Rob I have no idea what you are talking about you didnt ask any questions you accused me of shit, I really didnt come to this forum to argue with people like you, I came to here to help those that need help with there westside training, ok I concede you are smarter that me you read a lot of books you use fancy terms blah blah blah, I dont care, ask my athletes, ask those that have asked me questions on here or those that send me at least 3-4 private messages a day asking for my help if i dont help them a lot , i have meet a lot of people like you, you are the people who i loose speaking debates with all the time in my classes and then see them in the gym and there bench has been stuck at 225 for 4 years lol, i know you hate my “well i am stronger than you attitude” but it is what i beleive, i believe in making a athlete strong very fucking strong thats why i am a STRENGTH COACH, i dont know what your questions are, i mean i think you aksed some question about spinal erectors and glutes i mean come on man have you ever seen a truly strong westside athlete there spinal erectors are usually the size of a mans arm, and glutes, the whole fucking system is built on glute strength. i have a hard time beliving you know any thing about westside if you ask these questions. i truly beleive i will never change your mind and you will still be jealous of westside 10 years down the road when you are still a know one and the westside system will still be on top,i am now going to go train with the WPO 165 champion Ron palmer, a teenaage state champion phenom, a apf national junior champion, 2 900 pound squaters, 2 500 pound benchers 1 600 pound bencher, 2 700 pound deadlifters,a man who will squat 900 at 165 and become the first man ever to do so at this years WPO championships, apf masters champion, and one of the greatest coaches of all time, now i will probally get smarter and stronger tonight…rob i got to ask who will you be training with tonight?? whos on your team???big martin
martin you make great points and i think if you weren’t so dogmatic in your thinking you might get them across to people. “but i truly believe i’ll never change your mind”…blah blah, whatever.
i think westside is one of the greatest methods of training. i use a modified form of it to suit my needs. but what you have to realize is that westside is not the only way. if you think that it is and that there is no improving upon it, then my friend, there’s no need for you to contribute to such threads.
too much emphasis is spent on unilateral work and the such. In football, if you are ever pushing off of one leg against resistance more than likely the next move will be a bench press to get the guy off of you. Its not specific to anything and that seems to be what these balance board, one legged, kettlebell users are going for. You wont have to balance if you fire off the ball with 700lbs of force against a guy who has 400 lbs of force from doing one leg squats or whatever.
Bad analogy for many reasons, just a couple:
- If you have to cut, you push off one leg. In that case, there is tremendous UNILATERAL force. In that case, unilaterwork is very important.
- The 700 vs. 400 pounds of force is a bad one. You are assuming that there is no skill involved, just two guys banging into each other. You could come at me with 700,000 pounds of force, if I move to the side and you miss, it’s irrelevant. It’s something called agility.
Now, I am no wobble board hippie, but it’s not as simple as just “get really strong.” It depends on the sport, and for certain sports, getting really strong will have very little effect on performance (and sometimes none at all). You can’t just take the max effort and dynamic effort work (which is awesome for powerlifting) and blindly apply it to everything. The needs of a powerlifter are not the same as a football player, javelin thrower (one of the sports where maximal strength has very little carry over to increased performance) or wrestler. If you train everyone the same way, you are doing your athletes a great disservice. I’m not saying any of you do, it’s just a general statement. Conversely, if you train your football player with one legged squats on a wobble board then you are asking him to be crushed. In both cases, people are guilty of being very dogmatic with their chosen system. No system, no matter how well it works in a given area, is a panacea for all sports. Each activity has a given set of inter-related physical attributes (all in varying levels) which must be addressed by the trainer. Simply getting someone strong, fast, flexible, “stable”, or whatever at the expense of other phyical qualities shows a serious lack of knowledge about training for athletics.
yeah, and we aren’t all offensive linemen. by the way, unilateral training helped me overcome a fairly serious muscular imbalance between my left and right legs so that i could actually squat correctly without making the imbalance worse. granted i didn’t use it exclusively, but it definitely has its place.
Martin, as usual, things seem to be getting lost in the confrontation. I hope training went well for you last night and you learned some things from the lifters you were with. I think we still all have a lot to learn, it’s just a shame that we can’t learn anything from each other.
Strong is good. But it’s only one piece of my puzzle. Like I said, I am generally more thorough and complex in my way of doing things. Surely the middle ground between you and I is a good place to start.
Otherwise people are just feeling more stupid after reading these rants. Nothing accomplished, as usual.
Rob my rants are because you accuse me of shit and distort facts about the program i follow, i swear you think westside guys are just large fat asses who have never played sports before, Jim wendler was the full back when arizona beat nebraska in the holiday bowl in 1998 thats big time athletics. ron palmer was a division 1 soccer player at cal state and is now the pound for pound strongest powerlifter in the world. tom mylinski During his time in college he was part of 2 SEC championship football teams (1989 & 1990) as well as being part of the SEC & NCAA track and filed team. Tom was a 4th round draft pick of the 1993 Super Bowl Champions, the Dallas Cowboys. During his time (1992-2001) in the NFL, Tom spent the majority of his time playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Chicago Bears as a Versatile offensive lineman (G/C/long snapper). Tom credits his success and longevity in the NFL to his strength and condition program…paul childress division 1 foot ball at canaisus, i my self played divison 1 basbeall at the university of tennesse martin. and jack ass uses westside to get ready for pro wrestling…and do i need to even mention martin rooney, Martin has trained entire NFL teams such as the New York Giants as well as Major and Minor League Baseball players. Martin has performed consulting work for NIKE Corp. and has lectured on the subject of speed and strength training for the American College of Sports Medicine…he obviously thinks westside has some benefit for athletes. rob if you want me to awnswer questions ask me them, dont accuse me of using my powerlifting background to ruin athletes carrears, i did a search on you in the mag forum search and it is very evident by your posts that your are a westside hater that you hate it and have jealousy about it, that is fine i dont care but dont accuse me of not knowing how to train athletes, i use the same program that louie simmons demonstrates for athletes i modify to fit each sport and athlete…
now here is how i use westside to help athletes if you have any questions then ask me but dont accuse me and the sysytem of shit that isnt true…
half hour of a gpp warm up based on sport specific activities
latic acid training for conditioning based on specific sport recs…takes 10 minutes usually
strength work westside tmepalate based on the day folowed by only 1 asseccory exerscice…
off days i use gpp, active restoration, and strongman tech to work on conditioning these also change based on the sport,
now if you have questions you can ask andplease no psycho babble…big martin
IMO what Westside does is not “real” Conjugate Periodisation in the true meaning of the word as used by Verkhoshansky.
Westside looks more like Concurrent periodisation IMO
Please Elaborate CCJ
Siff-To evoke a more powerful training effect in athletes who have already accomodated to high levels of stimulation, it becomes necessary to impose intense phases of unidirectional loading on the body. This is precisely the purpose of the conjugate sequence system.
Simmons-On max effort day the entire volume consists of unidirectional loading. One training workout con?tributes to the next.
I do see your point. The max effort day is what constitutes the conjugate method but the WHOLE program looks more like concurrent periodisation, if you go by the literal definition in supertraining.
Haha. Aren’t you glad I recommended Supertraining Goldberg???
Ive even started spelling periodisation with an s instead of a z.
good post sully.
you guys have some good points. But like someone said earlier, it is very sport specific. Some sports require a great deal more flexibility than others.
Martin,
I didn’t read too much of your post above your usual work outs, but there’s a few things that are interesting.
The GPP is pretty long. I imagine there’s an emphasis on conditioning there. I like that, but what types of things would you do for your baseball player, for instance?
What about the lactate work? I assume this is specific to sport. What perameters do you use to establish work times? For instance, in hockey a shift lasts for 30-45 seconds, but only 10 seconds or less is devoted to peak output. Do you take those types of time frames into account, or is it more general than that?
Also, do you find that doing your conditioning before your strength work impairs that amount of force output or are you looking to derive your training effect in that fatigued state?
It’s interesting to see someone else’s use of an hour. My use is a little different:
Assuming warm-up has been performed, 10-15 minutes of static/PNF/dynamic stretching depending on what the cleint responds to best.
Maximal work (15-30 minutes). I generally follow Poliquin modern trends protocols to load in the maximal exercises for both upper and lower body.
Supplementary work (remaining time, 15-30 minutes). I use this to address imbalances, get the assistance work in for whatever I’m trying to acheive with the maximal work (usually a goal of both loading and anatomical adaptation) and any supplementary condition (lactate work, hypertrophy, sport specific endurance; depending on client needs).
Injury prevention (remaining time). Generally this goes last because it’s addressed primatily in the first two programs a client goes through and again every 18-24 weeks. I do a lot of the pelvic (abdominal work) and trunk (spinal stability work) in order to maintain what was accomplish in the preparatory programs.
Funny, but that looks a lot like a Westside template, doesn’t it?
One last thing I wanted to post seperately:
Where does everyone think the actual training effect in the Westside template comes from?
In my view, the Max work is really only designed to train the lifter psychologically to not be afraid of the big weights. There’s no specific overload on those days because you generally only spend one set on each weight.
I noticed that some spend more time on their max weights in their max workouts, so maybe I’m mistaken. But of what I’ve read, there’s 3 sets at most at the max weight on Max Effort days.
Seems to me that the real training effect comes from the dynamic days. The speed work is what gives the Westside Template it’s superior effect over the linear method. It follows what Charlie Francis has said.
Any feedback would be interesting.
Rob most baseball players i train come to me and they are very very very physically weak most cant squat at all have trouble reaching parrellel with just the bar and these are top level baseball players this has been the same no matter where I go even at very large division 1 schools most baseball players have added muscle mass because there training is mostly bodybuilder orinated but they all are very weak the biggest bench press I have seen for a division 1 baseball player is 315 and that was a golden spikes winner kamil green from clemson i take this as personal proof that all baseball players could use a little more strength. and most baseball coahces are still left with the run them to death mentality is stupid but most baseball coahes pride them selves on ignorance claiming to be old school. so there is very little need for cardio type conditioning with the athlets i train. so for the gpp warm up i stick with movemnts to make them stronger in important baseball regions hips, hamstrings, glutes, forarms, lat and upper back, so gpp for them wouldnt last a half hour, but with most football and wrestlers i work with it does. i dont beelive in any sport specific crap as you know i beleive i am a strength coach with most athletes i train strength is the major priority. so a base ball player gpp work out would look like this…
a1 pull throughs 5x10
a2. reverse hypers 5x8
b1. glute ham raise 3x10
b2. band good mornings 3x10
c1. lat pull downs 5x8
c2. hammer curls 5x10
these are done at low intensity wich mean they are not close to failure and these are done in supersets for conditioning, and are based on weak points for sport specific needs the extra work will help them a. get warmed up, b. get them in shape. c. help bring strength and weak points up.
now for wreslters these exerscices are completelty diffirent, they spend a lot more time doing strongman type work in gpp as i have found this to work very well with wrestler who are already fairly strong.
latic acid training dosent vary much from sport to sport i do what coach x from elite fitness does if i was you i would really study him he is one of the best strength coaches and works with a very strong NFL team, i use full body movements of the olympic lifts, i cycle between hang cleans from pins, power cleans from the floor, hang cleans from boxes, power pulls, and very rarely variations of deadlifts. we do 20 reps with 60% 1rm resting 15-30 seconds in between reps.
training fatigued we dont beleive in this and the proof is at westside, members spend some time up to a half hour dragging sleds doing gpp warmups for weak points before there main event starts and they are the strongest gym in the world you cant argue with that, now tell me why a athlete who has to play 4 quarters or a double header cant do a gpp warmup some latic acid training and then train at full speed? it is because he is out of shape and the previous trainer has done nothing to bring up his workc apacity and thats what scares me about these sport specific coaches. does it effect them at first yea a little, but it is like a guy who joins the army the first day the drill sergant may ask him to do 100 push ups and he cant and he is all sore the next day but he has to do push up again or he will be in trouble so in time he has made his body able to do 100’s of push ups a day because he brought up his work capacity. so i could care less how he performs at first because with athletes work capacity is very very important. …big martin
Periodization bible II explains your question Rob. If you really work up to a one rep max on the movement for the day and bust your ass, you will know it and know that it will make you stronger in the long run.
I didn’t read too much of your post above your usual work outs, but there’s a few things that are interesting. --------*Rob I think you did read it and saw that a number of big time athletes used this system and it pissed you off because you have gone around on this forum bad mouthing westside for athletes to any one who would listen, hey and if you are going to bad mouth and judge something as much as you do, you may want to research it a little better, westside is not just for overweight powerlifters, sorry for another rant but this guys just pisses me off beyond belief, I did a search on the forum and he has bad mouthed westside to many athletes even tho he has never tried and based on his questions really dosent understand it, like dave tate told me at one of his seminars there are people who think they understand the system but they dont,. get this…he even told someone on here that the reverse hyper is no good???..big martin
Martin, don’t get the impression that I bad mouth Westside just because it’s powerlifting. The ironic thing is that my training model isn’t far off from what you do. I appreciate the feedback on your methods. Your reasoning and arguements gain you a lot of respect in my books.
I’d agree that a lot of athlete’s get bashed by there coaches with too much running and aerobic work. I also agree that strength is the number one lacking component of conditioning in baseball. My own baseball training mimics a lot of what you said above.
Hate is a strong word for someone who frequents the same message board as you and disagrees with some of your ideas and methods. Ironic thing is that I like a lot of what you do. As soon as you put the ‘death to the NSCA’ stuff aside and actually articulated your methods I actually learned some things from you.
Maybe you could learn a few things from me. Takes a big man to be able to admit that he learned something from a guy he ‘hates’. Life’s too short to worry about this stuff. Let’s just keep learning from one another.
Goldie, I read that article. I actually cited it as a reference for a paper I wrote in college about periodization. I’m just thinking more in terms of the S.A.I.D (specific adaptation to imposed demands) when I ask that question.
‘Knowing’ you worked wasn’t my point. I was think more neuroligically where the training effect comes from. Seems like it’s the speed work.
Any feedback?