Seeing as your squat is lagging behind, I would say you are better off doing your regular squat on you deadlift day. You could do front squats on your main squat day as the second exercise and then deadlift last.
Personally, I’m not a fan of front squats because the movement pattern is too different from back squatting. Some people do well with the though, but you need to be able to front squat properly with a challenging weight for it to do anything for you. You could consider SSB squats, which are similar to front squats except that you can handle more weight because you won’t fail if you start to lean forward. High bar squats and high bar pause squats are also very good for building your quads and teaching you to stay upright. The issue with front squats, other than technique, is that the limiting factor is back strength rather than leg strength. You need a strong back for sure, but you also need quads.
From personal experience, when my squat used to really suck I made the most progress by doing the actual competition squat more often. The next two best lifts were high bar and SSB squats.
Do you know how to box squat properly? My guess is no. Either a close variation like SSB, high bar, or maybe pause squat, or just more squat volume. Don’t complicate things unnecessarily.
I never said not to have deadlift as the main lift one day, I’m just telling you to do 5x5 with your competition squat after deadlifting. You can deadlift on your squat day too if you want, but most people can make good progress deadlifting once a week and increasing your squat should increase your deadlift as well.
Maybe just buy one of Wendler’s books and pick a template and follow it. Or send me some money.
I think you should go ahead and run a WSBB template and report back to us how it went. Give yourself a year of running it and see what happens. The only reason I say that is you are curious enough to run it and if you believe what the internet says about it being the best, why wouldn’t you just go ahead and run it?
I’m not being sarcastic. Run it and see how you respond. See where you are a year from now.
The guy following a certain program strictly to learn it properly.
The guy educating themselves about all things lifting.
Keep you head down at the gym, chip away at whatever program you choose and then satisfy your reading needs with that, reading. You’ll create a huge mess if you start mixing and matching stuff without proper understanding.
Exactly. Don’t change things up until you know how to implement something better than what you’re doing. I knew about 5/3/1 for a couple of years before doing it - it took me that long to grasp how to run it (which says nothing good about my intelligence). It took another year and a bit before I could understand just enough about conjugate training to start to implement a few elements here and there.
Today was supposed to be my OHP day (still working with 531). Instead I tried to take some people’s advice and I switched it to another bench oriented day since in Power Lifting the Bench,Squat and DL is what matters.
I added pause reps and board press
I also added weighted dips as the assistance lift as opposed to flat dumbell bench I do as an assistance lift on my other bench day.
Was that a good or bad idea ? Or should have I just kept the OHP ?
You have to give it some time, and see what happens.
Keep running “accessory day.” Keep track of your 5/3/1 Bench Days. After doing those assistance moves, does bench technique feel smoother and stronger? Or herky-jerky and clumsy? Are you improving on your main sets? Do your shoulders and elbows still feel good?
Use the progression of the Main Work Sets to evaluate the assistance work. If it’s good, it helps your Plus Sets.
Your form on the big lifts needs to be dead nuts REPRODUCIBLE. What this means that if you don’t do the lifts for 3-4 months, you should be able to perform a correct competition lift. The only way you will build this competency is by accumulating thousands of repetitions. I do countless squats at home with a broomstick and eyes closed to ingrain the motor pattern. This means a long history of training before touching conjugate training.
Louie is brilliant but confusing as fuck. To understand what you need to do you need to read ALL of Louies stuff, plus all the writings of Dave Tate, Nate Harvey, AJ Roberts, Brian Alsruhe, etc. Plus since this is not a program but a METHOD, you are left to programming on your own. Louie says it takes a year to learn how to use the system. I have countless years under the bar and I am on Westside style training for 7 months and are just now beginning to program it correctly.
As for chains and bands, I’ll refer you to Dave Tate who said that guys got strong as fuck before these things were being used. You can train conjugate without them but setting up bands is as simple as using dumbbells to anchor the bands (I train in a commercial gym). You use an appropriate sized dumbbell and wrap the band around the bar 3-4 times to have tension at the bottom.
If you can work these factors out, I can attest to the fact that conjugate will outperform 5/3/1, linear, block, RPE, Juggernaut etc.
JBackos is correct on all points. The biggest struggle you are likely to have with Westside conjugate is in exercise selection and diagnosing your weaknesses. I would suggest using 3 deadlift variations (deficit dead, rack pull with plates 4" off the ground, and opposite style-so conventional if you pull sumo or vice versa). Which is the hardest? Train that for 2 cycles on your deadlift day. For squats, try 3 different box heights. Again, use the hardest one. For bench, you could do close grip, Spoto press, floor press, incline, whatever is hardest. Train that on your bench day.
Also, bands are totally worth the investment. You can get a set of mini bands for less than $50 from elite FTS and you’ll be amazed at the training effect. Do about 5 sets of bench presses with doubled over mini bands and then take the bands off. It feels like the weight literally flies off your chest.
What I discovered with the deadlift is that block pulls helped my pull off the floor. I use rubber bumper plates for blocks and use a 55, 45, 35, and 25 pound plate in that order three weeks apart. After running this for a few 9 week cycles i noticed that my 35 lb plate block pull equaled what I could pull off the floor. This became my “tester”. Whatever I can pull off the 35’s, I can pull off the floor. Each step in the progression is about 20 lbs in my case.
For the Squat max effort I use Hi bars to a low box (3"below), Manta Ray to a high box (2" above), Banded box squats, Suspended box squats, suspended wrapped comp. squats. The suspended (regular band) wrapped comp. squats have become my tester. Whatever I can do in this movement I can do 30 lbs less on the platform on a second attempt.
For bench max effort I use the close grip floor press, close grip 1 board, pin press at 0", 3", 6" above the chest, and 1 board close grip incline. I’m using repetition effort in place of the Dynamic day for bench because my Bench form is not dialed in enough to fuck with bands.
For dynamic lower I alternate 3 weeks with straight weight and 3 weeks with bands. I do half my DE deadlifts with conv. and half with sumo. Box squat I use between 40% and 55%, deadlift between 60% and 70%.
Finally always remember to beat the shit out of what you SUCK at. In my case its calves, delts, dips, chins, pullovers (yes I do pullovers), biceps. On Friday I add some shoulder work tot he tail end of my DE lower day.
Wow that’s great information. I’m still figuring conjugate out (after a lot of frustration using other methods). For me, pulling with the plates 4" off the floor and pulling from a deficit both seem to have direct carryover to my conventional pull. Squatting to a 14" box for the squat (I’m 6’ tall, so this is just below parallel) and squatting with a ssb have really started to bring my squat along. For bench, i like Spoto presses and close grip. I remember Louie saying close grip steep incline was his tester, so once my bench starts to slow down I’m gonna give that a shot. Any other tips you could offer would be appreciated.
The one thing I noticed in my last few meets was the lack of heavy weight walkout stability. For my next meet this fall, I will program in heavy walkouts and supports thusly:
After your Max effort movement and before your supplemental movement, place the pins at a level a few inches deeper than your rack height. Load the bar to 50 lbs over what you plan to squat at the meet. Walk the weight out and hold for 15-30 seconds and walk back in. Next, put the bar on the pins and load 100 lbs over your planned meet squat. Stand up and support the weight (do not walk) for 10 seconds. Do these every other week for 12 weeks. Do not change weight. Try to add time to the hold portion.
I’ll use these also. I like to throw in isometric pulls, benches after ME also. Let me know if you have any issues with CNS fatigue. When I do (especially) reverse band squats, for example, I notice my CNS is pretty much shot and in need of a deload. I’ve never tried just unracking the weights and walking them out
I don’t deload. What I do if I feel like shit (I’m 57) is I just take a day off every 6-8 weeks. I also take only Monday off after a meet. I’m back in the gym by Wednesday. If you’re young and need a deload every 3-4 weeks you’re out of shape. Over the years you need to work towards increasing your work capacity. I do this by keeping rest periods as short as possible. I never rest longer than 3 minutes even under a max effort load. Over the years, you will get used to it. Sorry if I offend anyone but guys who need to rest 10 minutes are fat.
Be careful with the walkouts and supports. You need to be able to hold your brace for the entire time either by holding your breath or breathing in very small doses during the hold. If you lose tightness your lower back could be fucked.
Ok. I don’t have scheduled deloads, I use deloads when I start to feel tendonitis, accumulation of minor inflammation, or start to consistently miss on ME attempts. Or all 3. Typically, this happens every 6-8 weeks, so I’ll take a deload and test the big 3. Analyze and start again. I know there is an argument to be made against deloads, but I am hoping that doing them intuitively will keep me in the game longer. I also do rehab/soft tissue work between working sets during repetition effort. So if I’m squatting 5x5 @ 75%, between sets I’ll do banded tricep push downs to rehab/prehab and build ligaments and tendons as per Louie’s recommendations.
