ExRx.net

Found this article, nothing new, but an interesting perspective on assistance lifts for squat, bench and deadlifts from eight different strength coaches.

http://www.wannabebig.com/training/the- ... -deadlift/

I thought that it was pretty interesting how diverse the views of the 8 coaches were!

I'm not surprised. It's going to be a mix of:

- what worked for them (which depends on their personal structure, technique, and weak points)
and
- what worked for their clients (which will be heavily informed by the first one)

If you are weak at the DL and do some good mornings along with your DLs and your DL goes up, you'll recommend GMs. If you get clients and they're weak in the DL so you have them do GMs and DLs and their DL goes up, hey, GMs are the bomb! Everyone should do them!

But maybe you were just weak in the lower back and the GMs helped, and your clients might have gotten stronger in the DL just from doing DLs, but you'll credit the GMs.

I think that's why, say, Jim Wendler relates to people giving him dozens of grip-and-lockout exercises to improve his DL lockout, and then he found Kroc Rows always correlated with an increase in his deadlift. I suspect that's the case in most situations, and results in the lack of conformity in recommendations.

BTW, great article, thanks for the link PK.

Peter, I think you are exactly right. Several of them are frank about "this has worked for me" in their remarks. I'm going to re-read the article and try to tabulate the results into an easy comparison. Or something. Tomorrow. Maybe.

I bookmarked the link. Thanks for the heads up.

Doc, I expect you'll get a lot of overlap, but I'm not sure what it'll tell you. I'm curious to see what you get.

I expect a lot of glute, hamstring, grip, abs, and lower back work, plus "work on your damn technique" too. :D

Summary:

Squat:

Front sq (2)
Hip thrust (2)
GHR (2)
Single leg (2)
Ab wheel (2)
Just squat (shouldn't count)
Varied stance squats
Squat with 3 sec pause
Goblet squats
Rack squat
Weighted prisoner jump squats
Speed squat with chains or bands
Good morning
Movement drills
Back extensions

Bench:

Board press (2)
Rack press (pin press) (2)
High-rep DB bench (2)
Push press (2)
Close-grip bench
Close-grip press
Seated press
Incline press
Weighted plyo pushup
Bottom pause bench
Press
DB press
Triceps work
Low-weight technique work
DB floor press
Rack deadlift or inverted row
Suspended pushup

Deadlift:

Deficit DL (3)
Rack pulls (2)
GHR (2)
Kettle bell swings (2)
Back raise/Goodmorning (GM got 2 votes)
Hanging static holds
Front squat iso-hold
Heavy eccentric DL
Band assisted pulls
Romanian DL
Snatch-grip DL
Band or chain speed pulls
DB single-leg work
Suitcase DL or iso holds
DB rows

Could enhance the thread by adding what has worked for people here?

I could really go on forever, and tend to overthink exactly how you quantify things. I feel there's a lot of things that help "indirectly", too.

Squat: In no particular order

-Varied stance squats.
-Single leg stuff
-Horizontal rowing
-Sumo Deadlifts with squat stance
-Speed Box Squats
-Front Squats I felt helped me big time up to 380-40-ish. Whenever i got stronger on them, my back squat went up. Recently that's not been the case, though.

Deadlift:
-Squats. I'm a natural deadlifter. When my squat goes up, my DL goes up.
-Sumo DL's. I think conventional pullers are back dominant and the sumo's force the hips and legs to do more work. Improve your sumo and conventional will go up.
-Deficit variations (going to include snatch grip DL's here), and they probably help for the same reason as above (more legs/hips, due to lower hip position).
-Speed work.
-GHRs (I can only do the "natural" version)
-Single leg DL variations
-Rack pulls. I felt rack pulls really helped me at the start and were a staple in my programs, but I think the stronger you get the less they carryover.

Bench:
I could brainstorm about what's helped my bench and what hasn't for ages. I'll try and keep it brief.... First, I've only been able to bench to my chest comfortably, without any pain, for about a year. Before that, I done it in 2 week bouts, at the most. Any more than that and I would be in pain for a few days. Therefore, by default, i've used a lot of partial/board work when it comes to benching. I can say that my bench regressed a little on 5-3-1, but this could also be down to a lifestyle change. When I went on 5-3-1, I started working 70-80 hours per week. This was part of the reason I went on it. I also trained bench last in the week, so it got the least priority.

-Speed bench.
-Floor press. I can't floor press as much as I can bench, and I suspect it's the absence of leg drive, plus, a floor press sits the bar pretty close to my chest.
-board pressing, particularly 1-3boards.
-Technique, technique, and more technique.
-Technique
-band resisted push ups.
-Lots and lots of rows and pull/chinups.


Notes:

There's various obvious things that i've not included either because they never done much for me or i've not gave them an honest shot yet. There are a few things i'm trying at the moment that I can't judge yet.

I never put any "core" stuff because it's too difficult to quantify, and I could go on about why I think it may or may not have helped forever. But I do quite alot. For me, "core" work is - Anti extension, anti flexion, anti rotation. I think Anti extension (rollouts) in particular has good direct carryover, but I cover all of them. I don't do situps or crunches, or atleast, I haven't for about 3-4 years, at least.

That was far longer than I thought it would be. I type too fast. However it was nice review of my own training for me, and has put things in perspective a little, actually

KPj

The problem with this is that it's very difficult to test. You'd have to have test groups and control groups for every exercise. Something like control group squats 3 days per week, test group squats 2 days and does the assistance exercise 1 day.

It may well change at different levels of strength and experience. It will be different for every nuance of body type. I think we're all left with "here's a list of things to try, and then see how you feel about them."

When a lift goes up you never really know whether you're finally seeing the result of working hard at that lift for weeks, or the result of whatever else you've been doing, or even other factors in your life. We've all heard stories about someone who stops doing a given lift, only doing assistance lifts, then after months tests the lift again and finding that it has gone up dramatically. Of course whatever else he has been doing is immediately adopted by all his friends.

Proper,

There is some good information in the article. Some of the information from Nick Tumminello appears to be Powerlifting 102. I question Nick's expertise in this area.

Eric Cressey is a powerlifter who has the book smart and first hand experience to draw from. Cressey is definitely an authority in this area.

A Different View On Auxiliary Exercises.

I view auxiliary exercises as a bit different that most.

I see using the powerlifts as a means of developing strength for that particular lifts more as a negative than a positive.

The key to developing strength for your competition squat, bench press and deadlift is through auxiliary exercises.

I am not alone in my view on this. Louie Simmons' West Side Training is built the use of auxiliary exercises for developing strength...NOT the powerlifts themselves.

Dr Tom McLaughlin (former powerlifter and PhD in exercise biomechanics) also promotes the use of auxiliary exercises as a mean of increasing strength for the powerlifts...NOT the powerlifts themselves.

McLaughlin's Bench Press More Now provide training information of how to use auxiliary exercises to increase strength and how to train the powerlifts for technique. You can get the book for about $20 at CrainsMuscleWorld.com

Let's examine some of history and reasoning for this.

Tradition Method

The traditional method is to use each of competition lifts as a training exercise. That means to increase you squat, you squat. To increase your bench press, you bench press. And to increase you deadlift, you deadlift.

The tradition method used by many was pretty much cut into stone until the early 1980s. That is when thing began to change.

A New Approach

In the early 1980s, Lou Simmons began to push the West Side Training Method. That method pretty much eliminated performing heavy sets of reps in the powerlifts: Squat, Bench Press and Deadlift.

Instead, the Squat, Bench Press and Deadlift training loads were dropped to 60% of 1 Repetition Max.

Each of the powerlifts were trained for Speed, NOT Strength!
Strength Training of each lift was developed by using Auxiliary Movements that were closely related to each of the powerlifts.
As an example, Powerlifting Squats were replaced with High Bar Squats, Zercher Squats, Front Squats, Belt Squats, etc.

Auxiliary Exercises were/are considered "Disposable". Disposable meaning you can train them into the ground in a training cycle and throw them away.

In your next cycle, you then use another Auxiliary Exercise that is similar in nature.

Thus, you could burn through High Bar Squats in one cycle and then in the next cycle use Zercher Squats.

One of the reasons for this was/is to insure that you don't overtrain any of the powerlifts.

However, this method of training also provides another benefit!

"Practice DOESN'T Make Perfect, Perfect Practice Make Perfect."
Vince Lombardi

One of the problems in using the powerlifts to increase strength is that in an all out effort for the last rep, the focus of every lifter is to push or pull the weight up...NO matter how you do it.

When this occurs, you are practicing bad technique. In fact, you are burning it into your "Mother Board"...you central nervous system.
As the saying goes, "Garbage in, garbage out. That meaning once you've ingrained bad technique into your "Mother Board", getting it out requires even more work.

Thus, another benefit to the West Side Method is that it allows you to develop better technique. The lighter loads allow you to increases power as well as focus on performing your squat, bench press and deadlift with proper technique.

The Down Side of West Side For Developing Technique

While the use of light loads with West Side will improve your technique, it does not completely translate to good technique with maximum loads.
One of the problems is the muscles fire differently when different load are used. The firing sequence/muscle involvement is not the same for load of 60% of 1 Repetition Max vs 100% of 1 Repetition Max.

You Lift Like You Train

To effectively elicit the best technique, you need to use training loads in each of the powerlfts that are close to you competition max. However, you want to make sure that in doing so that you do not overtrain your competition lifts.

To do that you need to perform only 1-2 repetitions per set. The focus of each rep is on technique, NOT weight.

At any point that you technique falls apart, STOP.

Summary:

1) The best Auxilary Exercises are those that are similar in nature to the powerlifts.

2) Use the Auxilary Exercises to increase strength.

3) Train the Powerlifts with Lighter Loads (60% or less) for power and technique

4) To develop technique use loads close to your competition max for 1-2 reps. Once you technique falls apart, STOP.

Bench Press Example

If your best competition bench press is 300 lbs. Start off performing singles in your bench press with 270 lbs. Perform 270 X 1 rep X 5-10 sets.

The next week, increase it. Perform 275 X 1 rep X 5-10 sets.

Keep increasing the weight each week.

How Many Sets?

The determining how many sets of singles to perform is TECHNIQUE.

If your technique falls apart in the 6th set, STOP! Don't do a 7th set. Do NOT perform any more sets, period. Go home or perform some auxiliary exercises.

Kenny Croxdale

It's mostly annoying when a newbie starts resurrecting old threads, especially without anything significant to add to the old discussion.

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I see myself in you.

Whoa. What a thread. It reminds me of the reasons why I spent so much time lurking and googling this forum in the first place.

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