Westside Extra workouts

For you guys out there that train westside and do extra workouts i have a couple of questions. First i’ve read about doing timed dumbbell presses for strength and recovery, i’ve read you do it 3 ways, 2-4 minutes, 3-5 minutes, and 5-8 minutes. What day would you do these timed presses? Would you do them after you bench workouts or on another day? And about extra workouts too. Lets say you did your max effort squat workout in the morning, would you do your extra workout for hamstrings and abs later on that day or would you wait untill the next day? I’ve got the concept of these extra workouts but just dont know when to do them. Anybody who’d be willing to chat about westside principles let me know cause i have many more questions and love training westside.

Binford, I am hardly an “expert” when it comes to Westside protocols, but I have been spending an insane amount of time learning everything I can about it for the past 10 weeks or so (and also have been using it). If you want to give your questions a shot with me, PM me.

About the extra workouts…they are very individualized. If you are new to WS stuff, stick with the four main days, and GRADUALLY add in extra workouts for recovery or to bring up weak points.

I personally do recovery based workouts the day after hitting specific areas (ie DE Squats on Sat., lower body sled dragging on Sunday…ME bench Wed, light high rep upper body work Friday). Sometimes I will even do them for two consecutive days after, if I feel the need. I believe some of Dave Tate’s articles on this site, “Drag Your Butt Into Shape” included, have some good pointers on when to do extra workouts.

Remember…these extra workouts are for RECOVERY…if you push them like a normal session, you are only going to overtrain yourself with a quickness.

I have a suggestion for you: if you have a specific weak point, give Chad Waterbury’s “100 rep” protocol a try on days where you don’t work that muscle group in the gym. It works wonders. You can bring it up with a search here on T-Mag.

Steve is correct. Don’t just do an extra workout without a specific goal you are looking to achieve. You should start by bringing up your work capacity; the best way would be with a sled or feeder workout ideally 6 hours after the main workout. As your WC grows you will be able to add an additional extra workout the next day following the empirical rule of 60% (60% of the weight you used the workout before).