six week program, something like that. And then when you're maybe a month out from the meter, a few weeks out from the meat, then you get much, much more specific to powerlifting.
And we might call that a peaking block or something like that. And in that block, you would be again, very specific to powerlifting. It would be, you know, exercise selection would be almost exclusively squat bench deadlift. Maybe a handful of assistance exercises that you really feel like carry over well. The rep ranges would get much lower.
You know, lots of one to three rep sets with heavy weight, really trying to prepare your body for that. And then you might have a very short D load week and then you go on to the meat. And that's basically kind of a rough bird's eye view of what block periodization would be. So basically starting out with higher volume, higher rep ranges. That sort of thing and kind of coming down into more specific powerlifting training. Does that does that all sound about right? Do I have all that about right?
Yep, that was a pretty good explanation there. And before I mean last episode, I think I ended with how concurrent training or like how the West Side method or the concurrent training ideas is perfect is a little bit of a, you know, exaggeration. Because when we talk about this, it's not to say that block training isn't super effective for for different people. All these all these protocols, all these methods are useful at different times and people's lifting careers.
And just I think this will be a good segue into the kind of the framework behind the concurrent training you're going to describe Andy and how if we're talking, we're sticking on the powerlifting idea of things. One of the flaws that's been pointed out about block training is that you really don't start handling what we would call them power like sport specific work heavy heavy, you know, singles pretty much.
If you're running it that way, most likely if you're running the traditional way, most likely you won't handle those heavy singles until the last block of training. So you're, you know, the months leading up to that last month to six or eight weeks however long that last phase is before your competition, for example, you're only getting practice with specific competition movements or lifting maximum loads, which is the sport itself under heavy heavy loads.
You're only getting that the last phase of the training. And so you're not necessarily practicing your sport earlier on in those those first two training blocks, if you will.
Yeah, and that's, you know, that's kind of the general critique. And like we said with, you know, every, you know, there are things that can be perfect on paper, nothing's ever perfect in practice. And that goes with, you know, whether it's block training or conjugate training or whatever other training program you're going to do nothing, you know, nothing's ever perfect.
There's holes potentially in everything. And so, you know, I'm not necessarily advocating for or against block training or even concurrent training. It's more of just why you might use one versus why you might use the other one.
And some potential problems that concurrent training solves. So one of the one of the potential problems with block training is again, like what you said, as you spend a whole lot of time working non specifically towards the actual goal, which is to lift more weight for one rep max and the squat bench in the deadlift.
Now there are certainly strategies to mitigate against that. You know, a lot of guys, even in their hypertrophy block might, you know, that you can institute a quick single of, you know, say 90% or something like that.
You know, once a week or once every other week or something like that, you can, you know, just kind of keep your keep yourself in practice with those heavier weights. But the reason you would want to do that is because when you spend a long time away from the specifics, the specific sport of, you know, one rep maxing on the on the three lifts.
And then the thing is that while you're building up the muscle mass, you're potentially detraining, you know, your, your peak strength. And really, I think that's fine. I think, especially if you're an advanced lifter, you're not, you're never, you're, you're, it's unrealistic to think that you're always going to be at your peak.
You know, once, okay, I, I squatted 500 in a meet. So now that's like my new baseline. That's not really how it works. So it's okay to spend a portion of your year, not at your, at your peak. I'd say most athletes in any sport rarely do that.
So some detraining of one physical quality in order to emphasize another is certainly okay. But, you know, in this comes down to individual response. Some people, I feel like detrain way too much. If they spend a significant amount of time doing, you know, more bodybuilding training or hypertrophy training and nothing really heavy, then they actually may detrain too much during that time to make it up.
So even when you, you kind of shift focus into more of a strength phase and a peaking phase later, you may have actually lost too much ground to actually make any significant progress. So you may just be kind of working yourself up back towards your baseline where you started this whole thing. So you did a lot of a long series of training blocks with a lot of, you know, well, well thought out programming. But it really only brought you back.
Kind of to where you were. And in some cases, I've seen, you know, back under to where you were. So that's a potential problem. The other, the other problem is when. So we talk about, you know, spending the first, the first block, you know, training hypertrophy training, higher volume higher reps, more isolation work.
When you get away from that type of training, let's say you do that for six or eight weeks and then you do another, you know, say four to five weeks, a strength training and several weeks of kind of a peaking phase, you're actually going a long period of time with a much reduced volume and getting away from all those movements and all that programming that supposedly built all that muscle mass. And so you're actually losing, you're actually losing the adaptation that you spent some time building earlier in the block.
And so that's a potential pitfall as well as that. Yeah, you may build some muscle mass early on, but then you, your volume drops so low that you actually start to lose some of that muscle mass. Just doing, just doing the only the really heavy training. So that's, that's a potential problem that some people have.
Well, that along with like the GPP aspect of it to make your, your general endurance, your ability to tolerate high intensity training will decrease because your body is just less prepared in general because it's just not doing as much anymore.
Yeah, and as we know conditioning, you know, it's a transient adaptation. So you may have, you know, got yourself in much better shape and ability to, you know, handle a lot more training volume. And then when it drops, you're not, you're conditioning in your work capacity along potentially with some of your muscle mass will, we'll start to, we'll start to drop as well.
So that's a potential pitfall of, of block training. I would also say not just if you kind of, if you kind of zoom out a little bit and look at a longer period of time, say a year or two years or five years. When you talk about building muscle mass, you know, hypertrophy training, if you're only really focusing on that on, you know, these little blocks of time of say four to six weeks or four to eight weeks.
A couple of times per year, you have to really kind of look at what is the actual realistic potential of building a lot of, building a significant amount of muscle mass, you know, just working in these short little blocks of time and then allowing it to detrain how much muscle are you really going to put on.
In my experience, you know, especially natural trainees and those trainees that aren't super genetically gifted, it's not that easy to put on muscle mass and maintain it. And it's really one of those qualities that has to be trained, you know, basically year round.
You know, not necessarily like right up, you know, the week before the meat or that sort of thing. But, you know, to have, you know, just a handful of four to six week blocks throughout the year, where you're going to focus on muscle building and hypertrophy specific training.
You have to really, you know, wonder how much muscle am I really going to put on doing that or would I be better off, you know, running a system that allowed me to spend more time, more time doing that. And that's where that's where the concurrent system comes in. When we talk about all these physical qualities that you might want to become a good power lifter, let's kind of go from least specific to most specific, let's talk about work capacity.
So that's just we talked about that a lot in the last episode or two, which is your general physical fitness, your ability to handle a high training volume, you know, your kind of your muscular and cardiovascular endurance, if you want to phrase it like that. But, you know, just kind of your overall fitness level and ability to handle training high amount of training volume.
That would be kind of your your GPP or your work capacity. And then we look at, you know, you know, muscle size or muscle hypertrophy. You know, that as a physical quality along with your work capacity and then your strength, those are really the, you know, kind of the three main physical qualities that a that a lifter is wanting to that is wanting to increase throughout the duration of the year.
And so what the concurrent model does is it figures out a way to train all of those qualities simultaneously all through the year. So every single week, there is exposure to, you know, higher volume type of assistance work in in Louis terminology calls that, you know, special exercise or the repetition effort or whatever we would just call that kind of bodybuilding training or, you know, higher rep work, isolation training, whatever you want to call it.
That's in their year round, the very heavy strength work that that maintains your ability to strain against, you know, heavy loads is in their year round. And your exposure to higher volumes of the competition lifts so that you're continuously, you know, kind of refining your refining your abilities on those lifts as well as maintaining your work capacity on those lifts and developing kind of the neurological skill by through the kind of repeated exposure to those lifts.
You know, all of that work is included in the program basically every single week. And you say, well, how do you do all that without over training. And that is that's really where we talked about last time of kind of the beauty of the West side system or how how Louis and his and his guys at Hive gym have organized the concurrent model.
Training all of those physical quality simultaneously within the week and all throughout the year is the concurrent model. So there's no real blocks specifically dedicated to any one, you know, to any one physical quality you'll get exposure to some of it every single week of the year maybe except for, you know, your deal of weeks and things like that.
But the way that the way that they've organized it is is kind of where the genius of the program is that because they do have it organized in a way that allows you to do it without having to worry too much about over training and killing yourself. And that's really where the conjugate method comes in. Okay. So the conjugate method is a piece. It's not conjugate training and concurrent training or not the same thing that's not the terminology is not interchangeable.
The conjugate method is a piece of the West side programmer a way in which they they implement the concurrent training model. And so conjugate, you know, basically just means it means different are varying. And that's where when you see the West side guys, you know, if you don't really know what's going on and you watch the YouTube videos or the Instagram stuff and you see these guys doing all these what looks like kind of wacky movements.
You know, and working them up to one rep max is that's the conjugate method the conjugate method is mainly used on the max effort day. The max effort day and this program happens once a week for the upper body and once a week for the lower body. And so we'll just take the upper body to start with basically what that has you doing is on the max effort day for upper body you're going to work up to a one rep max on a bench press on a variation of the bench press once per week.
And what that does is it keeps your body your your mind your your body and your mind trained to constantly be in a state where your condition and trained to strain against very, very heavy loads and movements that are similar but not exactly the bench press and what that does is it maintains.
It maintains your your peak strength pretty well. So if you're constantly working up to one rep max is in the close grip bench the incline bench and the floor press and the pin press and all these movements that are close to the bench press but not exactly your one rep max strength on the bench is not going to fall off that much so people will look at all these kind of weird movements and go well that's not specific to powerlifting.
The specificity is in the strain so it is very specific to powerlifting yes powerlifting is the bench press but is the bench press for a one rep max so that so the max effort day does train specificity but not exactly in the movement it's in the ability to strain against those movements that are similar to the bench but not exactly so it's using all the same musculature.
It's all you know peck shoulders and triceps and similar technique and that sort of thing and the loads will also be fairly similar not exact some movements might be a little heavier than your competition bench so might be a little bit lighter and that's all by design so you're maxing out you're going up to one rep max every week but the absolute load actually fluctuates weeks week to week.
And what we found in doing this certainly been my experience is that when you're doing that with a lifter when you're constantly rotating those movements around and the absolute load is shifting he's working up heavy maximally heavy every every week but he's not overtraining he's not if you did that on just a bench press if you win in every week and
you did a one rep max on your competition style bench press you might make gains for a couple of weeks maybe you might see an increase some lifters might most advanced guys would not and most people after a couple of weeks of that are actually going to regress they're going to back track and then on top of that they're going to wind up getting injured trying to repeat maximum effort movements and that same exact movement pattern week after week after week and so changing the movements on this to what what I've seen with all the guys that I do this so I'm going to do this.
And what I've seen with all the guys that I do this with is that not only do they not over train but they also don't get injured very often you would think that they would I was actually I think we talked about this last time I was worried about implementing this with a large group of people like I've done because I was a little concerned about the possibility of of of injury doing that with people but I just haven't seen it again I don't have you know graphs and charts and stuff I can point to to tell you the injury rates but just anecdotally looking at it I haven't seen it so you know I've been able to do that.
So I've been pleasantly surprised so that's kind of the the max effort day on the bench price is is working up to a variation like that yet so to me like so I work with a lot of athletes like youth athletes and I I look at the max effort method because I mean they train other athletes but the congee get programming like it's most you know notorious or famous for for powerlifting so it's it's a power lifters basically it's a power lifter sport specific work the max effort is the power
lifters form of football practice it's the it's training the actual sport but because that sport you can't train 90 per it's you can't play a football game you know every day of the week or even all you're going to be a long so a coach might you at practices are probably not maximal effort meaning you're just smashing into each other every single day I mean my high school coach did that which is why we're
horrible but you do variations like in football practice you do half of the line and you might do like you know some drills running the same play and the scout team isn't going that hard because you know it's a walk through on Thursday or whatever so it's it's the same idea as I so I look at it just like sport practice
and the other thing and maybe I'm jumping ahead here is you can you can almost and I would imagine I don't know if Louis does this but imagine that you could kind of create blocks like you can kind of merge block training in this congee get method in the sense like if you're leading up to a program you might do like for example let's say like your
squad training for example you might do you know maybe seated good mornings for a couple of weeks and then you might do standing good mornings and then you might do a box squat like so you can take the exercises and go from more general to more specific as the me gets closer all while training that ability to to push against you know one rep maximum loads yeah and I and I think along those lines the blocks are often going to be
created based on the individuals own weaknesses so you know a guy that has a great deadlift but a terrible squat so yeah we'll jump into the the lower body max effort day real quick and how people do it it's basically the same thing is and guys do this differently so for lower body we have the squat and the deadlift max effort day the way that I do it is that I just alternate every other week with a squat variation and then a deadlift
variation and that makes it really really easy to recover from while still going you know maximally you know because the loads are going to vary so much in the movement patterns are so different I do know some coaches that do a squat and a deadlift max effort movement on both days I've never done it that way but I do know that there are coaches that that program it that way so that's kind of leave that kind of up to the individual of how much of that very very heavy work you can
recover from but you know if you're not sure you just the easy way to do that is just alternate a squat variation and a deadlift variation you know every other week and work up to a one rep max on that and but that can be for sure you know individually kind of you know
organized into into blocks or just you know a specific program where it's not just you're not just kind of randomly picking movements but you know if you've got a great deadlift and a terrible squat you know relative to your deadlift then you know maybe two out of three of those
movements are going to be squat variation so you might do a you know a deep paused box squat on week one and then you know a front squat on week two and then you do your deadlift variation and then go back and do two more different squat movements and I also know coaches that don't necessarily always do a one rep max they may they may spend some time doing instead of a one rep max if they're further out from the from the meat or whatever they may do you know two to five rep maxes on certain
movements so you know they could say we're going to for the next few weeks we're going to work up to on our max effort day everything's going to be like a max triple you know that sort of thing and then as they get closer to the meat they might bring it down a little bit and do more singles so it kind of just depends on how you recover from this stuff I don't think it really matters if you're over 90% which is where you're you know your doubles and triples are going to be you know you're
probably specific enough to powerlifting where that's going to carry over doesn't necessarily have to be singles although it you know it can be very helpful for especially newer lifters to just get used to straining like that all the time and really training you know really training those max effort singles heavy because it is a skill if you're used to do and nothing but five rep sets or above you know your one
rep maxes will go down I know just you know for my own training the stuff that I personally do now is a lot of higher rep stuff you know and I'm stronger on a lot of that higher rep stuff you know eight to twelve eight you know ten to fifteen rep range now I've gotten a lot stronger on that but I can tell you my one rep maxes are not nearly what they used to be because I don't train on that heavy anymore so you know if you're not
regularly straining against those heavy lifts your your specific ability to lift heavy singles especially in competition is going to be diminished so it may in a lot of lifters to they get anxiety about lifting heavy you know if they're not used to doing one rep maxes on the special on the squat you know if they're not used to do in that all
the time they get they get a lot of anxiety over that and this the Westside program kind of beats that out of you you know you're doing it every single week it's on a different movement but you're used to you're used to walking out a way that you're maybe not a hundred percent sure you're going to be able to get up and it caused it helps you be able to
focus a little bit better help not just on getting the weight but you know holding your form together not not getting anxiety not panicking you know that sort of thing whenever you're because a lot of a lot of new lifters especially will you know you you can see it in their face you can see it in their body language that they they don't really like doing that in the best way to kind of
conquer that nervousness or anxiety is just to do more of it so it becomes you know say you Louis always said that he's like I don't we don't need to peak for me he's like if you want to do a meat we'll do one tomorrow you know we may not be at our all time best but we're not that far away from it you know they don't need a 12
week peaking phase in order to be able to pull or squat one rep maxes so that's kind of the that's kind of the benefit of that and that's that that's the so the conjugate method is that constant rotation of movements and I do think it's it is better to basically rotate out a different movement every
week you don't need for all these lifts you don't need to do every single variation imaginable I mean if you if you start doing the math and you start playing around with different specialty bars bands and chains different grips that you could potentially take on the bench press different
stances you could take on the the deadlift for instance you know sumo versus conventional versus snatch grip and then you do all of those against bands or do all those against chains do all of each of those on from a deficit or from pens I mean there's literally hundreds of
variations that you could potentially do and I think for most people they they definitely don't need all of those variations for one if you if you don't return to some of those maxes often enough you don't really have a good way of gauging progress of whether you're actually getting stronger so you know the way I have my programming set up and again there's nothing magical about this I have it kind of set up on like 12 week cycles so that's basically you know like 12 different
variations of the bench press when you think well that's a lot well it's not really because that's you know you're thinking it's a it's a bench press maybe an overhead press and incline press a close grip bench a floor press a pin press I think we do some I
have one week where I have them do a specialty bar of their choice you know whatever the guys have can do a Spoto press which is you know lower in the bar down and pausing it holding an isometrically about an inch or two off your chest for a few beats you know a paused bench versus a touch and go bench it's two different variations so you don't have to get crazy with the variety you can just pick you know you can if you want to but I think if you go you know two off the
walls you don't necessarily need a you know camber bar good morning again with chains and you know all that kind of stuff necessarily it looks cool but you don't necessarily need that if you don't have the equipment for it or if it just kind of bothers you to get that far away from the main lifts but they should be barbell based you know they they and they should generally be you can use specialty bar safety in fact specialty bars are a great tool for that just because they alter the
thing so much so you know there's specific enough would a so like with your barbell club doing doing this conjugate style do you do you find her just a guess like early on like when somebody's getting introduced to it you have like you rotate exercises every week so it might be more often what what west side I think prototypically does like a couple weeks at a time they might stick with one maybe two or three weeks before moving on do you
actually might be a better idea like especially early on to have kind of like what you're doing where every week you're switching because you might like I think individualization is tends to be born out of out of the programming that's going on so you'll find that oh man this person's really bad at this so I want you know you it might start to formulate other like the movements that you might keep in someone's training as they get more advanced
and you actually might be able to dial in the type of movement patterns that you'd want to start kind of sequencing through as somebody goes through like changing every week basically yeah so you yeah no it does because
that's that's one of the again and that's the max effort day in a way is a is a fantastic diagnostic tool because it tells you exactly where you're weak at and then that's where you get into organizing your assistance work so the assistance work is not random either it's literally it's attacking
weaknesses and Louis will tell you you know that that's where the magic really is it's not in all the crazy max effort movements that they do that's just there to get guys the practice to you know to learn how to strain against the the weights and to keep the loads and the movement patterns varied
but the volume is so low on those that there they have a limited ability to be real causative in terms of make you know if you do a and also you're not doing them very often so you have to really look at what is there what is their ability to for a single max effort
movement use once every 12 weeks to really have an impact on strengthening you know your squat bench or deadlift will it doesn't but what they do do is they put into focus what where is this lift or week at and so and then you set up an assistance training program that targets
those weaknesses and the assistance work can be some of it can be barbell based some of it can be more kind of what you think of assistance work on a more you know smaller isolation movements that kind of thing but it you know if you if you you know if you're doing a
close grip bench press let's say and you know some guys when they close grip bench it's very it's very close to what their regular bench press is some guys are way far off and if you're way far off on that it can be an indicator that this guy's got terribly weak
triceps that are not you know that are holding back his bench press and so you're going to maybe put together a you know an assistance training template that is going to be very tricep dominant versus maybe another guy that would be more you know kind of peck dominant
work or if you're doing if you're not used to shoulder pressing a lot you know your shoulder presses way way down relative to say your bench you know bringing up your shoulders is only going to help your bench press it's an indicator of weak points and the same thing can be said
you know if you can't lock out your deadlift if you constantly on your movements you're failing it you know the lock out point versus off the floor that's can be an indicator that you know this guy needs a lot more kind of glute lower back and upper back work to help that lock out versus
the guy that constantly you know can't budge the weight off the floor he may need more leg drive and he may actually benefit from you know more kind of direct leg training versus back training you know so those kind of things can give you insight on how to select your assistance movement
so that it's not just kind of random or you're not just following you know kind of an arbitrary template and so that's a that's a very good point about how to do that and it may be that you you take a movement out of let's say good mornings I don't really like using good mornings for max effort movement but some guys do but let's say you do a you know a good morning for a you're just terrible at it you know it for your for your for your max effort day you may pull good mornings
out of the rotation for a max effort movement and make that one of your assistance movements so that you have you get more exposure to it and train with more volume same with a close grip if you're really terrible at the close grip bench press might be a good idea instead of just training it
you know for a one rep max once every 12 weeks is pull it out of the rotation for max effort movements and make it you know a supplemental movement that you do for say three sets of five or something like that you know every week or every other week and so you take that
weakness and turn it into a strength and you keep doing that over and over again with different movements you know and then all of a sudden you've you have a lot less weaknesses and your total has gone way up and and I'll add to that too I don't want to go jump around too much for this
because we're not even there yet but like the repetition method which is kind of what you're talking about with the assistance movements like more volume is type training with different variations you're actually to like if you're thinking of the conjugate method like let's say
someone's new to west side and there I don't know they're doing a bench max effort movement close grip since we using that example and maybe it takes them like seven seven attempts basically to get up to a weight where they get that's they maxed out they've hit their max for the day
by doing those assistance movements and essentially increasing your endurance increasing your muscle mass increasing your gpp whatever we want to call it you're actually like the next time you go through close grip bench press again when you get back to that sort of part of a training cycle
you might be able to get 10 or 11 reps in before you reach that max effort and you know those last handful of reps are going to be above probably at least 85 probably above 90% so as you go along you'll actually be able to tolerate more practice in the sport of powerlifting so it kind of feeds itself as well for like the repetition feeds the max effort practice along with like building muscle mass bringing up weak points and what not as well.
Yeah that's a good point and you'll also get better at one of the things that a lot of guys when they start off doing the max effort day is they have a real hard time finding their weights the first time they're not used to maxing but the more that you do it the more the better you're going
to get it kind of quickly working up to you know quickly working up to those movements so that you won't have to take you know 8 billion attempts but if you do have to you know it's you don't want to gas out early from you know if you have to take more warm up attempts than you think you don't want to burn yourself out early I mean short change which you can get.
So yeah and that's you know the purpose of the repetition effort you know that's what we we talk to about the max effort the max effort method the dynamic effort method which we haven't talked about yet and the repetition effort method the repetition effort method that's all it just
means reps you know it just means it just I mean it's not you know it's traditional bodybuilding type training it's typically you know five to fifteen reps eight to twelve reps somewhere you know somewhere in that range it's kind of dependent on the exercise that you're doing but that's basically
you know that's basically what you're doing is you're attacking weaknesses with more bodybuilding type workout and your your workouts are going to flow big to small I mean that's how most workouts workouts go you know the anatomy of the actual workout can vary a bit but you're going to say
on the max effort bench day you know you're going to start with your max effort movement whatever that is for that day a barbell base movement you're going to work up to an all out one rep max and then you're going to maybe do like a back off set or two or you come down to like 90% and hit a double or triple with that and then you're done with that movement and then you usually going to like a supplemental movement which is going to be another kind of heavy-ish movement that kind of builds
builds your bench press so it could you know something like a dumbbell bench press you know you know works well there could be another barbell movement you know done for like three sets of five or something like that and then you're going to go you're going to kind of go down into working all those smaller muscle groups and it's basically a bodybuilding workout from there on out so you're starting the workout very very heavy kind of moving slow low volume and then you're going to go to like a
supplemental movement usually and then you're going to do anywhere from like two to four more movements that are basically building all of the constituent muscles that are active in the bench press so it's obviously it's your chest shoulders triceps but also lats upper back you know rear delts those sorts of things it's kind of there's a million different ways to organize it so I'm not going to get into that too much of like exactly what exercises you should do on what day
and that sort of thing because there's there literally is like a million permutations of it but that's basically the gist of it and to since we're still a little bit on the max effort method you see those memes I think it's I don't know it's like I Steven Crowder or something it's like him sitting
on a college campus and it's like change my mind right the I kind of feel that way about I think that five three one like Jim Wendler's five three one is essentially like that protocol is well you know it's it parallels the max effort method but it's for general strength so sure I mean
even if you look at this I mean the Texas method which a lot of our lifters are going to be the Texas method is essentially organized like the west side program it's just not using variations instead of using exercise variation it's using variation in rep range you know the Texas method that we
outlined you know in the book the you know you have your basically your volume day which is like kind of like your dynamic effort day we'll talk about the similarities between those two in a minute and then you have your Mac your intensity day and that's where you're you know you're
working up to like a you know usually I prefer a you know like a rotation of rep ranges so like you know week one you work up to a max triple week two it's a double week three is a single and then you start the rotation over again so the difference between the two is that the organization
of the training is very similar it's just that one the Texas method is using the same exercises over and over again and varying the rep ranges and the the conjugate or concurrent or what are west side program is basically keeping will say on the intensity day it's keeping the reps the same
singles but varying the movement all the time and so there's a and that's that's basically you know the if you look at the like the four day Texas method you know in practical programming it's very easy to turn that into the west side slash concurrent program very very easily the model is
more or less the same where you have of you know you're training each lift basically twice a week once with a volume stimulus and once with an intensity stimulus so one is just I guess you would call it simpler in terms of the exercise variety is very small but the rep range is
changing the other one is I guess a bit more complex it's using more a lot more variety and exercise so I think the text is the Texas method is also like like what you know when are you implementing the Texas method it's relatively early on in someone's training career to so like a five by five will be enough volume still like for someone who's relatively new compared to needing all those supplemental or accessory exercises that you'd see like a more advanced that they're doing in west side
like you're going to get you're going to gain hypertrophy you're still going to be good and that's where the all the accessory movement you can think of it is just a way to increase training volume but it's a better way to do it rather than you know let's say that you know doing the squat you know
or the bench let's say the bench you know five sets of five done once a week on the volume day you know plus and then you've let's say you do some singles on the intensity day you're going to reach a point where that is no longer enough training volume to elicit further you know adaptation
so you say well how do we add training volume to that well there's different schools of thought you could just keep adding sets you know you could do six sets of five and seven sets of five and eight sets of five or you know you could keep doing that but you have to keep bringing the intensity down
if you're going to do that plus it's extremely time consuming I would say that definitely has its limitations on doing something like that there's a diminishing returns on just adding set after set after set you know sub maximally like that you know or you can add more days which some guys do so instead of adding more sets to the heavy volume day you might add in a third benching day that's lighter so you start with
you know three sets of five at a lighter weight so you bump up the frequency so you're adding volume that way and that works for some less less well for others and adding the assistance movement is just another way to increase training volume
so you know instead of you so you may continue to bench for five sets of five instead of just adding bunch more sets to that you add in you know some dumbbell benching or some incline benching or you know whatever variations you want so that you're adding overall training volume but in a way that I think is more effective and also more sustainable that's the problem with a lot of these really high volume barbell only programs is that I just I don't see any evidence that they're super sustainable
over a long period of time for most people wind up burning out on them not everybody so but you know a lot of people wind up burning out on that approach if nothing else just from sheer fucking boredom Jesus Christ if you want to train that way I mean I don't know I think I'd rather be weak than transiting I've gone up like six sets of five I've done it on different programs that were put out there years ago
and I'm like this is no way but I have a thought on volume there was a big deal of like a pure or it was like a meta analysis like one of the systematic review kind of thing I think either way it was a study that came out that I saw a lot of people posting about on Instagram and like maybe a year or two ago probably two years ago now and it was basically saying you know there's a dose response but there's a lot of people
you know there's a dose response between I'm going to say this really specifically so there's a dose response between number of sets performed per week and hypertrophy which means that the more sets you perform the more hypertrophy you get there's obviously a point of diminishing return where you like kind of what we're talking about can't keep adding sets and think that that's going to keep you because if it was that simple everybody would be fucking jacked
because all you have to do is just keep you know if you say well the threshold for hypertrophy is 70% or you know whatever 60 you could keep you could just keep adding set after set after set you know a day after day I mean you could eventually condition yourself to do every lift four or five days a week you know for a bunch of a bunch of sub-maximal sets and everybody would be jacked but it doesn't work that way you know if it was that simple I think more you'd see a lot more people
following that approach but I think what you find is that one like you said the just the repeated movements over and over and over again and you know like you said as you add volume the intensity has to come down so the the the the sets have to be more and more sub-maximal the more that you add and you have to you have to get into well how much how much hypertrophy and I'm am I really going to gain from just doing a bunch of sets that are you know
a very if you want to use RPE a very low RPE you know where you've got and I just don't think that that's a super effective way to train long term and I think it's very fatiguing in most guys you know I can't tell you how many people have come to me you know and email me you know for coaching and I look at their programming and they're on one of these programs where they're just it's just crazy high volume and they're just not getting anything out of it except getting really
fucking tired and they're doing yeah and it's like you know if you want to just be stagnant in your training I can I can write you a program that'll keep you stagnant with a lot less work you know yeah so it's not that they necessarily yeah they are lasting too there's a tendency to think that they always necessarily need you know just more more more but it's it might you might need more but also different you know it's
you know if and especially guys that aren't big this is getting off the track here a little bit but if you're bench pressing and you're you know you're you don't have peck mass from doing lots of bench pressing you've got your bench stronger but you say you have a you know you don't have a lot of peck mass it may be that the bench press is actually not a very good hypertrophy stimulus for you based on how you bench
and a lot of powerlifting style bench pressing is not a good hypertrophy movement I mean it doesn't create a lot of tension on the pecs it doesn't take them through a full range of motion so doing more of a movement that already isn't working is not going to make you bigger and so I think a lot of people need to understand that it's like squatting too low bar squatting was like that for me you know in terms of like
quad development low bar squats never really I was I was joke I was all ass and adductors you know that's where I grew from from low bar squatting it is my quad development relative my squat was embarrassing and you know for me to say well just I'll just do more I'll just do more training volume on the low bar squat and hopefully my quads will start to grow I did need more work from for my quads but I needed
the work to be different so just doing more of the same that you know the competition lifts themselves aren't always a great stimulus for hypertrophy and so you know I would argue that you know a stiff leg deadlift L is a far better you know hypertrophy stimulus for the hamstrings than is a deadlift you know I would argue a high bar squat safety bar squat is a far better hypertrophy stimulus for the quads than the low bar squat so when you
start to analyze your body and why your weak on given lifts you know you start to look at you know and sometimes just the mirror test you know guys agonize over well what's weak you will look at yourself in the mirror man like you know if you've got if you have no triceps then your triceps are probably weak so build them up but doing more wide grip competitive bench pressing is not going to build your triceps up you know start
close gripping start doing weighted dips start doing more skull crushers and and treat them you know treat them as lifts we talked about that a little bit in the last episode as you know if you continue to train small lifts like they're or train small muscles like they're small muscles they will continue to be small muscles so you know Louis talks a lot about and I do too I beat my lifters over the head with this that you have
you can't just do triceps you can't just go in the gym and say I did some triceps today that you have to progress on effective movements so if you're going to whatever that is you know say a lying tricep extension with an easy curl bar you know if you start off with 50 pounds for sets of 10 you know over time that movement has to go up you know you've got to be doing a hundred pounds for sets of 10 you know or
sets of 20 like whatever but some metric has to increase like you have to you have to record progress on those lifts you have to keep track of it and you have to try to beat the weight that you're doing the number of reps you know the overall amount of work that you do on those movements or they're not going to carry over to hypertrophy and that's you know with the west side programming you know there should be as much attention
paid you know to how you perform and how you progress on a lot of the quote the special exercises or the the assistance work as on on the main lifts that's where the real driver of progress is going to come from and a lot of guys don't they ignore that part of it they they go in and they do the max effort lift and then they just kind of go half ass a couple of you know a handful of assistance movements and they don't get anywhere on it
and it's like well what you know when was the last time you PR your your your weighted dips or your tricep extensions or whatever and that's where with the block training that's where I don't like it is because to make significant progress on those types of movements you need more than a four to six or four to eight week block you need year round training on those movements and you'll have to rotate those movements out as well because you can't you know certain movements Romanian or line tricep
extensions for instance you can't necessarily do those every week they'll eat up your elbows so you might have to do them once every two or three weeks rotated in with cable press downs and overhead extensions or whatever but usually those smaller muscle groups you'll have to rotate around different movements even more one because it's hard to get like week to week linear progression out of them but also because a lot of
single joint stuff will eat you up same things like RDLs and things like that sometimes it can be really hard to do those movements hard can be hard to do them weekend and week out you know month after month it just repeating the same movement patterns kind of eat you up so you have to you have to rotate those movements out sometimes with other lifts and so all of that put together means that you you can't you can only you're not going to experience a
ton of you know a significant amount of muscle growth to change your total in a four to six week hypertrophy block you know done eight weeks out from a meat you've got to you're going to have to figure out a way to train those things year round for them to really carry over so I hope that's making sense for everybody because I feel like it's a really really important point for an advanced lifter to understand that over time
you have to go outside the box a little bit in order to move your numbers rather than just thinking that you can do it by adding sets at a lower intensity to a movement that's plateaued that's my opinion anyway.
And so two things one I had you in the back of my mind your voice I didn't just do triceps the other day I actually I started like I just have a bands I don't have a cable extension yet but I started bands and I'm a progressive because I'm like I can't just do triceps I got a train them so you coach me a little bit
last time that we talked. Yeah you got to take you got to take them to failure and that's where that's where this we haven't talked about it but this concurrent system you know you talk about the max effort movement the dynamic effort day and the repeated effort day you know it's it's it's where do we get maximal motor unit recruitment into a movement well two places well three three places theoretically
and where you know where are we going to get that that Maxwell recruitment of muscle fiber motor units is going to be at very heavy weight so you know you could argue is it 85% is it 90% you know I definitely
I think over 90% you're probably a maximal motor unit recruitment so that you're you're you're you're getting stimulation of of everything that needs to be stimulated to kind of dumb it down a little bit so that's where the max effort movement comes into play the other the other place is through
taking movements to failure so you know do in a set of if you're going to you know take a set of tricep extensions for 15 reps you know that that 15th rep needs to be basically that failure it means if you tried number 16 it's not going to go up now you don't want to train your squatting or deadlifts and your bench like that all the time because it gets very hard to recover from but your isolation movement your assistant stuff has to be trained that way for it to be effective if you
if you do 50 pound tricep extension and you're capable of 15 reps but you stop at 10 you know because you want to be able to do more sets you're losing out on where all your money is made all your money is going to be made in those last couple of reps that are approaching failure I really
I'm not going to get into it but I really like the kind of the effective reps model you know that I think it's beard leased the guy I kind of follow him a little bit I like his his explanation of it because I think I agree with it so it confirms my bias but I think it's he it's it's well thought out
structure and I think that it's true is that you know it's only those it on a set of 15 reps to failure you know the first 12 are just there to set up the last three you know and it's those it's those those are where the money is made and so you have to progress on those movements
taken a failure or they're not they're not super effective now if you're training at 90% or above or I'd say maybe even 85% or above you know you don't really need to take those to failure because from rep one you're already at maximal motor unit recruitment so you don't
have to train to failure nor should you it's too fatiguing so you know if you you can do you know double say doubles or triples at 85% which I think is a super effective way to do it you do a bunch of doubles it say you know 85% you're probably it maximum motor unit recruitment
from on all of those even though they're not none of them are really close to failure failure you're failure would be like five reps you know at 85% four or five reps for most people you know but you can't do very much volume that way but if you do a say a bunch of doubles you know
there whatever you're gonna you're gonna accumulate a lot of volume on those I think it's an effective way to train and this is kind of get it we're starting to get into what the dynamic effort model is which is doing a lighter weight a sub maximal weight but moving it with maximal
volitional speed and that's what that would you know theoretically put you at maximal motor unit recruitment and that's how the volume work on this concurrent program is done where we're not take we're not doing it's not for a lot of you guys you're used to doing like five sets of five you
know and every set is like a limit set and that's gonna over time that's gonna have some diminishing returns because you just can't train that way long term without burning out so this dynamic effort method you're able to train with a lighter weight but you're not just taking it easy you know you
know you may do you know on a bench press you may do 10 sets of three you know at 65% which if you just kind of ho hum move the weight from point A to point B it's not very stimulative but if you explode that fucker off your chest it's hard as you possibly can you know
across all 10 sets for three reps and every set is as fast as you can make it it's a whole you know all you've got to do is do it it's a whole different experience in terms of what you feel you're gonna feel the fatigue from that and that's because you're stimulating a greater percentage of
those motor units where if you just move a lightweight slowly it's of limited utility but a lightweight move quickly you know now you're now you're getting somewhere so that's how I think of like so go back to the sports example too like just trying to draw parallel there once again that's
that to me is sprint that sprinting for like a field it is field athlete right so and that's why sprints are fatiguing you know that's why you're you know if you you can't run how many max effort you know 40 yard dashes can you run before your your speed really drops off you know not that many
now you're not you're moving your body weight right but the contractions are so hard and so violent that it's you know you're you're at maximum motor unit recruitment during a high speed sprint and so you know I know a lot of coaches speed coaches and stuff that they the way they determine
training volume for a given workout is how much drop off do we have yes you know and they'll they'll say you know something along the lines of like from your first rep you know after your first full speed rep once we drop say two tenths of a second off then we're done because at that
point you're just training you're training slowly yes and so Charlie Francis I've brought him up a couple times and I and this is I actually think Charlie Francis he his programming for sprint training is basically it's it's basically concurrent training not quite the same as maybe conjugate
in the sense like I'm not and I'm sure he might have special exercises for sprinting I would I would guarantee that there were specific things that he would do with bands maybe sled stuff like that that were like special exercises but what he would do is like let's say somebody they start
dropping off after like six or seven reps let's say hundred meter sprints the flip flop days so if he sprinted on Monday Wednesday Friday Tuesday Thursday Saturday he would do tempo runs which is basically he's low at exactly yeah and but it built up work capacity and it was the exact reason
you said so basically if he kind of believe that somewhere in the 70 to 90 percent of someone's top speed if you're trying to get as fast as possible is no man's land so you're not training to be as fast as possible you're you're basically kind of training to be slower than than fast
and so he would say to his athletes like you know stay below 70 percent 60 70 percent and they were so highly trained in such data points you could probably accurately have them at that pace because then they just avoided this no man's land and built up their tolerance to handle more
sprinting so maybe three weeks later on that hundred meters sprint day now that guy who started with six or seven sprints on day one you know on day whatever 12 14 15 he's now could handle maybe nine or 10 sprints so now he's getting more high quality practice in and his volume of specific
practices increasing so he he can now maybe get faster because he's doing more very specific work over 90 percent and it's the same idea kind of brought that up before with the assistance exercises with Westside so like if you look like it's kind of interesting how these really like very well known
for good reason maybe arguably some of the greatest coaches in these sports are kind of converging on the same principles which was really fascinating to me when I when I read about it kind of kind of independently arriving and that's usually it's funny that's that's usually when I know that
my whatever I think I discovered on my own or whatever because as coaches you know when you work by yourself you kind of you know you think you have some kind of brilliant discovery or whatever and you know when you really know that you're kind of on the right track when you talk to some other
coach that maybe you don't communicate with all the time and you kind of independently arrived at the same you know at the same conclusion and you're both putting you know you're both putting stuff into practice every day and then two coaches like that arrive or multiple coaches arrive at
the similar conclusions and you know that you're okay you're potentially on to something and that's you know what you're talking about like say the tempo runs in between to build up the work capacity so that you're able to eventually do instead of when we talk about that drop off of two tenths
of a second you know it would be better if that happened after 10 sprints than if it happened after four yep right because in your and that's the same thing like with the sled dragging with west side that's just an example they do other stuff too but the sled dragging for the work capacity
what that does is it's it's trying to increase the capacity for you to do more volume at a higher percentage of a 1 rat max you know for more sets potentially with less rest in between without slowing down and that's you know when I coach people to do dynamic effort training you know it's
always difficult to know what what exact percentage should we be at because we don't really know should you be at exactly 60% or 70 or 80 you know it kind of varies with the individual and I'll have some thoughts on that maybe on the next episode that we do in terms of how to set your percentages
and all that but whatever you're whatever you're working at really one of my rules of thumb is that the bar speed should not really slow down from the first set to the last so if you're doing 10 triples on the bench or you're doing 12 doubles on the squad or 15 singles on the deadlift or whatever
you're going to do my rule of thumb on that is I really like I don't like to see a slowdown in bar speed towards the end of the workout and if that's happening I know that we're potentially either not taking enough rest and you don't really take a lot of rest on dynamic effort but
your your loads are too heavy or you're just not conditioned enough to maintain the output so you want to see in in best case scenarios where you know that you're kind of on the right track is that and a lot of lifts are going to tell you this they actually get faster you know every you know
especially like after that halfway point you know if you're doing 12 doubles you know that that those doubles at their heart and you have to work for it but you know maybe sets 9 10 and 11 and 12 are actually the fastest you know and so that's that's kind of where I like to see my guys
at is actually sometimes picking up speed on the dynamic effort sets rather than losing speed but you have to be in shape enough to do that that's the that's the the only thing you have to be in shape enough to train you have to have the work capacity to to do that at a high enough
percentage and guys that a lot of times these dynamic effort workouts on paper they look easy but then when you have them get under the bar and do it you know if you have somebody get under the bar and do you know 10 doubles at 80 percent well a double at 80 percent is not that hard
but a double at 80 percent moved as fast as you can move it and done on like 60 seconds of rest before the next one you do 10 of those I mean you I mean guys that have done it the first time you do it there they they can't believe how exhausted they are and it's a different type of
exhausted it's kind of unique to that particular experience but you know upon doing it you can kind of tell this is a this is a little bit different stimulus than what I'm used to you know and a lot of guys see big gains on their on their lips when they first started just because the the novelty of
that type of training is so different if they're used to grinding out you know heavy sets of five you know for their volume stimulus and then they switched to this different type of training program and there a lot of guys fall in love with the fact that it doesn't take as long either
you know you don't it doesn't require full rest time in between in fact you kind of want to keep it short and you're so you're getting a lot of work a lot of high quality work done in a fairly short period of time if you're conditioned enough to handle it so that's kind of that's kind of
the breakdown of the concurrent model I know we kind of jumped around a little bit all over the place but I hope that everybody kind of got a sense of kind of the broad overview we're going to do a couple more episodes on this to kind of get into a little bit more more of the nuts and bolts
on like the max effort days and the dynamic effort days and maybe some some specific things to think about I think we'll probably do another episode on this but that's that's basically the birds I view of it is figuring out a way to train your volume work your high intensity work your
work capacity work your hypertrophy kind of keeping all of those within a given week and not overtraining and not burning out and not regressing too far on any one of those qualities or adaptation so that you're trying to have to make up ground at some other point during the year for the for
the qualities that you lost so that's why we said in the earlier episode that it's kind of the perfect program again nothing is perfect in practice but on paper it solves a whole lot of problems so we'll talk about I definitely want to get into some of the I don't like to sound like a
fanboy of of any one particular program because having implemented these programs with a lot of people I'm certainly aware of the pitfalls that happen there are some things that you can do wrong and there are you know there are people where the conjugate system concurrent system whatever you
want to call it doesn't work as well and so we're going to talk about you know maybe on the next episode who's a good candidate for for this program certain certain pitfalls to avoid you know that can kind of that can kind of derail you and then also getting a little bit more into the
nuts and bolts maybe of how to put some of these workouts together so that it makes a little bit more sense so anything to add before we cut it off for the day yeah I'd like to maybe next time to it kind of explain how like how like five three one not necessarily that's like my favorite
program or anything but the principles of it because when there was such a Westside guy it's it's actually the same exact principles that Westside uses so I always say I'm like five three one is Westside for general strength like general health and fitness is so maybe dig into that
because then maybe they'll give people like a better understanding like underneath what's going on along with the nuts and bolts of like yeah that's a good idea we'll do that because five three one is so simple so easy to understand it's kind of like Texas method in that way it's it's so simple
to kind of understand it's a good way to kind of illustrate what's happening but yeah there's definitely similarities in there with the three-week wave the kind of the building of the volume and then cycling back yeah kind of the building of the intensity yeah split sprint work sled
work the max effort which would be the five three one cycle and then the like if you look at his his examples templates it's like boring but big or a lot of tips a lot of accessory type stuff so it's I think his roots are you know in Westside and they just kind of come out into the general world
basically yeah so well yeah we'll definitely we'll do that next time for sure um okay I think we'll leave it for there that's that's an hour on all this stuff so hopefully everybody is super confused and more more in doubt of what the hell we're even talking about than they were before they joined
us and that'll give them reason to tune in next time so we can clarify it all and hopefully get you all on the right track well that's why we did this though just to talk shop so hopefully it's interesting but we can click that's right next time too yeah so all right everybody I appreciate it thanks for listening talk to you next time