Westside In a Commericial Gym

Like has been said, Westside is not chains and bands, its DE and ME. AS far as not having bars or boards, you’ve still got plenty of choices

bench - 5RM, 3RM, 2RM, pointer on teh smooth max, pinkie on the rings max, pointer on the rings (some would even add in the ring and middle finger maxes) ultra wides, floor presses - yes, you can do this, I used to lie on the floor and have my buddy deadlift the bar and hand it to me. Never had a problem with it. Bench with your feet up on a chair, this takes out leg drive (like floor press) but lets you go through a full ROM (unlike floor press,) rack presses, rack presses with different grips

squat - 5Rm, 3RM, 2RM, zerchers, front squat, OL squat, GMs, bottoms-up squats. this is a pain in the neck to set up, but a lot of people like em
DL - rack pulls, sumos, conventionals, deficit deads

that’s more than you’ll need

I’m loving the ideas guys, you’ve given me way more ideas than I need. Haha last night i couldn’t sleep cuz i kept thinking of the ways to pull off these and i think i got it down.

I have a couple questions about bands. Me and my training partner are going to buy a good set to use. I’ve heard good things about EFS’s jump stretch bands, but I’m currently going through a horrible situation with them not sending my belt. Because of this, i’ll probably avoid them for future orders and am looking into the bands on liftinglarge.com. Does anyone have any experience with their Woody Training Bands? I was thinking about getting the starter set.

Another thing, the power rack at my gym is not equipped for bands, but I thought of a way to make it work. I’ll anchor the bands down with heavy dumbbells. The heaviest set in my gym is 120lb dumbbells, but im sure I won’t be putting enough band resistance to pull that off the floor. Any Opinions on this?

1 - youd be surprised how much resistance a band that is fully stretched can have. I’m not saying it WILL pull the 120 off the floor, im not say it WONT, but I wouldnt want to find out. Lay a 45 plate or something on top of the db

2 - more importantly what, specifically, is going on with EFS? I’ve had nothing but good experiences with them, so im kinda surprised… have you called customer service?

Heres the situation with EFS. I ordered one of their retro series belts on January 26th. It says on the site it will be shipped within 3 weeks. I pay an extra $12 for 3-day ground shipping so that i dont have to wait like a month for it. 3 weeks rolls around and i havent heard anything about my belt. I email them after 4 weeks and ask about it and include my reference number and all that. I get a response(within a day or so, this was one thing i was pleased with) saying that they are having a problem with the manufacturer and will ship it out ASAP.

Two more weeks pass by and still havent gotten my belt. I email them again explaining that it is rediculous I have waited 6 six weeks and still do not have my belt. They end up refunding me $9.95, the difference between the price i paid and the price of the belts now because of a sale. Personally i think its lame that is all they are compensating me, but i just want my belt. BTW, that email was last week, and I still don’t have it.

[quote]KBCThird wrote:
1 - youd be surprised how much resistance a band that is fully stretched can have. I’m not saying it WILL pull the 120 off the floor, im not say it WONT, but I wouldnt want to find out. Lay a 45 plate or something on top of the db
[/quote]

I don’t know about the strong bands, but I have used average bands choked around the base of my gym power rack and 100 lbs DBs and they don’t come off the ground.

Also, I’d strongly recommend the jump stretch bands. The training partner whose garage gym I lift in has tried iron woodies and jump stretch and he says there is clearly a difference.

I prefer the jump stretch bands as well. You can order them directly from jumpstretch or sorinex or several other places online if you want to avoid EFS, though I’ve ordered numerous things from EFS over that past three years from small items like t-shirts to larger items like a GHR and have never had a problem with them

[quote]evansmi wrote:
Thats some damn good artwork, who painted it?[/quote]

My brother does air brush work.

[quote]confusedjake wrote:
Heres the situation with EFS. I ordered one of their retro series belts on January 26th. It says on the site it will be shipped within 3 weeks. I pay an extra $12 for 3-day ground shipping so that i dont have to wait like a month for it. 3 weeks rolls around and i havent heard anything about my belt. I email them after 4 weeks and ask about it and include my reference number and all that. I get a response(within a day or so, this was one thing i was pleased with) saying that they are having a problem with the manufacturer and will ship it out ASAP.

Two more weeks pass by and still havent gotten my belt. I email them again explaining that it is rediculous I have waited 6 six weeks and still do not have my belt. They end up refunding me $9.95, the difference between the price i paid and the price of the belts now because of a sale. Personally i think its lame that is all they are compensating me, but i just want my belt. BTW, that email was last week, and I still don’t have it.[/quote]

  1. Quit emailing and call them up; it’s always tougher to deny a person when talking with them

  2. If they don’t have it, they don’t have it. I understand your irritation and given the sale I would expect swift mitigation, but a quick call can put you at the top of the queue. Things happen.

EFS has gone out of their way to help me several times, and not just for mondo-big orders – even pathetically small ones. You should do what you feel led to do, but I wouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

Hope the situations resolves soon.

I use the Iron Woody brand bands. I love elitefts, but it just doesn’t make sense to me to spend so much more on bands that are essentially the same thing. The Iron Woody’s have worked great for me. The one thing I didn’t realize when I bought them was how incredibly handy having a set of bands is whenever something gets hurt, you can rehab anything with those things. Shoulder problems, hip problems and shin splints. every time something starts to hurt I just search through the elitefts rehab database and its feeling better in a few days.

[quote]PublickStews wrote:
KBCThird wrote:
1 - youd be surprised how much resistance a band that is fully stretched can have. I’m not saying it WILL pull the 120 off the floor, im not say it WONT, but I wouldnt want to find out. Lay a 45 plate or something on top of the db

I don’t know about the strong bands, but I have used average bands choked around the base of my gym power rack and 100 lbs DBs and they don’t come off the ground.

Also, I’d strongly recommend the jump stretch bands. The training partner whose garage gym I lift in has tried iron woodies and jump stretch and he says there is clearly a difference.[/quote]

Did he say what was different about them. The resistances aren’t equal. for example an IW #3 is not equal to a JS Medium. Theres like a 10-20 lb difference if memory is correct.

to the OP:
you can look up the resistances on the ironwoody website and elitefts website if you want to compare

Haha maybe they read T-Nation and got the idea, I got an e-mail earlier today saying its been shipped.

Yeah I did some research and the EFS bands are stronger when compared to the woody bands of the same level, but the woody bands are aroudn $50 cheaper. So I’ll have to decide whether i wanna spend the extra money or not. Its about a 30lb difference from whats listed on the sites, but they might have tested them differently.

[quote]evansmi wrote:
PublickStews wrote:
KBCThird wrote:
Did he say what was different about them. The resistances aren’t equal. for example an IW #3 is not equal to a JS Medium. Theres like a 10-20 lb difference if memory is correct.
[/quote]

I guess I shouldn’t have phrased it like that because I have seen the difference myself. The only light bands I’ve used are iron woody lights. The problem is that the bands start to get all knobby after a certain period of time, like the material actually looks and feels like it’s breaking down. With the jumpstretch bands, if you run your hand over them after a year they feel the same as the day they were brand new.

My garage is the one PS is talking about. We have IW bands up to light, and average and strong JS bands.

The iron woody bands are nowhere near the quality of Jumpstretch. I live in southeast texas and it gets pretty damn hot in the garage. We have to keep the IW bands in the refrigerator because they melt, JS bands do not. All the JS bands we have are as good as they day they were bought, the IW bands are about the same age but are all fucked up.

For the additional life you get out of them, Jumpstretch are well worth the extra money.

[quote]PublickStews wrote:
evansmi wrote:
PublickStews wrote:
KBCThird wrote:
Did he say what was different about them. The resistances aren’t equal. for example an IW #3 is not equal to a JS Medium. Theres like a 10-20 lb difference if memory is correct.

I guess I shouldn’t have phrased it like that because I have seen the difference myself. The only light bands I’ve used are iron woody lights. The problem is that the bands start to get all knobby after a certain period of time, like the material actually looks and feels like it’s breaking down. With the jumpstretch bands, if you run your hand over them after a year they feel the same as the day they were brand new.[/quote]

hmm, I’ve only had mine for maybe 4-5 months, I’ll have to keep an eye on that. I did notice that my minis seem to be getting darker, as weird as that sounds.