Christian Thibaudeau, I have been following your Best Damn Workout Plan for Natural Lifters and it is going extremely well for me. I overall feel better on it, my muscles are holding pumps, and Ive actually been making some gains in areas that I have long term healing injuries.
My issue is that I however highly miss doing dynamic speed work, I have been a huge fan in the past of doing speed work with bands westside style and some olympic lifts. ( I know this is not a strength specific program, and I do not mean to deconstruct your program) I am merely trying to make some adaptations to it to fit my personal needs. Plus I always feel refreshed after speed work and feel like a badass doing it, its a big mental happiness workout for me.
So can you tell me how you feel would be the most effective way to add dynamic work to this program. Could I take one of the push days and do banded squats and bench on that day and then continue with your workout, or should I do only dynamic work that day and then do the program for those body parts again after a day of rest? If i made that change would I benefit in doing deadlifts and cleans on the leg push day as well?
Or maybe should I do just a few sets of dynamic work each workout before the main program lifts?
Additionally and more specifically if I wanted to add the dynamic work and pick one movement to concentrate on strength say deadlift? how would I set up the deadlift training days as the reps and sets would likely change as well since it would be power oriented for that movement.
Thank you for this program, advice, and all your articles.
What you could do is use a Westside-style split but…
With two additional “bodybuilding-only workouts”
and
Doing all your assistance work like my original plan recommends
For example:
DAY 1 - Upper body max effort (or another for of heavy lifting) on one lift + upper body assistance using the best damn approach
DAY 2 - Lower body bodybuilding only work (low volume of course)
DAY 3 - Upper body dynamic effort on bench + upper body assistance using the best damn approach
DAY 4 - Lower body dynamic effort on squat + lower body assistance using the best damn approach
DAY 5 - Upper body bodybuilding work only (low volume of course)
DAY 6 - Lower body max effort (or another type of heavy lifting) on one exercise + assistance using best damn approach
DAY 7- OFF
- All the assistance work is done utilizing the best damn approach (2-3 gradually heavier warm ups, 1 all out set) and the methods recommended in the original program
Fantastic sir, thank you for the detailed response. Your methods are greatly helping to improve my performance and change my physique to where it used to be thus far. I am eager to incorporate these new tactics.
Thanks again for taking the time out of your day to assist us
P.S. have you had anyone try this specific protocol? If not Ill provide you with my progress in a month or two if you would like.
I’m not a huge proponent of the dynamic effort … it works REALLY well with certain people based on their neuro profile, but it’s not mine and not that of most of the people I work with. So it is not something I tried (please keep me posted). But the variation with one heavy lift, I’ve used with clients.
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Christian just wanted to let you know that I have used this protocol since this posting and it has worked substantially well. I was actually able to work problem muscle groups that had tears from about a year ago. For the first time I increased leg curl strength in a year. Bench press up to acceptable levels for me 225x23, incline 315, front squat 355, hex dead 565… Thats all with a healing hamstring tendon and healing minor pec tear. Just wanted to give you a shout out and let you know of the progress I had with this program.
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