Is Switching Exercises Really that Necessary?

Bigger Stronger Leaner Powerlifting & Strength Sports
1

…Well, first off, I just wanna say that I have taken Louie Simmons’ words as gold. I respect the guy and he knows alot about what he does… I follow what he says, such as not staying with the same Max Effort exercise for more than 3 weeks…

The main concept of the Sheiko training system on the other hand is the exact opposite of Westside’s… Train the competitive lifts so frequently that… blah blah, synaptic facilitation, greasing the groove blah blah… I was scanning powerliftingwatch.com one time and there’s some dude who posted that most of the lifters in IPF, which for me, is the gold standard of all PL feds, uses Sheiko instead of westside…

At first, I have kept convincing myself, “Screw Boris Sheiko, Louie knows his shit better than that guy! Communists are more superior than Bulgarians!”… At first, I believed him, but time passed by, I’ve kept googling googling and googling, and I have yet to hear ONE elite COMMUNIST weightlifter who actually uses the method’s that Louie described. Even these communists, the ones who supposedly had a different training system than the bulgarians, did THE SAME TRAINING CONCEPTS!! Leonid Taranenko is a perfect example. In an interview at dynamic-eleiko.com, he stated that he cannot imagine anyone becoming an elite weightlifter without having the capacity to train atleast 6 days a week… That right there, is a communist speaking…

Did you know that Boris Sheiko, the one who invented the Sheiko training system is a communist too? You didn’t? Well, atleast you know now… Since he is a russian, isn’t he supposed to be teaching people how to regulate band tension???

Heck, even chinese lifters have more than one training session a week…

…And some of you may argue that “Hey, what the fuck is this TYPE2B guy talking about?! Louie adapted some russian training whatnot and used it for powerlifting! You can’t compare PL to WL! It’s just not cool!”. Think again. Please read this article: http://www.marunde-muscle.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-811.html

Louie is confident enough to assume that he can train American weightlifters… Please keep in mind that, NONE of his guineau pigs are capable of competing with the russians, bulgarians, and pretty much almost any elite lifter in the eastern bloc countries even with the squat. Guys like Taranenko, Zakharevitch, squats 800+ pounds raw, ATG. Here’s an interview with Taranenko: http://www.dynamic-eleiko.com/sportivny/library/news/nv005.html

“The back squat is the most important strength exercise. I usually squat everyday, sometimes more than once a day. My best back squat is 837 pounds. But this is with a two second pause at the bottom.”
-Leonid Taranenko

Here’s what the usual interview with a westside trainee.

“Uhhh, yeah, I squat a 1000 pounds. I do it deep. My feet are a million miles apart whenever I’m squattin’ and the bar position is located on my ass. It’s for leverage purposes. I’m wearing this quadruple ply titanzer ninja katana and has a 900 pound carryover to my raw squat. The secret is to fart everytime you box squat so that you train your CNS to give you a an extra boost when going up. It works like a rocket you see, without the fire. In order for you to take full advantage of this technique, you gotta learn how to believe in the fire. Imagine it’s there… Of course, you have to make sure that your center of gravity is balanced. Your hips will go up early if you just fart. You have to puke to…”

I may be wrong with this, and please correct me if I am… Didn’t Dan John raise his bench press from 180 pounds to 300 pounds with the “greasing the groove” concept? It’s been used by weightlifters, and so did Dahn John… Also, another russian dude trains his bench press with 70 heavy sets a week, and it seems to work for him cause he’s the Soviet Union’s bench press record holder…

Please forgive me for everything…

Oh, and here’s the real question… Is switching exercises on a regular basis necessary when it comes to doing Bill Starr type routines? Thank you.

2

No.

3

[quote]coffee wrote:
No.[/quote]

4

Either your high school history teacher has failed you or you are an idiot.

5

After recovering from the massive head trauma acquired from reading that post I decided to do some investigating:

and

take a gander at those. Did you ever stop to think that both ways could work? Maybe its freaking possible that if you train like a powerlifter and lift only 4-5 times a week you can get strong as shit and squat 1000 for a double to good depth in a shitty old titan suit and a belt and wraps? Maybe its also possible to high bar squat over 800 raw if you train like an olympic lifter? Does it really matter which way you train when they both work?

Also, when you train for the olympics and all your life consists of is training (think china), then you have what is known as “all the time in the world.” When you hold down a job and have a crappy commute like some top powerlifters do, you cant train everyday of the week or for multiple times in the day (think matt kroc). Both ways work. Both ways make you strong. Go waste your time training instead of posting these bullshit threads. Now I’m gonna go grease my groove if you know what I’m sezzin.

6


Wow, holy fucking shit. How can you expect to be taken seriously, when you can’t even formulate a comprehensible paragraph? Your inability to properly articulate your thoughts is a pretty sure sign that you do not understand what you’re talking about or what you read.

In short, boobs!

7

You know…you seem to have the impression that the average WSB trainee is some sort of bumbling idiot, when in fact, you will rarely find someone succeeding with that training style that is neither very smart about what they are doing or coached by someone who is.

Speaking of the Bulgarians…if you had any clue about what you were talking about, you would realize that a large part of what they are doing at WSB is influenced by the Bulgarians.

Shieko, etc. use a high volume of the competition lifts to raise SPP. WSB uses a variety of exercises to raise GPP…the thing is…even WS uses a higher volume of competition lifts as competition draws nearer, as this is necessary in order to facilitate proper motor learning. They also perform the competition lifts weekly on DE day, when form is emphasized very highly and the advent of heavy band tension has led to dynamic squat day moving closer to the realm of the 80-90% range in various states of gear year round. Some people are calling this the “SE” method and it somewhat resembles what used to be the circa-max phase (which itself has changed since Louie first wrote about it).

By in large, powerlifting is less dependent on SPP than weightlifting due to the lesser technical demand of the lifts. Lifters spend years learning and practicing their snatch, but once someone can squat, they should have very little trouble “remembering” how to do it correctly.

I don’t know where you got the notion that the Russians or ANYONE in weightlifting was using accommodating resistance in any large amount since bands and chains were added by Louie long after he had adapted the conjugated system used by the Dynamo Barbell Club in Russia to powerlifting.

If I remember correctly, in the conjugate model used by the DBB in Russia, there were only 6 max effort movement rotated through, all of which had a high degree of specificity to the lifts themselves (hang and power variants).

None of this really matters for you though, since you barely squat your bodyweight.

As for your question, you need to first stop drinking everyone’s kool aid and work on understand the basic how and why’s behind each of these different systems (which, coincidentally, ALL work very well). Max effort exercises are rotated on a regular basis in the WSB system because it is unlikely that anyone beyond a beginning trainee will continue to make strength gains after 1-3 weeks of working above 90% of a true 1RM on a lift. Since WSB performs a relatively low volume of the actual competition lifts outside of meet prep, this regular switching allows for an almost unlimited supply of methods by which to build general strength. Since you aren’t maxing out every week with the program you mentioned, you don’t need to rotate. Hell, you’re green enough that you could probably get away with maxing weekly for 5-8 weeks and still get stronger.

Now, stop posting.

8

Spend more time lifting and less time posting.

9

they rotate the lifts in WSB to limit accommodation and so they dont fry they’re CNS.
i rotate every week because i like variety :slight_smile:

10

[quote]Stronghold wrote:
You know…you seem to have the impression that the average WSB trainee is some sort of bumbling idiot, when in fact, you will rarely find someone succeeding with that training style that is neither very smart about what they are doing or coached by someone who is.

Speaking of the Bulgarians…if you had any clue about what you were talking about, you would realize that a large part of what they are doing at WSB is influenced by the Bulgarians.

Shieko, etc. use a high volume of the competition lifts to raise SPP. WSB uses a variety of exercises to raise GPP…the thing is…even WS uses a higher volume of competition lifts as competition draws nearer, as this is necessary in order to facilitate proper motor learning. They also perform the competition lifts weekly on DE day, when form is emphasized very highly and the advent of heavy band tension has led to dynamic squat day moving closer to the realm of the 80-90% range in various states of gear year round. Some people are calling this the “SE” method and it somewhat resembles what used to be the circa-max phase (which itself has changed since Louie first wrote about it).

By in large, powerlifting is less dependent on SPP than weightlifting due to the lesser technical demand of the lifts. Lifters spend years learning and practicing their snatch, but once someone can squat, they should have very little trouble “remembering” how to do it correctly.

I don’t know where you got the notion that the Russians or ANYONE in weightlifting was using accommodating resistance in any large amount since bands and chains were added by Louie long after he had adapted the conjugated system used by the Dynamo Barbell Club in Russia to powerlifting.

If I remember correctly, in the conjugate model used by the DBB in Russia, there were only 6 max effort movement rotated through, all of which had a high degree of specificity to the lifts themselves (hang and power variants).

None of this really matters for you though, since you barely squat your bodyweight.

As for your question, you need to first stop drinking everyone’s kool aid and work on understand the basic how and why’s behind each of these different systems (which, coincidentally, ALL work very well). Max effort exercises are rotated on a regular basis in the WSB system because it is unlikely that anyone beyond a beginning trainee will continue to make strength gains after 1-3 weeks of working above 90% of a true 1RM on a lift. Since WSB performs a relatively low volume of the actual competition lifts outside of meet prep, this regular switching allows for an almost unlimited supply of methods by which to build general strength. Since you aren’t maxing out every week with the program you mentioned, you don’t need to rotate. Hell, you’re green enough that you could probably get away with maxing weekly for 5-8 weeks and still get stronger.

Now, stop posting.[/quote]

Please don’t mind if I make a few corrections… Louie Simmons does not think that the Bulgarian training system is that superior to what he is using. And of course, since he doesn’t believe in it, he doesn’t use it! And one more thing, these russians actually had up to 20+ variations of the olympic lifts… I have no clue how many they used as a max effort movement.

Aside from that, bravo.

11

[quote]TYPE2B wrote:
Please don’t mind if I make a few corrections… Louie Simmons does not think that the Bulgarian training system is that superior to what he is using. And of course, since he doesn’t believe in it, he doesn’t use it! And one more thing, these russians actually had up to 20+ variations of the olympic lifts… I have no clue how many they used as a max effort movement.

Aside from that, bravo.[/quote]

You are so far off that its not even funny. Of course, if you think that Louie doesn’t draw any ideas from the Bulgarians, I’ll be sure to ask him about that next time I’m up north.

Where do you think the max effort method came from? That certainly can’t be Bulgarian can it? Of course not, because Louie believes in lots of exercises and the Bulgarians don’t, so they obviously can’t share any other commonalities…

“We train a lot like the Bulgarians…”-Louie Simmons, Westside Squat DVD 2004 (Revised)

The Russians didn’t use a maximal effort method, but rather heavy, repeated efforts and volume progressions to build work capacity. What does that sound like to you?

Not to mention that the addition of large amounts of band tension has led to dynamic squat day at WSB actually be performed at much higher %'s (when band tension is included) than the original 50-60% that Simmons wrote about. Working around or well above 90% during every training session…who does that sound like?

There have been some interesting discussions of this on this board in the past year, but I’m not going to link you because you already have more information than you can intelligently process at this point.

I guarantee you that if you keep worrying about all of this shit, in a years time, you will be no stronger. This all applies to ELITE athletes.

You don’t need concurrent or conjugate periodization yet, simple progressive overload will be more than adequate for you. I recommend buying something basic like Starting Strength as an ebook and disconnecting your internet. Then, the next time you feel like clusterfucking on your computer, you can stare at that until you remember that NONE of this fancy shit applies to a kid who can’t squat 1.5x his bodyweight yet.

12

[quote]Stronghold wrote:
TYPE2B wrote:
Please don’t mind if I make a few corrections… Louie Simmons does not think that the Bulgarian training system is that superior to what he is using. And of course, since he doesn’t believe in it, he doesn’t use it! And one more thing, these russians actually had up to 20+ variations of the olympic lifts… I have no clue how many they used as a max effort movement.

Aside from that, bravo.

You are so far off that its not even funny. Of course, if you think that Louie doesn’t draw any ideas from the Bulgarians, I’ll be sure to ask him about that next time I’m up north.

Where do you think the max effort method came from? That certainly can’t be Bulgarian can it? Of course not, because Louie believes in lots of exercises and the Bulgarians don’t, so they obviously can’t share any other commonalities…

“We train a lot like the Bulgarians…”-Louie Simmons, Westside Squat DVD 2004 (Revised)

The Russians didn’t use a maximal effort method, but rather heavy, repeated efforts and volume progressions to build work capacity. What does that sound like to you?

There have been some interesting discussions of this on this board in the past year, but I’m not going to link you because you already have more information than you can intelligently process at this point.

I guarantee you that if you keep worrying about all of this shit, in a years time, you will be no stronger. This all applies to ELITE athletes.

You don’t need concurrent or conjugate periodization yet, simple progressive overload will be more than adequate for you. I recommend buying something basic like Starting Strength as an ebook and disconnecting your internet. Then, the next time you feel like clusterfucking on your computer, you can stare at that until you remember that NONE of this fancy shit applies to a kid who can’t squat 1.5x his bodyweight yet.[/quote]

…

…Ummm, have you seen my log toots? I almost front squatted more than 1.5 times my bodyweight… Yeah, but I failed so it doesn’t count. Gimme about… 3 more weeks.

I’m currently an intermediate right now.

13

[quote]TYPE2B wrote:
…

…Ummm, have you seen my log toots? I almost front squatted more than 1.5 times my bodyweight… Yeah, but I failed so it doesn’t count. Gimme about… 3 more weeks.

I’m currently an intermediate right now.[/quote]

You are a beginner.

5-20-2009
Squat- 275x4

You weigh…200 something?

Yeah, you are a beginner.

14

[quote]TYPE2B wrote:
I’m currently an intermediate right now.[/quote]

By who’s standards?

15

[quote]Stronghold wrote:
TYPE2B wrote:
…

…Ummm, have you seen my log toots? I almost front squatted more than 1.5 times my bodyweight… Yeah, but I failed so it doesn’t count. Gimme about… 3 more weeks.

I’m currently an intermediate right now.

You are a beginner.

5-20-2009
Squat- 275x4

You weigh…200 something?

Yeah, you are a beginner.

[/quote]

Yeah, I just want you to keep in mind that 275 is actually my 5RM… And it’s ATG with a pause, high bar… I don’t think that makes much of a difference though… Anyway, to answer Invictica’s question, I don’t know. It’s just an assumption. Advanced for me is some who can ATG squat more than twice his bodyweight.

16

[quote]TYPE2B wrote:

I’m currently an intermediate right now.[/quote]

uh oh

17

[quote]ravell wrote:
Does it really matter which way you train when they both work?

[/quote]

This is really all that needs to be said. Somebody ban this idiot. You do realize that Bulgaria was part of the Eastern Bloc, and thus communist, right? Guess not.

18

[quote]TYPE2B wrote:
…Ummm, have you seen my log toots? I almost front squatted more than 1.5 times my bodyweight… Yeah, but I failed so it doesn’t count. Gimme about… 3 more weeks.

I’m currently an intermediate right now.[/quote]

No, I’m sorry. You are a pure beginner. Here’s an example of how you don’t know what you are doing from your front squat workout:

45x10
185x2
225x2
275x1
315x1 (failed. Sticking point about 2 inches above parallel.)

Yeah… 14% jump into a max? Not too bright.

You are a 200-205lb lifter. I am in your weight class (94kg). To give you an idea of how much of a beginner you are, 135lbs (60kg) what I use on my first warmup set (about 50%) after empty bar work on the snatch. One of my lifters who I would now classify as an intermediate has trained with coaching for a year and recently snatched bodyweight (I think he also qualified for collegiates). Hell, one of my female lifters who weighs 20kgs less than you snatches what you snatch, and she’s not even national-quality yet. You are NOT intermediate.

You aren’t even intermediate in terms of just basic lifting. The highest squat number I see in your log is under 300. That’s beginner weight for someone your size. Again, to give you an idea of how much of a beginner you are, my 5 rep max is 418 (and it isn’t a max since I did it on the 5x5 day of the Russian squat cycle). My intermediate lifter’s 5 rep max is 145kg (320). Keep in mind, though, that he weighs roughly 25lbs less than you.

There’s nothing wrong with being a beginner… we were all there at some point! But you gotta stop pretending to be anything but.

You DONT need fancy programming. You DONT need special exercises. You DONT need as much thought as you put into it right now.

You DO need a coach if you are going to be an Olympic lifter. If not, that’s cool too. You DO need a lot of beginner programming for basic strength. You DO need to change your body composition.

Beginner programming is a lot different than intermediate or advanced programming on a number of levels. You don’t need to understand why right now. You aren’t a coach, and you aren’t good enough yet. You just need to focus on getting stronger using an appropriate program, which is one made for a BEGINNER.

This is why a lot of people are so annoyed with you. If you could wrap your head around this, people would probably be a lot more likely to help you. The whole reason I post on this board is to help people who know less about this stuff because I wish someone had done the same for me when I was younger. I bet a lot of other people here feel the same way. Don’t ruin that.

19

[quote]TYPE2B wrote:
…Well, first off, I just wanna say that I have taken Louie Simmons’ words as gold. I respect the guy and he knows alot about what he does… I follow what he says, such as not staying with the same Max Effort exercise for more than 3 weeks…

The main concept of the Sheiko training system on the other hand is the exact opposite of Westside’s… Train the competitive lifts so frequently that… blah blah, synaptic facilitation, greasing the groove blah blah… I was scanning powerliftingwatch.com one time and there’s some dude who posted that most of the lifters in IPF, which for me, is the gold standard of all PL feds, uses Sheiko instead of westside…

At first, I have kept convincing myself, “Screw Boris Sheiko, Louie knows his shit better than that guy! Communists are more superior than Bulgarians!”… At first, I believed him, but time passed by, I’ve kept googling googling and googling, and I have yet to hear ONE elite COMMUNIST weightlifter who actually uses the method’s that Louie described. Even these communists, the ones who supposedly had a different training system than the bulgarians, did THE SAME TRAINING CONCEPTS!! Leonid Taranenko is a perfect example. In an interview at dynamic-eleiko.com, he stated that he cannot imagine anyone becoming an elite weightlifter without having the capacity to train atleast 6 days a week… That right there, is a communist speaking…

Did you know that Boris Sheiko, the one who invented the Sheiko training system is a communist too? You didn’t? Well, atleast you know now… Since he is a russian, isn’t he supposed to be teaching people how to regulate band tension???

Heck, even chinese lifters have more than one training session a week…

…And some of you may argue that “Hey, what the fuck is this TYPE2B guy talking about?! Louie adapted some russian training whatnot and used it for powerlifting! You can’t compare PL to WL! It’s just not cool!”. Think again. Please read this article: http://www.marunde-muscle.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-811.html

Louie is confident enough to assume that he can train American weightlifters… Please keep in mind that, NONE of his guineau pigs are capable of competing with the russians, bulgarians, and pretty much almost any elite lifter in the eastern bloc countries even with the squat. Guys like Taranenko, Zakharevitch, squats 800+ pounds raw, ATG. Here’s an interview with Taranenko: http://www.dynamic-eleiko.com/sportivny/library/news/nv005.html

“The back squat is the most important strength exercise. I usually squat everyday, sometimes more than once a day. My best back squat is 837 pounds. But this is with a two second pause at the bottom.”
-Leonid Taranenko

Here’s what the usual interview with a westside trainee.

“Uhhh, yeah, I squat a 1000 pounds. I do it deep. My feet are a million miles apart whenever I’m squattin’ and the bar position is located on my ass. It’s for leverage purposes. I’m wearing this quadruple ply titanzer ninja katana and has a 900 pound carryover to my raw squat. The secret is to fart everytime you box squat so that you train your CNS to give you a an extra boost when going up. It works like a rocket you see, without the fire. In order for you to take full advantage of this technique, you gotta learn how to believe in the fire. Imagine it’s there… Of course, you have to make sure that your center of gravity is balanced. Your hips will go up early if you just fart. You have to puke to…”

I may be wrong with this, and please correct me if I am… Didn’t Dan John raise his bench press from 180 pounds to 300 pounds with the “greasing the groove” concept? It’s been used by weightlifters, and so did Dahn John… Also, another russian dude trains his bench press with 70 heavy sets a week, and it seems to work for him cause he’s the Soviet Union’s bench press record holder…

Please forgive me for everything…

Oh, and here’s the real question… Is switching exercises on a regular basis necessary when it comes to doing Bill Starr type routines? Thank you.[/quote]

Ummm. Wow. There’s so much wrong here that it is hard to see where to start.

20

[quote]PublickStews wrote:
ravell wrote:
Does it really matter which way you train when they both work?

This is really all that needs to be said. Somebody ban this idiot. You do realize that Bulgaria was part of the Eastern Bloc, and thus communist, right? Guess not.[/quote]

We’re having fun with him, shaddup. :oP