I’ve taking a break from westside and been trying a few different things here lately, i’ve been trying the 3 times a week full body workout, focusing on different types of contractions like CT using the easy-hard gainer guidelines. But even though i was training for mass my squats went up, i think the slow negative squats and pause squats were great. But my bench went down with an absence of max effort and dynamic work. So i had a lil idea. Christian kinda outline something like this before for westsiders who want to use the pendulum training. So i’m going to use a pendulum like this.
Week 1(Mass)
bench and squats for 6-8 reps,no max effort work, all other assitance work is done bodybuilding style, and speed work is still done once a week with lower volume
Week 2(strength)
max effort work is done twice this week, with dynamic work being done after the second max effort workout with half the volume, all assitance work done for 3-6 reps
Week 3(speed)
speed work is done twice a week with regular volume with max effort work done after the second speed workout for a 3RM instead of a one, all assitance work done explosively with throws and jumps
Week 4(strength)
same as week 2
Week 5(Mass, Recovery)
no competition lifts, max effort or speed work, use all assistance exercises in bodybuilding style
And i will also be emphasizing different portions of the contraction for all my max effort and even dynamic effort work. So i will be doing partner eccentrics with bench and squats, pause squats and benches, maybe even a few parnter concentrics, along with just regular lifting. So it isn’t really a pendulum where i change everything every week, i just change the main emphasis and maintain other things. I think this will work well.
Hey
How does that Mass, Recovery week looks like?
The mass/revocery week would be simliar to the first week, except much lower volume and intensity. There are numerous ways to do this, one could be a full body split for three days out of the weeks that utilizes weights in the 12-15 rep range. You could work a mucle group once per weeks for a 3 or 4 day split, or you could simply stick to upper/lower/upper/lower. Very simple really. Just keep the load light and don’t work to failure.
As for the program, it looks like a sound approach to mix up the conjugate method. IMO, this would be an ideal split for a bodybuilder to follow who would like to dab into westside training, which, once you alter it to this degree, really isn’t but that’s not the point. It follows the basic pendulum of Hypertrophy, Limit Strength, Power, Limit Stength, Hypertrophy/Unload. Pendulum training has always intrigued me and its a great way to structure your training year round. I always see guys on here that ask what program should I do now, or what should I do after finishing such and such. If you can create a pendulum to fit your current goals(whether it be strength, hypertrophy, power, etc.) you can dab into a variety of programs at the same time. For instance: Say you want to test run one of chad’s undulating periodization programs with the above:
Week 1: Pendulum Bodybuilding Week 1(just as example)
Week 2: ABBH II
Week 3: Dynamic Strength Week of Westside modification
Week 4: ABBH II
Week 5: Dynamic Strength Week of Westside modification
Week 6: repeat Week 1
Week 7: Unload
So this cycle would be Hypertrophy, Strength/Hypertrophy, Power, Strength/Hypertrohpy, Power, Hypertrophy
I presume if you were more interested in limit strength, you could always substitute the DE days for the modified ME days. I just love the fact that the amount of diversity of training methods you can harness is incredible, and for those of us that get bored easy, pendulum is the way to go…or westside:) If anybody sees any fault in my logic please feel free to speak up.