Introduction
I wrote a book not too long ago, highlighting how we were currently doing things. I am
fortunate enough that I got to spend my first three years as a coach being a student of the
legendary Russian coach, Boris Sheiko.
This is where I really learned the general principles of strength training. I wrote this
information down in a book for a few reasons. For one, I wanted to always have the
information to access.
This could be for myself or for my lifters. I find it worthwhile to sometimes take a step back
and look at the information that you may have forgotten. This helps us as coaches to not
steer the ship too far away from these general principles.
For my lifters, I feel there is a lot of strength to be had for self-efficacy. This is a topic that
you will read about thoroughly as you go deeper into this book. It is important that they
understand these same general principles and that we are on the same page.
At the time when I started working with Boris Sheiko, my group was very small. We saw
some very good success in those early days following the guidelines he laid out in his
seminars and through email conversations.
I followed these rules to a T. This is exactly what I should have been doing at the time. I did
not have enough experience to be experimenting with paying members’ money. My job at
the time was to follow the rules to get the results.
Again, this worked great for a period of time. You see, everything with powerlifting is linear
until it is not. We will get into this in greater detail in a future chapter. Chaos is around us
everywhere, even in the gym.
As a coach I learned this lesson the hard way. All of a sudden what I believed to be true
stopped working and it sent me on a journey to find some answers. This would be one of
the most frustrating journeys of my entire career. A journey filled with frustration and doubt.
In this search for answers, I would look up information online and seek out other coaches to
ask questions. I soon came to learn that everyone had something different to say. At the
time, as a young coach this was extremely difficult and I did not know what to do.
My main takeaway from all of the information that I was gathering was that perhaps we were
not lifting heavy enough. I believed that this could be the case because I did notice the
nerves start to kick in with my lifters until we started getting into the 90% of 1RM range and
higher.
I was still clinging to some original beliefs very hard. For one, we had to use weights that
would allow each repetition to look the same. I believed that this helped to build a stable
motor pattern.
I also was holding onto the guidelines laid out. There were suggested number of lifts and
average intensities for each classification of lifter. I did not want this to get thrown out of
whack.
I came up with the idea of intensity intervals. This is actually laid out in the first book with the
acute chronic work ratio (acwr) as well. Basically, the intensity intervals gave the lifter a
range of percentage points that they could use to adjust the weight on the bar for a given
day.
If training felt easy, they could go up based off of the interval for that rep range. They could
not go higher or lower than those ranges. I put these rules into effect because I did not want
the athlete’s acwr getting outside of the so called “sweet spot.”
The “sweet spot” in the literature tends to be between .8 and 1.3. This number is derived by
dividing the acute (current) workload by the chronic (can vary, but I used a 4 week rolling
average) workload. 1.0 is where each of these is equal.
The point of the acwr is to make sure that we are not increasing workload so quickly that we
are increasing injury risk. This is a nice monitoring tool for the mechanical stress of training.
This fit in nicely with a framework where volume was the most important aspect of training.
At the time we would get our intensity from variations. A pause squat at 75% of 1RM is
much more difficult than a competition squat at 75% of 1RM. All variations were executed in
the competition stance, or grip if it was a bench press.
This is how we could increase intensity while keeping technique the same for all repetitions.
The problem with this is it is not what I saw. You see, I am not Boris Sheiko. He possesses
an amazing skill to get the intensities, and each day right, that I definitely do not possess.
I thought I had the tool that was going to allow me to perfectly place easy, medium, and hard
training days and weeks into each lifter’s program. For over a year I used the acwr and
gathered data on an ever growing list of lifters.
I realized that these ranges did not fit well at times. Around a competition we saw a large
drop in workload and then a spike at the competition itself. No one was getting hurt at
competitions.
I also noticed that some lifters were not getting a great training effect even at the higher end
of the ratio. They needed workloads that put them in the 1.5 range or higher. Even when I
did keep everything within the green, we would see some unfortunate things occur that
would require missed training days.
Also, when I followed the guidelines to a T, there were many times it did not work. Again,
this is not a problem with the system, but the fact that I was using another coach’s system. I
will never be able to coach Sheiko’s system like Sheiko. This is where the frustration began
to set in. When things didn't work out as planned before, I was able to use intensity intervals
and the acwr. This time I had run out of options.
Later it came to my attention that general principles are true, until they are narrowed down to
the individual. This was a quote from Jacob Tyspkin on my podcast, Boston’s Strongcast.
PPS has individuals from all walks of life with varying genetics and outside life stress.
I started that podcast, reluctantly, because one of my lifters said that I should. This has
become a great learning tool for myself as it has allowed me to interview some great
coaches and athletes and continue to learn more about the sport.
I wish I had heard that Tyspkin quote at this point in my coaching career. I truly felt lost at
this time. It became easier to see all of the information out there suggesting that a “Sheiko”
program was flawed.
I knew it was not flawed. Sheiko had unheralded success running his methods with the
Russian national team. His methods clearly worked, arguably better than anyone else’s.
Why did they work so well for the Russian national team and why did they stop working so
well for my team?
Around this time I was introduced to the work of John Kiely by a colleague and friend. The
first paper that I read of his was titled “Periodization Paradigms in the 21st Century:
Evidence-Led or Tradition Driven.”
This article gave me hope again. I am half joking with that, but it spoke loudly to me. As a
coach struggling to understand why well-followed general principles were not working as well
as expected, this was exactly what I needed to hear.
In this article Kiely pointed out some very interesting facts:
1.
Classic periodization models assume that established time frames exist for the
development and retention of fitness skills
2. Various fitness attributes are developed in sequence
3. Training structures, time frames, and progressions can be generalized across various
athletic groups
4. It assumes that adaptation follows a predictable course and future adaptations can
be forecasted
These are just not true when they are applied in the real world. Science has come a long
way since the introduction of stress into the literature. Classic periodization, as well as
myself, assumed that mechanical stress was the only stress that matters since it is easily
measurable. We know this is not true.
Stress research has come a long way since Hans Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome. In
one of Kiely’s other pieces, “Periodization Theory: Confronting an Inconvenient Truth” he
goes into details about this topic.
I am going to quote a key point from this paper directly:
“Fitness adaptations, subsequent to imposed training stressors, are greatly influenced by the
neuro and bio-chemical backdrop upon which training stimuli are overlaid. This
neurobiological context is, in turn, greatly influenced by background levels of
psycho-emotional stress and the set of emotional expectations and interpretations
associated with imposed training challenge.”
The colleague that sent me this article I will name for this conversation is Mike Amato. Mike
is a physical therapist out of Boston PT and Wellness. He is the physical therapist that
works closely with our team. His co-workers Steph Allen and Zak Gabor as well.
We are constantly communicating the ideas about pain science and how strength
development shares similar mechanisms. Upon reading that passage something just clicked
for me. John Kiely was discussing modern stress research using the same language as
modern pain science.
At this moment in time I began to realize that I was searching for information in the wrong
places. Kiely was pointing out the flaws in the current periodization literature. This extends
much further than periodization. This extends to strength and conditioning research as a
whole.
We have these principles that we believe to be true for no other reason than “Just because.”
The old timers have passed down these stories and beliefs. The “all too smart for his own
good” new lifters and coaches are using this old science to backup their current thinking.
Instead we should be listening to the old-timers and trying to understand why certain ideas
worked.
Don’t get me wrong, this science is important, but it is a mere pixel in a much larger picture.
A picture that forms a fractal. A fractal is defined as a geometrical figure where each part
has the same statistical character as the whole. A shape that goes onto infinite.
The “GAS curve” that many use to explain a period of overload, followed by a decrease in
training stress, followed by supercompensation, does not apply to strength training. It is
misguided research that misguides coaches today. However, we know that programs that
follow those principles do work. They actually work more often than not. This doesn’t mean
that we can’t do better.
We all too often disregard the ones that these methods do not work for as error. These
outliers are not errors. Those outliers are there to teach the coach how to better improve
their methods.
As coaches and lifters following a classical periodization model, such as a linear approach to
training. They count backwards from a competition a certain number of weeks and write a
plan to “peak” for that day.
This assumes a linear approach to training and follows that Selye GAS model of stress. We
assume that if we gradually apply an overload, followed by a deload or tapering period, that
we will get supercompensation and be our strongest for competition day.
Those that have been involved in the sport for some time will know that this plan works
sometimes, but does not work others. They also know that strength is not a linear process.
There are progressions and regressions.
Most of which are completely unpredictable. The model outlined above assumes that we
can predict training outcomes. That if we backtrack from a date, we apply overload, taper
appropriately, results are guaranteed.
The human body is a complex dynamical system. You can not apply linear math here to
predict outcomes. There are far too many variables that we know of to do this. This does
not include all of the variables we have yet to discover.
Let us think about this for a minute. We have a strong belief that hormones affect strength
development. This is why steroids are a popular performance enhancing drug. Let us just
look at one hormone. We will use testosterone here.
Testosterone has daily, weekly, and monthly cycles all on its own. We know certain lifestyle
activities can affect testosterone production. For example, lack of sleep and high amounts of
stress tends to lower testosterone production.
Just that one hormone alone can be affected in so many ways that it can result in positive or
negative training outcomes. Testosterone production is stimulated by another hormone,
gonadotropin-releasing hormone.
This hormone has a number of variables that can positively and negatively affect its
production. See where I am going here? This can go on to infinity. This is just looking at
one hormone.
We know many different hormones are involved here. On top of that we can do the same
thing for sleep, nutrition, stress, genetics, and so on, just like we did for hormonal production.
The number of feedback loops is infinite.
Remember when I stated that many people would say I am losing my mind? This is what I
mean by the shape being a fractal and not a bell curve. These feedback loops are endless
and go on and on. You cannot simply put training within a bell curve.
That Selye Gas model only takes into account mechanical stress. We latch onto this model
because it is much easier for us to measure. As coaches we tend to love data. It makes us
feel more comfortable when we do not know the answers to questions.
I know because I have been there. When these unpredictable events occur, such as
strength not increasing, it gives us comfort knowing we have a lot of information to look at.
We look at this information and attempt to come up with a solution to a problem.
This is where I tell you that there is no solution. You are making a giant guess on what led
to the lack of progress. The other issue is that the person in front of you today is different
from the person that was in front of you yesterday, a week ago, a month ago, and a year
ago. This is where coaching experience is important.
Perhaps your solution would have worked if you had done it at that given time in which you
are looking at. This time around it may work, but it also may not work. If you believe general
principles to be true, without taking the individual into consideration, you can begin to bang
your head against a wall. Believe me, I have been here.
We really do love data. This usually starts day 1 with a coach. We have all of these
assessments that we love to do to gather data on our lifter or client before we even get
started. I used to do this as well.
I had this belief that the assessment I was doing was allowing me to perform my job at a
higher level. I actually believed that I was doing this for the better of the lifter or client at the
time. There are a few problems with this.
For one, these assessments do not tell us anything. No assessment has been proven to be
reliable and valid to predict injury risk or performance. This seems like a recurring theme
right? We as humans are extremely bad at predicting things.
This gets back to what I was saying about predicting training outcomes. There are just too
many variables to try to control and pay attention to. This is not a linear process. The
human body is a complex dynamical system that cannot be reduced to these linear
regressions.
These assessments can actually work against the coach. Having a lifter or client fail an
assessment is interpreted by them internally. Some may believe that they are at a higher
risk of injury due to failing the assessment. This part is not true, but our beliefs play a role in
physiological pain.
Perhaps they fail a single leg balance test and assume that they are at a higher risk of injury.
There is still a cultural belief out there that squatting is bad for your knees. Tie this into that
failed assessment.
We will take this even one step further, and say this person knows someone that hurt their
knee squatting. This person also witnessed their parents complain about pain and aging
quite a bit.
We have a nice setup here for some knee pain while squatting. This can all happen without
the coach saying one word. That failed test is interpreted by the lifter or client and that
interpretation gets mixed in with their other beliefs and experiences to formulate a new
hypothesis. This new hypothesis may be pain in the knee when squatting.
The other issue with the assessment is it assumes each human is the same. The
assessments are scored and given in an identical manner for each person. Every time you
reach for a cup of water you actually perform the movement differently.
If this is true, how can an assessment identify appropriate movement? It can’t because
appropriate movement has not, and will not be identified due to variability of the same
movement within the same individual. This doesn’t even account for the individual in
individual differences.
The body is always searching for a more efficient way to complete a task. This goes on for
the entirety of a person’s life. We have not identified the best way to move, and we should
not interfere with the body attempting to learn more efficient ways.
With that said, biomechanics matters for performance. As a coach we have our beliefs on
what this technique is. It is our job to help teach that technique to the lifter. We are always
assessing their performance, in terms of movement, because that is our job.
As a coach it is our job to talk to our lifters and get to know them. This can help you identify
their expectations, beliefs, and emotions about training. From there I like to put them in
positions they are unfamiliar with and train. Our job from here on is to just observe.
I think many coaches will have a hard time letting go of assessments because of our strong
ties to collecting data. Intuition is a form of data processing. Our minds are interpreting the
data we are getting from the conversation and from observing. From there, our experiences
as a coach can help us guide the behavior of the lifter.
This is a term I will use frequently throughout this book. Coaches need to embrace the
uncertainty of training. Understand that we don’t have any definitive answers and this is
more than ok.
Every hypothesis has been disproven at some point. What we know today will most likely
change in the future. It should, this is good, and this is called progress. As a coach we need
to understand this and embrace the theoretical aspects of training.
A good theory applies what we know, embraces philosophy, and leaves the door open for
new phenomena. The coach needs to be flexible and adaptable on a daily basis with the
lifters, but not so flexible that the day to day fluctuations alter the long term process.
Each day is different, and they are a different person. We are bad at predicting, but we do a
pretty good job of forecasting the weather. However, we are often wrong in the forecasting
here as well.
When the weather channel says there is a 10% chance of rain, in the long term, it usually
happens 10% of the time. You may expect it to be sunny on this day, but it actually rains.
We then complain about weather forecasting. This attitude is often seen in lifters when they
counter an unexpected day in the gym.
This is why the coach needs to be flexible and adaptable. If the weatherman calls for rain,
you most likely bring an umbrella with you. Do you still use that umbrella if it is sunny? No,
you adjust and will put the umbrella in your car or bag. This needs to be the same for
coaching.
In the gym, I feel we adjust in the opposite manner. We always predict it to be sunny, but
sometimes it rains. Sometimes things do not feel great warming up, sometimes the variation
is not giving the response in which we are looking for, sometimes things hurt. In all of these
situations the coach needs to adjust.
This may mean tweaking the exercise, the weight, and so on. It also may mean we just
need to have a conversation with the lifter and see where their head is at. Through this
conversation we can educate them and come up with a plan together for the day. This
process works best if it is a relationship and not a dictatorship.
I used to program in four week blocks and send that all at once. Again, this is assuming that
training is a linear process. Within these blocks I would have high, medium, and low stress
training days.
High stress training days would be above their daily acwr. These days were the ones where
we were applying overload and driving a training stimulus to force adaptation. Medium
stress days were right at baseline. This would be an acwr of 1.0.
These days were in to work on technique and maintain the strength acquired from the higher
stress days. These days allow the athlete to recover pretty quickly, but they still get in some
quality work.
A low stress day was placed in for recovery. At least every two weeks I would put in a very
low stress day for recovery. I was attempting to predict training by doing so. I was
predicting what days the lifter would feel great to hit those high stress days and what days
they would need for recovery.
It isn’t that these ideas are wrong. They are in fact true. Remember that general principles
are true until they are narrowed down for the individual. I got very good at applying general
principles and really understanding them from my time under Boris Sheiko. I now needed to
learn how to make this better for the individual.
There is also a high level of skill shown by Boris Sheiko in creating these programs. A skill
that he learned over his 40+ years of coaching in the strength sports. This was a skill that I
had not possessed yet. Also, my lifters are a bit different and time is a larger constraint.
There was a time that I did try to make this more individualized. I was observing that fatigue
and its effect on performance was very individualized. I tried to come up with a system that
allowed me to identify when someone would need a lighter day.
Again, this was me trying to make predictions. We can all guess where this story is going.
Anyways, I came up with this idea of fatigue points. I was not a huge fan of RPEs at this
time. It was more due to my lack of understanding of the training process than anything
else.
I forget exactly how I was attempting this, but each RPE was assigned a value. For those
unfamiliar with RPE. RPE stands for rate of perceived exertion. This follows a scale where
an RPE 10 means that the lifter could not do one more repetition. RPE 9.5 means that the
lifter could add weight, but maybe had one more rep.
An RPE 8 means that the lifter definitely had two more reps. RPE 8.5 they maybe had two
more reps. This goes on. We did not record anything under an RPE 6. Based off of the
point totals each week the lifter had some flexibility to go up or down.
This was very good at confusing the lifters and not very good at measuring fatigue. I quickly
scrapped this and came up with the intensity intervals that I discussed earlier. This thought
never left me though.
As I began to see more and more training unfold, I learned more and more about the
importance of individual variation within training. I just needed to figure out a way to
measure it so that I could give everyone an answer. Or so I thought.
I finally became so frustrated that I kind of just gave up. I wasn’t sure where to go again.
This was another instance of where I lost faith in my abilities. The universe is always looking
out for me though.
I was browsing some research articles on the internet and stumbled across “Dynamic
Systems Theory” research. I believe the first study I saw regarding dynamic systems was
explaining math.
Dynamic systems theory in mathematics is used to describe complex systems using
differential equations. This theory, to my limited understanding, as it relates to math is
focused on long-term qualitative behavior of the systems.
A quick Google search showed examples such as planetary orbits and the stock market. I
then saw a statement that said that the majority of modern research is focused on chaotic
systems.
This got my attention because of the term “chaotic systems.” I continued to research more
and saw that there were a lot of studies on dynamic systems theory of motor control. There
was quite a bit of research and it was pretty dense.
I reached out to Mike Amato again and asked what he knew about dynamic systems theory.
He seemed to get excited over this question which was good to see. He sent over a picture
of a textbook.
This textbook was titled “Dynamics of Skill Acquisition: A Constraints-Led Approach” by Keith
Davids, Chris Button, and Simon Bennett. I immediately ordered a copy, but felt I needed a
more introductory book to start.
I found “Nonlinear Pedagogy in Skill Acquisition: an Introduction” by two of the same
authors, Keith Davids and Chris Button as well as Chow and Renshaw. I decided to start
here since the authors were the same.
I am glad I did as this gave a very nice overview that was easy to understand. This began to
really resonate with me. After the introduction, I read the book that Mike suggested and
began implementing it with my group.
The ironic thing is that I was always trying to accomplish this with the program. Basically,
this was explaining the dynamical system approach of developing skill in sport. I will break
this down in great detail in a later chapter, but for simple understanding it suggests to alter
constraints (this is usually the lift itself in powerlifting) to give the lifter an experience to help
improve their skill.
Again, it is much more complex than this and we will get into those complexities. I got a third
book titled “Motor Learning in Practice” by a few of the authors of the other two books, Keith
Davids and Ian Renshaw as well as Savelsbergh. This picked up right where the previous
book left off.
This one gave a lot of examples on how to utilize a constraints-led approach in sport. These
examples I found very helpful as I attempted to make the connection to powerlifting.
I noticed that technique was getting much better with my lifters and their lifts were really
starting to go up. I read about deeply ingrained motor patterns and how we needed to
destabilize them in order to allow a new one to take its place.
Basically, we perceive movement before it occurs. We predict what the sensory feedback
will be and we preplan a motor strategy. We complete the reps and receive sensory
feedback. This feedback allows us to update our perceived motor pattern before we lift,
hopefully making it more efficient.
I would use variations that would punish bad technique. Like I said, in some cases removing
the competition lift all together. I was following the guidelines of this theory. It suggested
removing the inefficient skill for a period of time.
After removing the comp lifts for anywhere from four to eight weeks, I would bring them back
in and see some massive improvements. Not only in technique, but in the weight that was
being lifted. This wasn’t just for one or two of the lifters, but all of the ones I was using this
system with.
This got my buy in to the theory. I noticed that within this theory there isn’t any mention of
biomechanics outside of for optimal performance. This really got my head spinning. We
choose to use variations often because one may work the quads more, or the hips more.
We identify weaknesses in the lifts by identifying weak muscle groups. I had heard that a lot
of the Eastern Europeans did not believe that technical breakdowns in the lifts were due to
weak muscle groups. They believed it was just poor skill.
The fact that they brought the word “skill” into this discussion made me think it was a sign
from the universe. This would explain why one exercise would work for one person, but not
another with the same technical breakdown.
Learning a skill is exactly that, learning. Everyone learns differently and at different rates.
This is due to having different emotions, perceptions, and beliefs among other things. I
stopped trying to have an answer on what was causing the lift to breakdown and stopped
using these universal “fixes” for those breakdowns.
I just observed each lifter. From observing each lift I came up with tweaks to exercises and
some totally new ideas. I became much more successful at identifying the right exercise for
the lifter at the right time. I was beginning to individualize the general principles I learned
from Sheiko. I also kept in mind the biomechanics and what muscles need to be targeted. I
did not throw that out completely as I do feel it plays a role.
We were self-organizing technique, but I needed to find a way to do this with the rest of
training. This would end up taking me a while to come up with a solution. I was clearly on
board with this dynamic systems approach. I couldn’t read enough about it.
At this point I will be honest. I was only reading things to confirm my bias of the theory. I
was excited, what can I say? I was having a lot of conversations with Mike, Steph, and Zak
regarding this theory.
In one of the conversations, Mike mentioned a book. This book was titled “Chaos: Making a
New Science” by James Gleick. I remembered reading about chaos when I first stumbled
upon dynamic systems theory information.
This was another sign of the universe. This book really resonated with me and the sport of
powerlifting and altered my thinking. This would ultimately help me come up with a program
to self-organize volumes and intensities. My emotions may have gotten the best with me
here, but it was a great learning experience.
I am seeing the importance of self-learning in training. At this point I have thrown away all
the percentages that we were using before and we just began working up to what I called
hard sets.
Each lifter would work up to one to two of these sets. These sets would be heavy. I wanted
them at an RPE 8.5 or higher and I would rather them overshoot than undershoot. I had
learned the hard way that lifting light weights does not prepare the lifter to hit maximal
weights.
I began to understand Kiely’s words about the importance of the psychosocial parts. I read
an editorial by Franco Impellizzeri, Samuele Marcora, and Aaron Coutts titled “Internal and
External Training Load: 15 Years On.”
This editorial was really eye opening. The researchers discussed how coaches were super
focused on external loads because they are easy to measure. This was me with all of the
data in my fancy Excel spreadsheets that I collected.
This article also suggests that the internal loads may be more important to progress than the
external loads. Basically, the psychophysiological responses are the ones that mediate
changes within the person. The external loads are nothing more than arbitrary numbers
without the internal conceptualization of that load by the individual lifter.
This is where I scrapped the acwr as well as all of the external load data that I collected
previously. Instead we began to use a mood score upon entering the gym, RPEs of sets,
and end of session score to monitor training.
The only external load data I decided I needed was performance. I base this off of an
estimated 1RM. This objective measure helps to ensure that my confirmation bias is not
dictating training decisions.
Ultimately performance measures how well everything is working. I stopped looking for
answers and instead spent more time observing and communicating with my lifters. I trusted
my intuition in how to guide the training process.
I was no longer bound to the structure of a program. I altered exercises, frequencies, sets
(number of hard sets), and reps based off of what I saw in training and the information that I
was gathering from our conversations.
I was learning how to bend and mold the general principles for each individual lifter. I was
also learning how to continuously bend and mold that same structure for the ever changing
individual in front of me. Remember that fractal? This is what I picture training to look like
here.
This editorial by Impellizzeri explains why general principles are true until they are narrowed
down to the individual. This is due to those psychophysiological factors. Each person brings
to training a different set of emotions, beliefs, and experiences.
A 500lb squat to one person can feel very different to another as well. The number on the
bar is an arbitrary number until the lifter puts some context to it with their perceived training
effort. The same can be said for volume as well. If a lifter perceives the volume in training
to be adequate, it probably is.
For those looking at volumes as the main driver of performance, I would say to be careful.
We know volume is important. We know you cannot just perform one squat per month and
get stronger. However, what is the most optimal volume for someone?
It is impossible to know this. I kept track of this for over a year using the acwr. This ratio
was up to date with the lifter. Even then, I had no idea how far above baseline that I needed
to bring the volume to get desired results.
Sometimes I would get better than expected results by just programming around baseline for
a period of time. Other times I would really push those high ends of the ratio to drive
progress and the results would not be there. This flies in the face of the principle of overload
and Selye’s GAS model.
We know we need to do more than we are used to get stronger, but this can be
accomplished in a number of ways. Sheiko taught me that we can use variations to get an
increased perceived effort from lighter weights. I took this and combined it into a
constraints-led approach. We will get this perceived effort in positions that punish inefficient
technique.
Instead of using volumes to drive progress, I switched to a more intensity driven program.
This is where the hard sets came in. The one to two sets taken at an RPE 8.5 or higher.
These should be very heavy and I would rather them overshoot than undershoot since this is
where we are getting our training stimulus, the overload.
So the programs went from being very data driven and based off of volumes, to more
intuitive driven based off of intensity. The emphasis regarding technique stayed the same.
Instead of using Sheiko’s exercises I was following a constraints-led approach.
We no longer are writing a number of sets in the programs, just exercise, weight, and
suggested hard set weight. The lifter has the power to adjust all aspects of their training
using me as a tool. My job is to guide them to self-organize into more efficient technique
and the right volumes and intensities for them.
This went really well for a period of time. Totals were blowing up and confidence was
growing. What I was witnessing was truly mind blowing and making me question everything
I knew.
If you follow along with my blog and podcast, you have heard these thoughts and these
questions. I thought I stumbled onto something no other coach or lifter has ever tried.
However, I would need to adjust again.
After about 6 months of pushing it we began to see some nagging issues pop up as well as
some psychological burnout. I had rules in place for when the lifters should take lighter
days, but they would not do that. A part of coaching is protecting the lifter from themselves.
We were becoming too reactive to the day to day changes instead of being proactive in our
planning. There is always going to be some reactive measures taken by the coach, but the
whole program should not be like that. There needs to be a better plan in place.
I also began to lean towards separating training into pieces. There is no way to get better at
lifting heavy singles than actually lifting heavy singles. This works better than heavy sets of
2 to 5 reps. However, technique breaks down quite a bit during these singles.
This is where the constraints-led conjugate approach comes into the picture. We can use
positions for max effort that punish poor technique and only leave the options for better
technique to complete the rep. We can then use the other training slots to use lighter
weights to really focus on the technical aspects.
This also forces the lifter to take lighter days in their training. This is very important for
continued long term success. Our programs went back to being more structured, but flexible
within the structure.
Dynamic Systems Theory:A Constraints-Led Approach
I was fortunate enough to be guided along this journey into powerlifting by some of the
greats of the sport from my early days. Two months into starting this powerlifting journey
and I met the legendary Russian coach, Boris Sheiko.
He did his first ever American seminar at the facility in which I was working in at the time. All
I knew about Sheiko were his accolades that I read on the internet and what I heard others
say about him.
I worked at a gym that was filled with competitive powerlifters. Most of these were
“Westside” guys. They would tell me that Sheiko was not for beginners as there was way
too much volume. They also said that a lot of people get hurt doing it.
The interesting part is that this is now what people say about the Bulgarian Method. Since I
met Sheiko back in 2015, higher volume programs have kind of become the norm in the raw
powerlifting world.
In 2015, raw powerlifting was still pretty new. If I remember correctly, I believe that the first
IPF raw world championships were held in 2013. Raw powerlifting was and is still a
relatively new sport.
Equipped lifting was what powerlifting was. The popularity of Westside at this time had a lot
to do with America’s cultural beliefs about the sport. Westside had a much lower volume of
the competition lifts compared to many of the Eastern European programs out there.
Sheiko coming from Russia was a proponent of the Soviet System. This was a lot of
submaximal volume of the competition lifts. This volume made up about 80% (60% special
exercises, 20% competition lifts) of the total volume of the program. The other 20% came
from general physical preparedness (GPP) exercises.
This was very different from the max effort and dynamic effort days of Westside. As
humans, anytime that someone does something different than us we tend to always try to
explain it away with negatives.
In this case, too much volume in the Soviet System. That amount of volume will get you
hurt. The only reason that the Russians could handle it was because of drug use. Many got
broken from this system and the ones who survived were great. These were some of the
things I was hearing about this style of training.
Fast forward to 2019 and this is exactly what we hear about the Bulgarian Method. The
Bulgarian Method is very different from the Soviet System. They focus more on high
intensity than they do volume, but it is not low volume. The volume picks up over time as the
lifter matures.
In this method they work up to a max single, maybe multiple times per day. This was
primarily used in weightlifting, but certain concepts have been brought over into powerlifting.
This can be seen by the max effort day by Westside.
My point of this conversation is that cultural beliefs tend to swing things one way or the
other. Everyone will have a bias towards one way of training. Being objective, observant,
and understanding sound theoretical theories are extremely important for the coach.
Without an understanding of sound theoretical science that coach can get thrown around in
these cultural shifts of training. The coach also needs to understand the general principles
of training to ensure that they are steering their athletes in the right direction. If the coach
allows the latest fad to dictate decisions, this can lead to less than optimal results for the
lifters and a short career in the sport.
The theory that I latched onto as a coach is known as the Dynamic Systems Theory (DST). I
coupled this with the general principles of strength training and motor skill acquisition that I
learned from Boris Sheiko. Before we get into the details of this theory I will explain why I
chose this one.
I chose to work with Sheiko after he gave his seminar. What he was saying about
organizing training really resonated with me. Also, his emphasis on technique really spoke
to me at this time, and I still firmly hold onto the belief that technical perfection is a white
whale that every lifter should strive to catch.
As a coach at this time I was using a lot of assessments and corrective exercises to attempt
to “perfect” movement patterns. This was a very popular trend within the fitness community
at the time and as of the writing of this book it still is.
It wasn’t until I began coaching strength athletes that I realized the deficiencies with these
assessments. Once you start measuring performance outcomes you can easily see the
flaws in your confirmation bias.
I liked what Sheiko had to say and I reached out to him to see if he would be willing to coach
me. I only had a couple months of training in powerlifting at this time so the timing was
perfect. I ended up working with him for 3 years until he no longer took on online lifters.
Even to this day we still keep in touch.
Technique being emphasized as the most important aspect of training was instilled into me
from day one. Variations made up 60% of my total training volume. These variations were
selected based off of the technical breakdowns of my lifts. Sheiko often referred to these as
special exercises.
Sheiko used a percentage based training system. The top sets very rarely went over 85% of
1RM. The intensity instead came from the variation. A pause squat at 75% of 1RM is more
difficult than a competition squat at the same weight for the same repetitions.
All of the variations were performed in competition stance and with competition grip. This
was for maximal carryover to the main lifts. Volume was tracked and progressed over time.
Number of lifts and average intensities were also tracked.
This laid the foundation for my beliefs for what works in this sport. I did my best to mimic
these programs with a few lifters that I was coaching for free to learn how to coach. This
system worked extremely well, until it didn’t.
I do want to interject here briefly. The system was not what was broken. I was
inexperienced as a coach and my inability to navigate the uncertainty of adaptation in a
complex system was the issue here. However, we learn by trying new things and observing
the outcomes. Experience is a great teacher over the long haul.
I personally saw continued success the entire time I trained with Sheiko. I hit a new best
performance at every competition I did under him. Over a three year period this is amazing.
My lifters were not having the same success as I was having. Again, my inexperience was a
major factor here. You can’t just run the numbers and expect results. There is much more
to training as I would learn.
My lifters would increase their performances over time, but there were occasions when
competitions would not go so well. I would select exercises based off of the breakdowns in
the lifts just like Sheiko was doing for me.
I realized that technique would look really good in training, but it would break down under
heavier weights. I also noticed that a few of my lifters were getting very nervous at
competitions.
I also realized that sometimes a variation would work to improve an inefficiency and other
times it would not. This was confusing to me because I was definitely identifying the area of
the issue and using a “correct” exercise to fix it.
I had read Kiely’s work at this time and began altering training a little bit. I was giving more
freedom to the lifters in choosing weights based off of how they felt and this seemed to work
a bit better.
I altered the tapering strategies leading into a meet. With Sheiko I would test 17-22 days
away from competition. From there volume would drop off significantly, but intensity only
gradually. However, the week after the test the most weight I would touch would be 80% of
1RM for a single.
I decided to change this and keep things a bit heavier for longer. We would take around a
second attempt at the beginning of the week following the test and an opener at the end of
that week. Really light week the week of to keep technique sharp and then we execute on
the platform.
This worked much better than it did before. I was seeing a trend that was showing the
importance of intensity with my lifters. I was still only halfway there though. What I learned
later on is that for strength we need to lift heavy as often as possible.
Specificity was another of those cultural shifts occurring in the powerlifting world. Coaches
preaching that you only needed to perform the competition lifts with varying rep ranges and
intensities to see results. Many of these coaches have very strong lifters. Another thing
worth noting here is intensity is more than just a percentage of 1RM. Intensity is an internal
piece. The lifters that tend to see the most success bring this intensity to all of their sets and
reps, they are not just performing the sets and reps to just perform them. They have
purpose and intent.
As I was beginning to doubt myself and look for more answers, I wondered if variability in
training was truly necessary. I trusted Sheiko, who believed it was. Could it be that varying
intensities and rep ranges was really all that you needed?
Did the variations need to be in the same stances that we are going to compete in to be
effective? I was questioning this and decided to see if there was any literature on the
subject. There wasn’t literature on variability in powerlifting, but there was a lot of literature
on variability for sports performance and injury prevention.
This is where I stumbled upon the DST. I reached out to my network of smart people and
asked what they knew about this subject. I was directed to a textbook that was described to
me as the “bible” of DST.
This was “Dynamics of Skill Acquisition: A Constraints-Led Approach.” I read this textbook
as well as a couple others that I listed in the introduction of this book. I also read as much
research about the subject matter as I could.
I realized that I was attempting to apply the principles of this theory without understanding
this theory. This was really eye opening for me. Let us get into what DST is and how it
applies to powerlifting.
To re-emphasize, classical training views the lifter as a mechanical machine. In terms of
powerlifting we often hear that this exercise is a good one to build this muscle group within
the lift. Most studies use EMG to see what muscles are more active at certain positions with
various bars and stances.
I am not going to say that this research is useless. It has a place. However, what does it
really tell us? It misses a major component of the human being. Kiely highlighted some of
this in his articles.
Humans are not mechanical machines. They are complex open systems. Remember from
middle school science when we learned about thermodynamics that an open system shares
energy and materials with the surrounding environment.
Humans self-organize based off of their emotions, beliefs, culture, psychology, as well as the
environment. Self-organization, or spontaneous order, is when order arises from
interactions within the organism. This is spontaneous and does not need external influence.
Classical theory is lacking due to its inability to consider these self-organizing tendencies of
the organism. Carlotta Torrents and Natalia Balague discuss this in their article “Dynamic
Systems Theory and Sports Training.”
Classical theory has a backbone of the coach dictating behavior of the athletes instead of a
learner first model. The coach will provide feedback to the athletes telling them an optimal
way to move. Any deviation from this way of moving is usually deemed as an error.
Let us look at this from a powerlifting perspective. We see coaches all of the time provide
feedback on the best way to lift. The best way to lift has never been defined in the literature.
This doesn’t mean that there is not a more efficient way to perform the lifts. I absolutely
believe that there is a best way. This also does not mean that the coach should not supply
feedback. However, the athlete can become too reliant upon the feedback from the coach
instead of from the exercise or drill itself.
Sheiko has collected data from hundreds of national level lifters. There are some trends
amongst the world’s best. I do coach according to these trends. However, there are
individual differences.
Some simple individual differences with the squat are bar placement and foot width. Grips
can vary on the bench press as well as the arch height and some people prefer to pull
conventional deadlifts, while others prefer to pull sumo style.
Our job as a coach is to help guide the lifter to self-organize into the techniques that work
best for them at this current point in time. Remember that the human is an open, non-linear,
dynamic system. What is best now and what works now, may not be best later on, or work
later on. In other words, the lifter’s strengths and weaknesses will always be changing.
In the classical theory the coach will dictate behavior of the lifter often through the use of
verbal feedback. This is a coach centered way of coaching. In a DST approach the coach
will guide the lifter through varying constraints.
There are three types of constraints in a constraints-led approach. These three constraints
are the performer, the environment, and the task. The performer in this case would be the
lifter.
The lifter’s height, weight, and anatomical makeup are part of this. These may dictate what
is most comfortable for the lifter and some of their strengths and weaknesses. This goes far
beyond just physical makeup.
The lifter’s emotions, perceptions, beliefs, psychology, and cultural upbringing are also part
of this constraint. These often get overlooked in the coaching process. I am going to go
back to my experiences with Sheiko to explain this.
Sheiko saw a seven year run of being undefeated in international competition in Russia
while running his system. His system here did not have that same amount of success with
my lifters, or the ones using his templates.
For one, I am not Boris Sheiko. My relationship with my lifters are different. My lifters are
also very different from his lifters. In Russia they go to schools to learn the sport of
powerlifting.
The sport of powerlifting is a subject taught at these schools. The Russian students learn
about the principles of strength training in these schools. Their beliefs are developed over
this period of time.
They are taught to believe that the Soviet System is the best way to train. They are also
taught that they have the greatest coaches on the planet. These beliefs in the training
program and the coach helps lead to the success of the athletes.
Here in America we do not have these same schools. Lifters tend to get involved in the
sport at a much later age. When they do get involved in the sport they will look to other
lifters as well as the internet for information.
In their search for information they will come across many different ideas on what is the best
way to train. Often these ideas are contradictory. This will often lead the lifters to attempt
many different programs.
They will often begin one program that resonates with them. They will perform this program
until it no longer is giving the desired effects. They will typically blame the program here for
the lack of progress and try something else.
The novelty of the new program will drive new results. This pattern will continue to repeat
itself over time. This leads to a certain cultural belief within the sport of powerlifting here in
America.
For one, most lifters believe that the program is the main driver of results. This places a
large emphasis on external factors to drive success. This is contrary to what the literature
suggests about self-efficacy. Also, remember that external factors are not required for
spontaneous order aka self-organization.
An article written by Gilson, et. al. in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning titled “An
Examination of Athletes’ Self-Efficacy and Strength Training Effort During an Entire
Off-Season” covers this topic of self-efficacy. To quote the article:
“Over the past 30-plus years in which self-efficacy (or confidence at a task) has been
researched, findings have shown that in almost every domain of human functioning,
self-efficacy positively relates to effort, persistence, and other adaptive behaviors.” I do want
to mention that there is a body of literature that disagrees with this focus on self-efficacy.
Self-efficacy was defined by Albert Bandura as one’s belief in one’s ability to succeed in
specific situations or to accomplish a task (1977). Self-efficacy is built by the coach/athlete
relationship. I will argue that this may be the most important aspect of training. Far more
important than the program itself.
The coach/athlete relationship with Sheiko, I would guess, was very strong. This would
explain why the athletes using his templates did not see the same results as the ones being
coached by him. One of many factors that are involved in this.
American lifters do not seem to have this same sense of self-efficacy. They do not possess
the same internal factors that the Russian lifters do. This is an educated guess based off of
the different cultures built around the sport and based off of the emphasis that the American
lifters put on the program and the emphasis of the coach/athlete relationship in the Eastern
European countries.
In the gym we call this developing the skill of training. It is the coach’s job to educate the
lifter to make the best decisions for training based off of each day. This requires the coach
to know about the lifter’s personal life as well as their strengths and weaknesses while lifting.
These are some of the important performer constraints that the coach needs to be aware of.
These can only be identified through getting to know each lifter and keeping in constant
communication. The lifter will always be bombarded with new information from social media
and the internet. This is a constant battle for many coaches.
I have had lifters that hired me as a coach, to then decide to go in another direction after
only a couple of months. This was not enough time for me to learn about them as a lifter
and as a person. Results should not be expected right off of the bat, but instead the lifter
should understand that this is a long journey and that the more the coach learns about the
lifter, the better the long term results.
The second constraint is the environment. This includes the actual physical environment.
Most of this stuff is not within our control. Our team trains out of a warehouse space in New
England.
In the winter the gym is very cold and in the summer it is very hot. There is nothing we can
do about this. A competition might have more people and a different environment than
training. This is one reason I feel competing often is a good idea.
The environmental constraints are not just physical. They are socio-cultural as well. For
one, cultural beliefs are part of the physiological strength. This will be a theme that is
expressed throughout this whole book. Beliefs matter.
We hear this all of the time in elite sports. Locker room chemistry matters. All it takes is one
person that can upset that chemistry leading to a decrease in performance for the whole
team.
In team sports, this makes a lot of sense. The team is an open complex system on the
playing field. The team needs to self-organize into offensive and defensive sets. The more
they are on the same page the better they will be.
I will take this even a step further and this is nothing more than a theory that I have. A team
that hangs out with each other and gets along outside of the playing field, will actually show
greater performance on the field.
I am from Boston, so I am naturally a New England Patriots fan. Tom Brady and Bill
Belichick always get lunch together during the season. Brady invites his wide receivers over
to his house during the off-season where they toss around the football, but they also hangout
with his family. I believe these little things go a long way to being on the same page on the
football field. The results speak for themselves.
I believe that when we are having fun as a group, we will hit more personal records. Fun
increases motivation and we know that increased motivation leads to increased
performance. There is a time to be serious, but a lot of this sport is resting between efforts.
We lift heavy as often as we can, while ensuring adequate recovery. This requires
teammates to spot each other. This high intensity environment also naturally gets everyone
cheering each other on. This also increases motivation.
Lifters will discuss training with one another as well. This can help the lifter make better
decisions while training. The group setting also helps to create buy in with the program and
with certain exercises that the lifter may not like.
The lifter will see others doing similar exercises and hopefully getting stronger with them.
They will also have conversations with other lifters about the exercise. This can help create
buy in with the exercise and increase training effort by the individual.
This culture is not necessarily an easy thing to create in the powerlifting world. I am
fortunate enough where I get to see the majority of my lifters on a daily basis. However, I do
have quite a few that are online.
This is where technology can play a major role. We have a large group text chat. This helps
bring the distance athletes closer to the group as they can be a part of conversations.
Instagram can actually play a pretty important role here as well.
I have my lifters, both in-person and online, post their training videos on an Instagram
account. This allows me to see their training when I am writing their programs. This also
allows the other lifters to follow along with their progress.
The other lifters will often comment with words of encouragement or support. It is actually
pretty amazing to watch. I thoroughly believe that PRs are contagious and my experiences
confirm this bias.
The last constraint is the task. This is the easiest one to alter and the one that gets the most
attention. This would be altering the squat, bench press, and the deadlift. You can do this
with weight, repetitions, equipment, or varying the lift in any way that you can imagine.
These constraints need to be altered in a learner centered way to help guide them to
self-organizing into more efficient technique and a bigger total. I don’t just view the
technique of powerlifting as a skill. I actually view strength as a skill. Whether this is right,
wrong, or partially correct I don’t think it matters as it allows me to follow this framework.
When a coach latches onto a theoretical framework he or she needs to understand what it is
and what it isn’t. The coach must also understand that this only works if you buy into the
theoretical framework completely.
It does not work if you use pieces from one framework and pieces from another that may
have contradictory parts. The coach must have a very strong understanding of the
theoretical framework as well. Just understanding the basic guidelines is not enough. This
is very complex, but can be explained in a very simplistic way that actually misses the mark
when it is put into practice.
Oftentimes in the powerlifting world we view training from a reductionist approach. Coaches
tend to like certain exercises because they may target muscle groups that the coach
believes are weak based off of the technique of the lifter.
For example, coaches might choose front squats to help strengthen the quads of a lifter that
has the chest falling forward on the way up in a squat. Research has suggested that this
inefficient technique is due to weak quads because in the bottom position of the squat the
knee extensor demands are the greatest.
I used these viewpoints for a period of time. It is hard not to. As humans we like to have
answers and this reductionist view gives us answers. This just was not holding up in my
observations. I do like front squats to strengthen the upper back.
I would utilize variations that would “stress the quads” more and blast the quads with
accessory work. Sometimes this would help fix that technique and other times it would not.
Sometimes it would fix that technique, but it would not increase the lifter’s 1RM.
As I started reading more about DST, I started to get this gut feeling. I also needed
something to create buy in for me as a coach. I am unaware of anyone else in the
powerlifting world utilizing this type of theory in their training. I think on the surface it may
seem like a lot, but their reasoning will fall back into this reductionist view.
I decided to take a few lifters that had the inefficient technique of the chest falling forward out
of the hole on the squat. I decided that a high bar wide stance squat would punish that
inefficient technique.
With the chest more upright and the feet wider, if the lifter pitches forward out of the hole
they will fall over. I liked this because the literature says that a wide stance squat targets the
hip extensors more than the quads. This was the opposite of what the literature said is the
reason for that inefficient technique.
I want to say something about high bar first. High bar squats tend to lead to about 10
degrees more knee flexion. This would put more emphasis on the quads. This is when we
compare bar position to the same foot position in the lift.
The wider stance takes this extra knee flexion away. A lifter typically will not get as deep on
a wide stance squat as they will with their feet closer together. In comparing videos of the
lifters this is exactly what I saw. We also see a more vertical shin angle, limiting the quads
involvement.
To my amazement, this improved the lifter’s positions as well as increased their 1RM. I was
sold that this was the correct approach. It was time to learn as much as possible about this
theory.
I had read a few textbooks about it up to this point. “Nonlinear Pedagogy in Skill Acquisition:
An Introduction”, “Dynamics of Skill Acquisition: A Constraints-Led Approach”, and “Motor
Learning in Practice.” I read them in that order and they flowed extremely well.
All of those books have extensive reference lists to get through as well. This was also
extremely helpful. Keith Davids seems to be the most popular researcher in this theory as
he is an author of all three of those books and much of the research that I have seen.
If I am going to begin to alter the task constraints, I needed to learn more about movement
variability and how that leads to increases in performance. There was a fantastic article
written by Ashesh Dhawale, Maurice Smith, and Bence Olveczky titled “The Role of
Variability in Motor Learning.”
This paper is not specifically about DST, but it covers an interesting perspective on variability
and its role in learning. We are often led to believe that variability in movement is bad.
I have preached this before. If you read some of my older articles you will see my
discussions on developing stable movement patterns. I would advocate for every repetition
looking the exact same.
If they all looked different we would be training a completely different movement pattern. I
would say that this variability in movement patterns would lead to an unstable movement
pattern that is more easily broken down under heavier weights.
This article discusses variability from a different viewpoint. It views variability as
the body’s attempt to learn. This article specifically mentions reinforcement learning theory.
This theory suggests that the body is learning through a process that seeks to maximize
movement based off of rewards for being right.
This article was my introduction into the predictive processing theories of the brain. This
covers motor control as well. This is very complex and outside of the scope of this book, but
it is worth covering briefly now.
We actually perceive movement before it actually occurs. These perceptions occur in a
hierarchical nature and are both conscious and subconscious. We then perform the
movement and receive sensory feedback. This feedback allows us to update our
premovement perceptions.
This is how we learn in terms of motor control. We will discuss the details of how we actually
select a given pattern later on, but for now just know that our experiences, emotions, and
beliefs all play a role in this.
I would later learn of Bayesian statistics. Basically, Bayesian statistics picks a probability
with the lowest amount of predicted error. As it gets feedback, that chosen probability will be
updated with the new information. This explains training to me. This theory is more than
likely extremely flawed, but it gives a nice perspective on how perception seems to effect
movement.
Getting back to movement variability. To re-emphasize, because I think it is important,
movement variability is not a bad thing. It should not be viewed as an error. It is a normal
and natural phenomenon that influences our lives, our physical accomplishments, and our
health according to Guido Van Rysssegem in his article “Movement Variability-Science and
Practical Application.”
This seems like a very dramatic response to movement variability. However, healthy
populations are seen with an optimal amount of movement variability while unhealthy
populations tend to have less. This is why movement is so important to the rehabilitation
world.
Movement variability gives the performer the advantage of being able to adapt to any task.
For example, every time we reach for a glass of water our movements are different. This
benefits us in life as the glass may be surrounded by obstacles, on a higher shelf, or a
different size each time that we go to reach for it. The human body is always searching for a
more efficient way to accomplish a task. This is known as the Principle of Dynamic
Organization.
Studies have shown a relationship between movement variability and performance as well
as movement variability and injury risk. With that said, too much or too little variability can be
a detriment to performance and increase injury risk.
This is contrary to the studies and coaches that believe there is one way to optimally perform
a task. According to DST, the human body self-organizes to a solution that is most stable to
performance. Our job as the coach is to guide this process.
These optimal positions will always be changing as well. There may be a period of time
where an athlete prefers to pull sumo style deadlifts. Later on this may change and they
may prefer to pull conventional style deadlifts. This is the non-linear process of skill
acquisition. Strengths and weaknesses are always changing.
We need to find a balance between enough variability to guide the process and and not too
much or too little. There is a period of time for the lifter to learn the task. If we have a lifter
that pulls conventional style deadlifts pull sumo style, there will be a transition process.
The lifter will utilize variations in all max effort, dynamic effort, and repetition work. This
allows the lifter to practice the skills required in the sport under various conditions. These
skills include absolute strength, technical efficiency, and the rate of force development.
Lifting heavy also challenges the emotions of the lifter. Remember emotions and beliefs are
an important piece of physiological strength as well as skill acquisition. This is one way
where we can target more components of the whole human in front of us.
In terms of variability for exercise selection, I believe we need to clarify one thing. I am sure
that many people reading this will read the information above and think we need some
variation and competition lifts at the same time.
I do not believe this to be true necessarily. Who is to say what is specific and what is not?
We are looking more for transference of skill and strength here. Moving our feet a couple of
inches wider or closer on a squat does not change a squat that much. It gives the athlete a
different problem to solve. In fact, I tell my lifters that we do not have a comp stance until we
have a comp.
At the end of the day it is still a squat, performed within the rules of competition, with the
same equipment, and with a high amount of effort. By altering positions by a few inches, or
pausing, or whatever we decide to do, it does not change the movement that much.
This does not mean that we do not perform the competition lifts. We definitely do, especially
closer to a competition. However, the competition lifts are also a stimulus that the lifter can
quickly adapt to and stop seeing progress. I will remove them from the program for a period
of time to put them back in later on and use the novelty of the movement to drive progress.
Removing them for a period of time allows the lifter to truly explore other positions and to
see where their strengths and weaknesses lie.
If a lifter can hit close to the best competition numbers in a squat with a high bar wide stance
variation, we can safely assume that a new max will be achieved when we bring the
competition stance back in.
This exploration period also allows the lifter to see what feels best. They will often adjust
their competition stance when we bring it back into training after a period of variability. This
is the lifter self-organizing into the positions that work best at this given time.
This is also how we develop and attempt to maintain stable patterns. Remember that skill
acquisition is non-linear. It is always changing. Allowing the lifter to continuously explore
various positions can help keep up with the ever changing human.
If we keep things the same all of the time, when there is a regression, the lifter will not have
the tools to adapt and will see a lack of progress. These things will still happen throughout
the training process, but far less if we allow the lifters to explore positions.
If we have too little variability the lifter does not have the options to persevere. If we have
too much variability the system becomes noisy and does not know which options would work
best.
When a lifter first begins lifting or exploring a new variation, they will appear to be stiff and
uncoordinated. As the lifter gets used to the movement they become more fluid and we can
begin to stress it with heavier weights.
We then will reach a point where we begin to see performance in the lift level off. This is
where we need to change things up. We can use the same positions and alter it in another
manner, like with a pause, pins, bands, chains, boxes, or tempo if we feel there is more to be
gained. The coach may decide there is not more to be gained and decide to change up the
exercise altogether.
Interestingly enough, the amount of variation seen with a skill shows an inverse U pattern
with novices and high level athletes showing the most amounts of variability. This variability
in movement is obviously very different between the two.
We attempt to build well-rounded lifters here. This is my interpretation of this research.
Novices will perform similarly in multiple angles. The weights lifted will all be novice level
weights, but in the same vicinity of one another.
For example, a newer lifter with a 300lb competition squat, may be able to squat 280-300lbs
in both wide stance and close stance squats. An elite lifter is similar, except the weights will
be heavier.
An elite lifter with a 600lb squat may be able to squat close to 600lbs in different angles of
the squat. You see similar variability between angles between the novice and the elite lifter.
An intermediate lifter typically has an angle that is much weaker than other ones.
This does not mean that elite lifters do not show weaknesses. They absolutely do. The
coach just needs to be more creative to find them. This may be with the use of multiple
variations such as pins and bands together.
Movement variability may be important to injury reduction as well. Monotony seems to be
correlated to overuse injuries. The mechanisms for this may be outside of our
understanding. In fact, I can comfortably say that the mechanisms are unclear to me.
One theory behind the injury risk reduction piece is that varying movement disperses the
forces and avoids overload from one given angle. This seems very logical and may be true,
but my gut tells me that this is an inadequate explanation.
Some research has shown that patellofemoral pain decreased with an increase in movement
variability while running on a treadmill. This is an interesting correlation to me. Women have
higher incidences of ACL injuries when compared to men and show decreased variability in
cutting maneuvers when compared to men. This is also an interesting correlation.
We can look at back pain and see similar results. Those with back pain have increased
sway when standing or sitting, but increased rigidity in the spine. This increased rigidity
actually decreases movement variability. All of these articles are referenced in the Van
Ryssegem article which can be accessed for free.
Now that we understand the importance of movement variability with learning, performance,
and potentially a reduction in injury risk. We can now begin to understand why this is the
case. I am going to use an article written by Reza Shadmehr, Maurice Smith, and John
Krakauer titled “Error Correction, Sensory Prediction, and Adaptation in Motor control” to
explain it.
According to this article there are two problems with motor control that the body needs to
deal with. The first one is that sensory feedback is delayed and very noisy. The second is
that movement is variable as the environment and the body can both change.
This article looks at saccades to explain variability in movement that happens too quickly to
be the cause of only sensory feedback. A saccade is a rapid eye movement between fixed
points. This often happens very quickly without us even thinking about it.
People will actually increase velocities of saccades in participation of seeing a more
interesting stimulus. This change in movement occurs without sensory feedback. There has
to be something else that is predicting that feedback and altering movement accordingly.
Rewards being given or taken away will alter velocities of the movement as well.
Another interesting fact about saccades can be seen when we blink our eyes. This eye blink
is a perturbation to the task, but it does not seem to affect it at all. It seems that the brain
predicts this to occur and makes the appropriate motor commands regardless.
On the contrary, if we only relied on sensory feedback we would be in trouble as well.
Sensory feedback getting to the brain is delayed. We would be very inaccurate with our
movements if we waited for this information.
We actually pre plan a movement strategy based off of our predicted perception of the task.
This prediction is a hypothesis based off of the movement with the lowest prediction error.
We want to prove this hypothesis correct through sensory feedback. If this is true then why
wouldn’t our body just always select a motor strategy that would be considered good
technique? It would be nice if it worked that way, but it doesn’t. The body is also always
looking for more efficient ways to complete a task. This is known as the Principle of
Dynamic Organization.
Our emotions, experiences, and beliefs go into this motor strategy. If we are a newer lifter
we do not have a lot of experience to draw from. We may have feedback from other lifters
and we may have seen videos of people lifting on the internet.
If we are scared of lifting this can affect the strategy we choose. If we fear pain, it can
actually increase our likelihood of feeling pain. If we are scared of the weights it can also
negatively affect movement strategies.
If we believe a weight to be heavy, or we are motivated and confident, it can affect how we
perform the task. Remember we want these hypotheses to be proven correct through
sensory feedback.
If we fail with heavier weight or have certain technique breakdowns, we will most likely see
those things happen here. Don’t get me wrong sometimes the weight is just too damn
heavy. However, if we hypothesize that it will be heavy, these breakdowns would support
that hypothesis, making it correct.
In order to update these pre lift hypothesis, we need to structure training accordingly. This is
where we can alter the task to punish that technical breakdown. Failing lighter weights, or
receiving that technical breakdown with the lighter weights can help to restructure that
hypothesis.
The body learns that it cannot complete the task as it should by doing that and needs to
self-organize into a better strategy. We load that weight up and lift heavy and we can begin
to address the emotional needs tied to the lack of performance.
We get better at estimating our body in our perceptual world. Our brain is locked in a skull.
It cannot see the world. Instead it perceives it through our senses. This includes our
movement strategies.
Getting back to the saccades, the brain predicting where the eyes should move to and
receiving sensory feedback from the muscles allows the eyes to fixate on the appropriate
target with minimal error.
Understanding this concept, we need to be aware of the way in which we give instructions to
complete a task. The coach giving instructions is implying that there is one optimal way to
complete a task. This disregards the individual as well as the individual’s experiences,
emotions, and beliefs.
The lifter needs to understand the basic guidelines of the lift. This includes generalities with
technique as well as the rules of the lift in competition. Once they understand these, our
feedback as coaches can become much more minimal.
Our job is to instead place them in a position to receive the appropriate sensory feedback
and make the appropriate adjustments. The same can be said for visual feedback as well.
This can be the coach showing a lifter a video of another lifter.
This gets easier to understand when we understand the degrees of freedom problem.
Russian Scientist Nikolai Bernstein laid out the groundwork for the degrees of freedom in
1967. He was concerned with how the entire body was coordinated to perform simple to
complex tasks.
Bernstein theorized that as we are attempting to learn a movement that our body needs to
control the large number of degrees of freedom. In a simple explanation, the body will lock
up some of the degrees of freedom initially to make the movement strategy more simple and
easier to control..
This is done to make the new movement easier to perform for the learner. This would also
explain why movements tend to be rigid and appear uncoordinated when they are first
performed.
This “locking” up of some of the degrees of freedom would make sense to be a perceptual
piece of movement. Over time as the lifter gets more experience with the movement, and
more sensory feedback, these perceptions can be updated and more degrees of freedom
can be freed. Over time we begin to see more fluid movements take place.
Many will argue that novices should just practice the competition lifts in the beginning. I do
not necessarily think this is a bad strategy and it can definitely work. I just do not think that it
is best.
If the coach has a strong understanding of a Constraints-Led Approach (CLA), they can use
these ideas to guide the process effectively right from the start. I can see the argument for
watching them try to figure it out for a bit to see where we should actually start. I think either
can work effectively for powerlifting.
When I am teaching beginners, or using CLA to make technique more efficient, I will always
use a straight bar. Early on in my coaching of powerlifters, many of my co-workers loved to
use different bars in their training.
Bars like the safety squat bar, buffalo bar, cambered bars, and even bendy bars. I will use
these bars at times in place of the straight bar once the lifter has adequate technique with a
straight bar. Even then, the use of specialty bars makes up a very small percentage of our
lifts. This is more due to accessibility than efficacy in a lot of cases. Specialty bars are
another good way to give the lifter a different problem to solve.
There is a small amount of research performed on CLA and haptic information. When an
athlete holds a baseball bat, they receive information regarding the size, shape, and weight
of the object. This can determine some movement strategies.
If I gave a baseball player a heavier, or shorter bat, they would need to adjust their strategies
in order to make contact with a pitch. This may mean changing their position in the batter’s
box, or adjusting their swing timing.
I believe that this is what happens when we alter the bar in the sport of powerlifting and the
coach needs to take that into consideration. The bar feels much different to the lifter and
changes the way in which they approach the lift.
When we alter a constraint we need to have reasons. We are attempting to decrease
options to perform the lift. We want to take away less efficient options and leave only a
better option to choose from.
I don’t believe that specialty bars always do this. They just change the movement without
minimizing the options. For example, many coaches will utilize the safety squat bar in an
attempt to “fix” the pitching forward out of the hole in the squat.
The safety squat bar can make the lifter pitch more. However, pitching will not stop the lifter
from completing the task. This can actually make that inefficient technique more prevalent,
or more ingrained into the lifter’s perceptual movement strategies. With that said, there are
times that it can be implemented into training with a positive effect. Individual differences
matter here.
Bars such as the bendy Bamboo or Tsunami bars are never used with my group unless it is
the only option we have. These bars literally look like something out of a cartoon. They
bend aggressively creating an “unstable” movement. This is supposedly an attempt to target
the stabilizing muscles.
This misses the mark, mostly by a lack of understanding on how the human body works. We
are not just a bag of muscles. Our movements are more complex than what these exercises
suggest. In a CLA, I would argue there is no carryover to the competition movements using
these bendy bars.
As coaches, when we are altering constraints to maximize training, we need to understand
that individual’s intrinsic dynamics. Intrinsic dynamics include the individual’s genetics,
developmental status, past learning experiences, and social influences as well as physical
constraints.
To take a definition from Newell, we can think of CLA as changing constraints across
different timescales that are related to development and life experiences (2001). The
purpose of training is to practice with these constraints, to explore options, and self-organize
into the best strategies.
The coach’s role is to guide this process. Coaching in a CLA should not require much
feedback from the coach. The coach’s feedback can actually be a constraint that can have
negative effects on outcomes.
Instead, the coach should give the directions of the exercise and allow the movement to
provide the feedback. A squat is always completed with the rules of competition in mind.
The lifters know this. Altering bar position, foot position, or other task constraints should be
the feedback beyond this part.
There are some times where the coach needs to interject and explain something to a lifter.
However, many times it is best for the coach to just let the lifter lift. In many cases too much
cueing from the coach can lead to overthinking by the athlete, resulting in decreased
performance. Also, the lifter will likely move slower when they think too much. We definitely
do not want to move too slow under heavy weights.
According to Newell, learners go through three stages of learning. The first phase is
basically the athlete figuring it out. As we discussed earlier, in the beginning, many of the
degrees of freedom are “locked up” leading to more rigid movements.
Through practice a basic movement strategy is developed that allows the athlete to complete
the task. What emerges is a stable movement pattern for this athlete at this given time.
We are always perceiving. This means that these stable patterns can always be altered.
The human body never stops exploring. This can come from practice, but also from the
coach’s words, and even watching other lifters on social media and reading that information.
Stage 2 in Newell’s model is gaining control of coordinative structure. Once an athlete has
developed some basic strategies to perform a movement, they need to learn how to control
them to be able to adapt to changing constraints.
This may be the stage where the coach chooses to have the athlete perform the lifts in a
wide array of positions. This allows the athlete to explore all kinds of different positions and
see which ones feel comfortable and which ones that may need some improvements.
Once the coach has identified the angles that could use more practice, the coach can begin
to target those angles in training more frequently. The coach needs to observe and
intervene by changing the constraints when necessary.
If this is done well, the lifter will move onto Newell’s third stage which is skilled optimization
of control. This is where the athlete has developed a skill that is flexible and adaptable
under a large number of constraints.
Throughout this process the coach should be monitoring the progress of the athlete. This
includes how the variation is affecting the coordination of the lift, but also with estimated
1RM. At the end of the day, getting stronger is the goal.
Improvements in these altered positions should lead to more efficient and stronger lifts.
When we see this as coaches, we see the optimization of a skill. This does not mean that
our job is done and we have an elite lifter.
The body is always searching for a better solution. Discovery learning never ends. This is
also an ever-changing process. What works best now may not work best later on. This
constant exploration allows the lifter to always find the best movement strategies to increase
performance.
Retaining a skill is an important aspect that every coach would like to see from the athlete.
This can be difficult, because as an athlete ages and further develops things change. This is
a constantly flowing process.
Skills seem to be retained at greater levels if they are acquired over a variety of constraints.
This is assuming that practice time is significant enough to maintain some of those more
stable movement strategies.
I do want to mention something really quick about the transfer of skills. In the powerlifting
world it seems that coaches and athletes get very hung up on specificity and veer far away
from variability in training except for weight and reps.
Transfer occurs when one motor strategy is close to another. The literature has compared a
tennis serve to a volleyball serve as well as comparing throwing a javelin to throwing a
cricket ball.
There seems to be a transfer of skills from each of these movements into the other. If that is
the case, I think it is safe to assume that altering grips, stance width, and other constraints
within the same lift has a high degree of transfer.
I believe that the coaches and athletes that preach specificity would argue that those
examples would not have carryover into each other. Hopefully, seeing the literature can help
to get them thinking more. I choose to view specificity as heavy singles performed in the 3
lifts under the rules of competition. These are our max effort days. Singles are more
specific than high rep sets.
The coach’s ability to analyze the technique of the lifter is extremely important to this. The
coach needs to be aware of his or her confirmation bias. If the coach is unaware of this bias
they may teach the lift as if there is only one way to complete it successfully.
This is why tracking objective data is so important. The goal of the sport is to increase the
1RM of each lift on the platform. I choose to monitor 1RM of max effort exercises to keep
my bias in check.
This does not mean that the lifter hits a PR every week. This is not a linear process. There
will be regressions. The experience of the coach is important here. The coach does not
want to change things up too soon because sometimes this is just the lifter figuring the
movement out and actually in an adaptive phase.
I have had situations where I altered a constraint and it did not have the intended
consequence that I wanted. However, the lifter’s 1RM was increasing so I would leave it in.
The exact opposite has happened at times too.
I put a variation in, and it seemed to be having the intended consequences. Monitoring
performance allowed me to identify that it was not working as well as I thought and I was
able to make a change to training more quickly.
Learning is achieved with higher success rates when training matches the intrinsic dynamics
of the athlete. This comes from a strong relationship between the coach and athlete and
effective communication.
If the coach is not communicating effectively, the athlete may not understand the reason for
certain exercises, motivation can decrease, and performance can decrease. This may even
lead to the athlete seeking out a different coach.
Over time as my philosophy has changed and molded into what it is now, I have lost a few
lifters. Far less than I would have anticipated and I am forever grateful to the ones that
trusted in me and stuck around.
For the ones that left, the training no longer matched their intrinsic dynamics. They left to go
work with coaches that they felt were a much better fit. There is nothing wrong with this and
this is the natural progression of things.
These conversations are also important constraints to the individual. Leaving training more
open-ended for the lifter to make decisions, forces the lifter to talk to the coach more often.
These conversations are a way that we help to guide the individual constraints. These
include the individual’s experiences, beliefs, emotions, and so on. This is very important for
the progress of the lifter.
These individual beliefs can actually affect the time scale of learning. Every lifter will learn at
different rates. However, there are things that we can do as coaches that allow them to
occur more quickly.
Choosing the most effective variation for that lifter at that given time is definitely part of the
process. However, the lifter’s learning is also dependent upon their emotions and beliefs.
The coach educating the lifter can speed up that process.
Sometimes the coach can make the decisions that they feel are best, but the athlete does
not get the results that the coach expects. This is a dreaded word in the powerlifting world, a
plateau.
A CLA can help us understand plateaus. Plateaus will happen. They are part of the chaos
of training. The best advice during a plateau for athletes is to just keep effort and mood as
high as possible.
When a plateau occurs the movement system actually becomes temporarily trapped, in what
is known as a deep attractor state. An attractor is a physical property towards which the
system tends to go to regardless of the set of initial conditions.
This was another piece that really drew me to the larger umbrella of chaos theory for skill
acquisition. When we hit a plateau this attractor can be embedded deep in the hierarchy of
motor control.
This is no easy task for the coach. I wish there was a simple solution to this issue. The
problem is that there is no simple solution. The coach may need to try a few things. There
are some guidelines to follow in the CLA.
To put this more simply, when we hit a plateau, the movement pattern has actually become
too stable. Remember, when we learned about variability of movement, elite athletes
showed high amounts of variability.
This limited amount of variability shown during a plateau is like taking a step back. This can
be the case even if the coach attempts to increase variability in practice. This variability in
training may even punish the one the coach is trying to improve and still not work.
According to a CLA approach, the coach has two options here. The first I touched upon
above. The coach can attempt to increase variability in training to weaken that deep routed
attractor state.
This is sometimes effective, but sometimes it is not. I have had a lifter hit a plateau on a
deadlift for two years. We have tried many different things. We used higher volumes, more
intensity, a plethora of different exercise variations to no avail.
Luckily this sport is about increasing the total and her squat and bench have moved
extremely well, leading to increases in total and a top 10 finish at Raw Nationals. The
struggle carries on with the deadlift. For no explainable reason, she hit an all-time deadlift
PR at 2019 USAPL Nationals. Her pulls were going really well that day and we put the
weight on the bar and she hit it.
The second option that the coach has is to remove that movement pattern altogether. An
example of this option was made using tennis. If a coach wants to prevent a two-handed
backhand, the coach can have the athlete hold a tennis ball in one hand. This literally
removes that as an option.
In powerlifting this can be done a lot easier than in a sport such as tennis. We can remove
the lift completely. In the example of the lifter above, I removed her preferred sumo deadlift
stance for a prolonged period of time. We even kept heavy conventional work in her
program in the weeks leading up to 2019 USAPL Nationals.
She pulls more with a medium width sumo deadlift stance. Once she reaches a certain
weight the hips, rise, knees straighten, and back rounds, limiting the amount of weight she
can pull.
We tried widening the stance. With a wide stance, the task will not be completed with that
technical inefficiency. We ran that for 12 weeks and came back to the competition stance.
She was hitting rep PRs at this point (this was before we moved to heavy singles), but the
breakdown was still prevalent.
In this case, the coach needs to try something else. I chose to switch her heavy work to
conventional deadlifts. She is deadlifting two days per week. The other day I gave her box
deadlifts.
These box deadlifts were not performed “Westside” style. Instead she pulls her hips down to
the box until they lightly touch. The box height puts her torso very upright. More upright
than she would like to be to pull.
She is instructed to leave her hips on the box as long as possible as she completes the lift.
This angle is very difficult for her. The amount of weight lifted was far lower than she is
capable from the more stable attractor state.
Many coaches may get fearful of using a variation that requires much less weight to execute.
This absolutely can be a problem. I think the main problem is psychological. If the lifter is
struggling with perceived lighter weights, it can decrease confidence with the heavier ones.
In the case above, this is why we are deadlifting for two days. The conventional deadlift day
allows her to push, and more importantly, see the heavier weights on the bar. The box
deadlifts force her in a position to attempt to destabilize her deep rooted attractor state.
It is not so much about the weight on the bar that drives results. It is the effort. Weight is
arbitrary until there is context given to it. A 300lb deadlift is very different for the lifter I
mention here and myself.
The psychophysiological response is what creates the adaptation. Even though the box
deadlifts are required to be lighter, they come with very high effort. This effort is what will
increase strength. Also, this gets back to being a well-rounded lifter. Strong at all angles.
Remember, elite athletes have higher levels of variability than intermediates.
The coach to get results needs to be a mentor, teacher, friend, disciplinarian, and coach to
each lifter. Having experience as a lifter can help the coach get buy-in from the lifters and
have a better perspective as to what it is like to be an athlete.
The coach does not need to be a good lifter here. Being a good lifter does not make the
coach good at teaching behavior and skill. A coach’s intuition is based on their knowledge
and past experiences. The coach needs to be aware of the bias that exists there.
Most coaching information out there lacks theoretical frameworks. This includes the general
principles of strength training. The combination of the coach’s bias with the belief that the
general principles are true, can lead to many plateaus, and potentially injuries, for that
coach’s athletes.
This lack of theoretical framework utilized in the strength sports, led me to search for
answers in other research avenues. This is how and why I believe the CLA is the best
framework for coaches in the strength sports.
This is important as each coach will learn that each individual responds to training in very
different ways. In fact, each individual will respond to training differently at various times.
What works now will probably not work, or work as well, later on.
This is due to the intrinsic dynamics of each person. The intrinsic dynamics of each person
are made up of their emotions, perceptions, past experiences, and beliefs. The tasks need
to match up with these intrinsic dynamics in order for them to be successful.
This is not as simple as this one variation will fix this one issue in the lift. It is not a solution
to a problem. It is a dynamic system that needs to flow over time. It needs to be adaptable
and flexible enough to keep up with the ever changing intrinsic dynamics of each individual.
Many coaches will want to use genetics to explain some of these differences. I do not
believe this to be true. I think too high of an emphasis is placed on a person’s genetics. I
think this is more a coach looking for an answer for something that they do not understand.
A study by Fox, Hershberger, and Bouchard in 1996, that was discussed in “Dynamics of
Skill Acquisition: A Constraints-Led Approach” discusses this topic. The researchers looked
at sets of twins and how they responded to training. They concluded that there was no
significant difference between identical and fraternal twins in skill acquisition.
Other studies have shown similar results when looking at physical endurance. Our genes
work in combination with the environment and are as flexible and adaptable as other pieces
of the human body.
One of the arguments against how I utilize a CLA with my lifters, is the lack of focus on
specific pieces of the human. One of these specific pieces would be hypertrophy. Many
programs will run a higher volume “hypertrophy” block, followed by an increase in intensity
with a drop of volume.
An article titled “Exercise-Induced Changes in Muscle Size do not Contribute to
Exercise-Induced Changes in Muscle Strength” written by, Jeremy Loenneke, Samuel
Buckner, Scott Dankel, and Takashi Abe spells this out.
Research from 1939 up to 1985, laid out a picture that hypertrophy was not necessarily
correlated with increases in strength. In 1963 and 1976 Morehouse and Miller wrote “It has
not been proven that hypertrophy is a necessarily desirable reaction. Some students are of
the opinion that it may simply be a by-product of training, perhaps a noxious one.”
I came to this same conclusion myself before I had read that statement. The idea of
focusing on hypertrophy just did not make sense to me based off of a sports performance
outcome. However, a bigger muscle having more potential makes a lot of logical sense.
The problem is that it is too reductionist in its thinking.
Research beginning in 1970 began to conclude that adaptation was neural first and strength
gains after this period were a result of muscle hypertrophy. These studies were done
usually with bicep curls with one arm doing the work and the other not exercising and used
as the control. There are some extreme limitations to those studies and the conclusions that
were drawn.
For one, the untrained arm actually got stronger in these studies. This is due to the
“cross-over effect.” This shows that there are neural adaptations occurring. This also shows
that muscle strength and size can increase following exercise.
These may be unrelated and completely separate adaptations. The problem with the
research is that it is impossible to separate these two. When we train, we typically put on
muscle size. In many of these cases as muscle size was observed it gets the nod as a
driving factor in strength.
If there is no increase in muscle size , researchers will conclude it is neural adaptations
leading to the increase. The researchers mentioned above have done their best to separate
the two.
One group of subjects performed a standard protocol to increase hypertrophy and strength
while the other group practiced heavy singles for 8 weeks. The researchers were successful
in creating different muscle growth scenarios with the strength adaptations being similar.
This study is not without its own limitations.
Other evidence in the literature supports this hypothesis that strength and muscle size are
unrelated. Low-load resistance training when compared to high-load resistance training
shows similar results in muscle size, but with the high-load groups getting stronger.
The literature also shows that these strength deficits can be closed with periodic heavy
lifting. This is another reason why I tend to view strength as a skill. There are many
uncertainties surrounding strength being a by-product of hypertrophy.
Other research shows that detraining can lead to a loss of muscle size, but not necessarily a
loss in strength. These studies are done with very low skilled movements. I am not so sure
you could test the squat one time per month and maintain strength, but it definitely raises
some questions.
The authors in the study mentioned earlier theorize the increases in strength is typically
proportionate to the specificity of the skill and the load. I have drawn this same conclusion
observationally.
We practice a skill and we practice it heavy as this has led to the best increases in strength
with our team. Heavy means perceived effort as the body only knows effort. The mind sees
the weight on the bar. This is an important aspect of training as well.
The mind, in most cases, needs to see the heavier weights to be successful in a new
maximal attempt, with the body experiencing the effort that is required. Both of these
aspects need to be taken into consideration in training by the coach.
This is where I believe single repetitions efforts in powerlifting are superior to all other
training means. The further away from single reps we get the less specific the stimulus is,
and the less carryover to developing maximal strength.
Higher repetition sets of ten and eight, require very light weights. These lighter weights do
not push the lifter around the same way as heavier ones to develop their skills of lifting
maximal weights. This is addressed in an article written by Robert Morton, Stuart Phillips,
and Lauren Colenso titled, “Training for Strength and Hypertrophy: An Evidence-Based
Approach.”
This article recommends, based on the totality of the evidence, that 1RM is best increased
with loads above 85% of 1RM. This is around a weight that we can lift five times in my
experiences.
I do not think the weight on the bar is the absolute number to chase. I do think that effort is
important, but effort under heavier loads when compared to lighter loads is very different.
Heavier loads require more strain, while the lighter ones seem to be more of an endurance
effort.
To quote this article directly:
“Resistance exercise training (RET)-induced changes in muscular strength are primarily
mediated by load and training specificity...recent evidence suggests that RET-induced
changes in 1RM strength are greater when participants perform regular strength
assessments with near maximal loads (>85% 1RM).”
Load does not mediate hypertrophy as long as the sets are taking to near failure. However,
a focus on lower loads for the reasons of hypertrophy might not be an appropriate choice for
the coach.
Part of using DST/CLA framework to guide the coach is so that the coach makes decisions
based off of the whole person in front of them instead of breaking training into reductionist
pieces.
Classical periodization often uses distinct blocks of training to focus on one aspect. This is
true in most personal training books as well. For example, a coach may decide to start a
twelve week training cycle with a four to six week hypertrophy block.
These blocks usually are created with higher repetition sets which will require lighter loads.
This may work for some lifters. I would be very cautious saying this is due to increases in
hypertrophy.
For one, we do not understand the time constraints to actually achieve true hypertrophy. My
guess is that it is not some arbitrary four week period of time. My guess is that the novelty of
the load variation is what drives success for those that experience success on this type of
program.
For those that don’t, the DST/CLA gives us a framework. When the lifter lifts near maximal
loads at greater than 85% of 1RM it elicits a response that targets more of the whole
process.
The lifter sees the heavier weights on the bar for one. This will likely initiate a response of
some nerves. They also feel that heavier weight on their backs and in their hands. They
then get skill practice for their sport.
A byproduct of this is that the lifter will build muscle mass according to the demands of the
training. I do not see a need to do extra. More here is unlikely to be better. Performing
multiple sets, with one to two sets at or near failure, is enough to build hypertrophy specific
to the sport of powerlifting. Also, performing days with higher volume to work on technical
efficiency definitely gives the lifter enough stress to build muscle mass. Again, more is not
necessarily better. Taking extra attention to focus on more can actually pull away some
attention from other factors and create a less than ideal scenario.
Putting this into practice takes time. This is a complex topic for sure and the coach will need
experience to simplify it to fit their needs and the needs of the athletes. I will lay out some of
the ways in which I utilize this framework.
I view strength as a skill. This allows me to make decisions based off of the individual more
than general principles that we cannot fully understand how they apply to the individual, but
keeping these general principles in mind. I will give an example here.
The chest falling forward in the squat is a very common inefficiency within the lift. Pin squats
are an often utilized variation to help redirect this inefficiency. This works a lot of the time,
but also doesn’t frequently.
Remember when we put in a variation it should punish inefficient technique while leaving
only a few options to complete the task. These options need to be limited and leave the
door open only to more efficient ones.
I have had lifters that can execute a heavy set of five repetitions with pin squats, with the
inefficient technique. This is not a constraint for them and will not work well. The coach
needs to adjust based off of what they see. These examples are one reason why we
switched from higher rep sets to singles. The variation plus the heavy weight punishes the
inefficiency in many cases.
I will give two examples here. The first is where I decided to overload the movement. For
three weeks we just took singles with this variation. At some point, the load will be too heavy
to get away with it.
I have used knee wraps and high pin squats in training. If I believed the mechanical pieces
to be 100% true, I would argue knee wraps are not appropriate because the quads do not
get enough work at the bottom of the squat to carryover. Same argument can be applied to
high pin squats.
This doesn’t mean that we ignore those mechanical pieces. We can do backoffs without
wraps, or hit a different squat on another day. The coach has flexible options here because
the framework allows for those options.
We can look at an example from the bench press as well. An inefficiency that I see in the
bench press is often when the elbows flare out excessively on the press. In the past I would
view this as “weak” triceps and want to strengthen that muscle group.
I believe my decisions as a coach were correct, based off of this framework, but for the
wrong reasons in some cases. There are some cases where the arms are weak relative to
the chest and shoulders. However, sometimes the lifter just does not know how to use their
arms to initiate the press. This can be seen when the lifter shows these same breakdowns
or a bar path that goes back towards their face with lighter weights. I use a lot of closer grip
bench press work for this.
If the coach places a lifter in a closer grip bench press, and we still see this elbow flare, then
the coach needs to make a correction. In this case the coach may choose altering the
tempo of the press to slow it down, or the coach can have the lifter pause on the chest, and
then one to two inches above the chest. This would slow down the press and let them focus
on more efficient positioning.
I mentioned a few paragraphs back that I no longer view these variations as correcting or
strengthening individual muscle weaknesses. I think that this is a more wrong narrative than
just looking at lifting as a skill. This includes treating strength as a skill.
If the lifter just performs tricep pressdowns and other exercises without benching, the lifter
will not see an increase in bench strength. The bench press is necessary for strength to
increase in the bench press.
Most would argue that the extra tricep work, plus the bench press work, will result in
increased bench press progress. If the coach views the weakness in the bench press as the
triceps, they will make their decisions based off of that assumption.
What happens when this does not work? We know there are times we bench press and do
extra tricep work and it does not work. This gets back to the discussion regarding
hypertrophy and increases in strength.
This does not mean that the lifter should not focus on the triceps. They absolutely should.
However, if the triceps are to be strengthened within the bench press, the focus needs to be
on the bench press itself with closer grips and variations that force the lifter to initiate the
press with their arms.
Hypertrophy is a byproduct of training and may not be a direct contributor to increases in
strength. Just because the lifter increased size, and strength in single joint movements, for
their triceps it does not mean that their bench press will increase.
The DST/CLA framework takes this complex nonlinearity into consideration and offers the
coach some guidance to making decisions. If the coach understands the limitations to the
hypertrophy narrative, that coach will have more flexibility to make decisions for their
athletes.
Technique
Since my first day in the sport of powerlifting, Boris Sheiko drilled into me the importance of
technique. He would even go as far to say as technique is the most important aspect of
training. I do not disagree with that.
Plateaus in the sport are inevitable. Every lifter will experience a long period of time without
progress on at least one of the lifts. That is just how it goes sometimes. However, having
the most efficient technique can help minimize some of these time periods. It also helps to
build the best foundation to achieve the highest amount of success for each individual lifter.
There is a lot of variability within the lifts when we compare lifters. I believe that this has led
coaches to be more lax on technique. The reasoning is always “Well this lifter lifts like this
so it must be fine.”
I have gone through periods as a coach where I would overcoach technique, and other
periods of time where I would be too lax with technique due to the same reasons that I
mentioned above.
Over time I began to realize that Sheiko was right. Technique is very important, and there
are more optimal ways to perform the lifts than others. Lifters can get away with certain
technical inefficiencies up until a certain point. That certain point is different from lifter to
lifter. Some get very strong with inefficient techniques. This does not mean it is right.
Research will show a lot of variability in completing the task of the lifts. This research is
usually done on untrained, or slightly trained individuals. These lifters tend to not lift much
weight at all. Perhaps variability in movement strategy is ok with lighter weights.
The heavier the weights get, the less variability that will be found. This is why I am reluctant
to disregard what the multiply powerlifters on drugs have to say about technique. They are
forced to figure out how to lift the highest absolute loads possible.
The coach needs to keep in mind the equipment that those lifters are wearing. Their
equipment is so tight that it makes it impossible to get to the depth required in the IPF of raw
or single ply lifters.
This creates a lot of arguments on the internet. The arguments are due to a lack of
understanding of the equipment that the multiply lifters are wearing. It is not cheating, and
the amount of 1000lbs and more squats is impressive. Love all parts of this sport.
Something that I learned from Sheiko is that the coach should break up the lifts into each
one of its parts that requires a motor action. I like to take this a step further and even include
their preparation to approach the bar.
Lifters will often change their ritual of getting ready to take a heavy single. The coach needs
to be aware of this because this is showing a sign that the psychological components of the
sport need to be worked on.
Many lifters will miss a lift before they even unrack that bar. They get too excited or “amped”
up, or the nerves begin to really kick in. This emotional response plays a large role in
technique as well as performance.
This period of time that the coach needs to watch, is from the completion of the previous lift,
until the first phase of the next lift. Part of the art of coaching is learning how to help that
athlete achieve the proper level of psychological arousal that works for them.
Some lifters will do well with yelling and screaming. Others will have this very calm look to
them. Examples would be Chuck V from Westside. He was a maniac. However, someone
like Ed Coan looked like he was about to fall asleep. Each lifter needs to find what works for
them.
Squat
The squat has 5 phases. These are the same phases that I learned from Boris Sheiko, but I
altered phase 1 to include more of the time before the lift to account for the psychological
pieces of the sport that I find to be very important. I also combined phase 5 and 6 from his
system. Phase 5 was the concentric portion that includes the sticking point, and 6 was the
final position. All raw lifters have the same sticking point, and I do not see a need to break it
up. It is in my mind that it can be separated with each lifter if there is breakdown.
Phase 1: This is what I mentioned above. This is the time period between the completion of
the last repetition to the setup for the next repetition. This includes gripping the bar and
getting setup.
Phase 2: This is the unracking of the barbell and the setup up to the lifter receiving the
“start” command from the head judge.
Phase 3: This is the eccentric component of the squat. This goes until full depth is
achieved.
Phase 4: This is the concentric portion of the squat. This includes all parts until the lifter
receives the “rack” command from the head judge.
Phase 5: Bringing the bar back into the rack.
Grip width on the squat should be about 6 inches outside of the shoulders or wider.
Shoulder and elbow flexibility will be a determining factor here. Many lifters like to grip the
bar with their hands very close to their shoulders.
In my experience, these lifters are the ones that tend to have the chest fall forward on the
way up in the squat. I almost feel like this is a passive way to tighten the back muscles as
they just get pushed together by the arrangement of the limbs instead of the lifter squeezing
the muscles.
The squeezing of the muscles may have an effect on the central nervous system (CNS) that
prepares the lifter to lift heavy weights. This does not happen from just organizing the body
in a way where the muscles are more squished together.
With the shoulder blades squeezed together tightly, and the grip set, the athlete begins to
take their place under the barbell. The bar should be positioned on the rear delts with the
elbows down, but slightly back. If the elbows point too far back it will round the upper back
and lead to technical breakdown and loss of performance.
The hands should be pulling down on the back to secure the barbell. A common cue for this
is performing a lat pulldown with the barbell on the back. The head should be up and the
hips should be back.
The head up position allows for more tone in the back muscles and gives them greater
leverage to support the weight. The weight is always trying to push us forward. The back
muscles play a role in extending back into the bar to balance the barbell-athlete system.
When the head is down, the back is round. Also, the lifter will lean forward more, removing
some of the use of the legs in the squat.
The ribs should be slightly elevated and a small huff of air should be taken into the belly.
The athlete should push out into their belt and remove the bar from the rack. From here
there are 3 steps. One small step backwards with the first foot, step back with the other foot,
and then readjust. Do not take large steps.
Foot width is also a part of the squat that will be individualized just like the grip width. Most
lifters will settle for a foot position with the heels just outside of the shoulders with the toes
turned out slightly.
A squat with the feet closer and the toes more straight ahead will have a more positive shin
angle, placing more emphasis on the quads. This may play to a lot of lifters’ strengths when
they first start as the quads tend to be stronger than the hips.
This does not mean that the coach should embrace this technique for this lifter. The coach
needs to put the lifter in positions that will allow the lifter to lift the most weight over a career.
A narrow stance with the toes turned out to 30 to 40 degrees will have a similar shin angle
when compared to the medium stance squat with the toes turned out to a lesser degree. In
a wider stance squat the shins stay pretty vertical.
A study by Paoli and colleagues, published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning in
2009, showed that muscle activity in all stances was the exact same except for the glutes.
A wider stance was necessary to get more glute activity. They tested the quads, hamstrings,
and glutes in 6 experienced lifters. Other studies have shown differences in stance width.
The subjects used in these studies need to be taken into account. The coach needs to also
take into account that we cannot see the technique of the lifters being measured. Changes
in angles will alter the muscle activity.
The lifter has now achieved the proper start position. The back is tight with only a minimal
lean to support the weight (roughly 10 degrees), the knees are locked, and the bar is being
pulled down on the back to secure it.
The ribs should be slightly elevated to make sure the back is in slight extension. The ribs
down will increase spinal flexion, and we do not want to be too extended at the start either.
A small breath of air should be taken into the belly, and the lifter should push hard into the
belt. This combination of breath, pressure, and back tightness, creates a stiff torso to
support and push back against heavy weights. The lifter should be tensing every muscle,
even the chest muscles.
The beginning of the down phase should be done with the hips going back and knees going
out. We need to load the weight into the posterior chain muscles to avoid pitching forward.
This will be the same with the deadlift as well.
Once the hips are back and the knees are out, the lifter begins to sit down. As the hips are
going back the lifter needs to push the upper back into the bar to keep the barbell-athlete
system balanced over the middle of the foot.
Open the knees and continue to sit down, feeling the stretch in the hamstrings until the
proper depth is achieved. The wider the stance, the more the center of gravity shifts towards
the heels.
Some Russian experts believe the barbell shifting more towards the heels is more optimal.
Other coaches believe the barbell should remain over the middle of the foot. No coaches
believe that the bar should shift towards the toes.
At the bottom of the squat, the shin angle should be “as vertical as possible.” There will be
forward translation of the knees here, but we do not want the knees to go past the toes. This
is not for safety reasons, but performance reasons.
A shin that travels too far forward relies primarily on the quads to do the work, while
neglecting the larger glutes and hamstrings. EMG studies show very little hamstring activity
in the squat.
I think this is a mistake due to researchers using inexperienced lifters to perform these
studies. Coaches like Louie Simmons and Boris Sheiko talk extensively about the
importance of the hamstrings in the squat. I am not willing to throw away almost a century of
experience between the two for an EMG study on beginners.
I believe that the hamstrings, as well as the rectus femoris (quad muscle that crosses 2
joints), stiffen up to allow force to transfer between the other knee extensors and the hip
extensors. The hamstrings need to be strong enough to support this transfer of force.
Every lifter has the same sticking point. It is where the larger hip muscles have the least
amount of leverage and the quads are taking the majority of the load. This is why so many
people preach the importance of the quads in the squat, and they are correct.
This is also why coaches will blame weak quads for the chest falling forward on the way up
in the squat. However, it is much more complicated than that. The lifter experiencing that
inefficiency can most likely rep out that weight on a leg press with no issues. If this is the
case, how can it be a quad weakness?
The head going back and the lifter actively driving the traps into the bar activates more back
muscles, helps with maintaining the angles that allow the force to be transferred from the
quads to the hips and allows the lifter to stand up as one unit. The lifter should continue to
push hard into the belt as they are coming up in the squat.
The inability to create and maintain torso stiffness is also a reason why the lifter will
experience technical breakdown including the chest falling forward out of the bottom
position. The bar is placed on the torso, if the lifter pushes with the legs first instead of the
torso, they will pitch forward.
When the lifter is going to stand up from the bottom position, they need to first push into the
bar with the upper back muscles. The bar rests on these muscles, if the lifter drives from the
legs first they will experience their chest falling forward. After the lifter drives up with the
upper back muscles they need to push through the ground with their feet. They should not
push straight up as this will also lead to technical breakdowns like the knees caving in and
chest falling forward. Instead the lifter needs to drive out horizontally through their feet,
knees, and hips to utilize the hips and hamstrings and to stay in a good technical position to
accelerate and strain through the sticking point.
The coach needs to identify which phase within the lift that the lifter needs to improve upon.
From there, the coach needs to look at the angles of the joints and identify some weak
areas. This allows for the appropriate variations of the lift to be selected as well as an
emphasis for the accessory work.
Some common faults within the lifts and some examples of exercises selection and muscle
weakness targeting:
Removing the bar from the racks with the knees forward- Weak hips, poor bracing.
Emphasise the appropriate technique here.
Removing the bar from the rack with the head down. Weak upper back. Emphasise proper
technique here and heavy barbell shrugs.
Bar falling forward on the descent. This most often is a technical error. However, it may be
a sign of weak legs. This includes the quads. I really like using tempo squats here to work
on the control and overloading time under tension of the weaker muscles.
Chest falling forward on the way up. This is often misdiagnosed as a quad weakness. As I
mentioned earlier, the lifter is most likely able to leg press the weight for reps so something
else must be breaking down. I have often found exercises that target the hips work well
here. I use a lot of wide stance variations here. A high bar will keep the torso even more
upright in the wider stance, emphasizing the hips and upper back even further.
Pauses right out of the hole, tempo squats, pin squats, and box squats work as well. All of
these variations slow the lifter down to really focus on positions. The coach needs to
communicate effectively with the lifter so the lifter understands what they need to do.
Bands and chains can be used after slowing the lifter down with a variation above. Slow
them down and then speed them up. This is how I like to perform the exercises. The bands
and chains will punish any loss of position because the lifter will not be able to generate
enough force through the sticking point to overcome the increasing resistance.
The elbows being pushed backwards on the way up. This is a sign of a weak upper back.
High bar squats and safety squat bar squats are good choices here. Front squats can work,
but I find them to be better to improve the deadlift than the squat. Accommodating
resistance works well here as well for the same reasons mentioned above.
Knees caving in. This is a sign the lifter needs more control and stronger hips. I use a lot of
wide stance variations here in combination with tempos, pauses, boxes, and pins. This
helps by targeting the weaker muscle groups and to teach the control necessary.
Lifters that prefer the feet to be straight. This is a sign of weak adductors. The adductors
are one of the major hip extensors at the bottom of the squat. Just having the lifter turn their
toes out to 30 to 40 degrees is enough here.
Anytime the coach puts a lifter in a variation and they see a large drop in performance, this is
very telling. This means that the lifter has some significant weaknesses that need to be
emphasized and addressed.
Bench Press
Just like with the squat, the bench press has specific phases, all of which require motor skills
from the lifter. The phases presented here are adapted from the phases that I learned from
Boris Sheiko.
Phase 1: The moments preceding the lift, up until the lifter is set on the bench. At this point
the lifter should have the grip set, with the bar deep in the palm of the hand. The legs are
tight with the feet flat on the floor.
The lifter should place the feet in a position where they feel the most tension. Most lifters will
tuck their feet as far back as they can. In the IPF, where PPS competes, the feet must be
flat. The feet may be placed more forward and wider as well. This will be dependent upon
the structure of the lifter.
By rule the lifter cannot grip the bar outside of 81cm. This is with the index finger on the
rings. The lifters of PPS will assume the grip on the bar that they are currently strongest.
This shifts around quite frequently.
The back should be arched. The lifter should think of pushing the ribs up high while pinching
the shoulder blades together. The feet should be pushed into the ground with the knees
driven out. Leg drive does not move the bar, but it stabilizes the lift and the bottom half of
the arch.
Phase 2: Receiving the handoff. Many lifts are missed during this phase. Oftentimes the
lifter takes the bar out of the rack themselves and they lose a lot of the position that they just
put themselves in.
Upon receiving the handoff the lifter should be able to produce even more pre-lift tension.
The lifter should think of performing a pullover with the barbell and squeezing the lats hard,
while continuing to push the ribs up and knees out.
The lifter should bring the barbell out as far as they can. The wrists should be straight with
the hands squeezing the bar hard. The lifter should be positioned in a way to just bend the
elbows and move the barbell in a straight line up and down.
Most beginners that lay on a bench will press with a bar path that goes back towards their
face. Some coaches will coach this bar path as well. The argument is that it gives the pecs
and delts greater leverage to lockout the weight. This is true, but in my opinion, not ideal.
When the “back towards the face” bar path is used, it places the majority of the load onto the
pecs and delts. This can lead to irritation of the pecs and shoulders. In my experience, the
lifters that bench like this, usually with a strong elbow flare, have more issues in those 2
areas.
If we press in a straight line, the lifter will use the pecs and delts with the traps, lats, and
triceps. The more muscles that the load can be distributed amongst, the lower the incidence
of nagging issues. The less we have nagging issues, the harder we can train.
Phase 3: This phase begins with the “start” command and ends when the bar is motionless
on the chest. The lifter should take a breath after the command is heard. It is ok for the
breath to fill the chest here to shorten the ROM of the lift.
The lifter should think of “rowing” the barbell down to the chest. The ribs should be
continued to be pushed up, lats should be squeezed, and legs tight with the knees being
pushed out.
The touch on the chest should be soft. The wrists should remain straight the whole time.
The elbows should remain under the barbell. They should not get in front or behind. If the
lifter struggles to control the barbell, they may need to work on the technique of “keeping it in
the lats.” They also may have weak forearms as the forearms are very important for the
control of larger weights.
Wrapping the wrists well can aid the forearms, but in order to control big weights, and keep
the wrists straight with them, the forearms need to be strong. I like to use fat bars to bench
with to help improve this inefficiency.
Phase 4: This phase begins on the “press” command, and ends when the weight is locked
out. Upon receiving the “press” command, the lifter should explode the bar off the chest.
Speed is important in all of the lifts to get the barbell through the sticking point.
The elbows should remain under the bar and the wrists should remain straight the whole
time. This allows the most force to be transferred into the barbell. If the elbows flare out,
and/or the bar goes back towards the face, the lifter needs to work on the lats, and
strengthen the triceps. The horizontal movement of the bar requires the bar to move further
and lose speed. This can make it difficult to get past the sticking point.
According to Louie Simmons, the great coach of Westside Barbell, the bench press should
be 75% triceps. There is no proof that this number is correct, but there is something to it.
Lifters on drugs and using the strongest equipment, lift the most absolute weights. They
learn what you can and cannot get away with under heavier and heavier loads.
Certain bar paths and technical inefficiencies will allow a lifter to get up to a certain weight.
For each lifter, this can be very individualized. There are many 400lb bench presses with
bent wrists, but not many 600lb or more bench presses with bent wrists.
Many coaches and lifters underestimate the importance of the lats in the bench press as
well. In a Russian study performed in 2015, 4 high level lifters’ lat activity was looked at.
They all had strong lat activity on the press. 3 out of 4 had strong activity from at least
halfway down during the down phase. This tells me that the lats are very important to the
bench press.
The lifter should think of “driving the feet through the front of the shoes and the knees out”
on the press. The lifter should also think of “chasing the bar with their ribs” and “punching
the ceiling.” The arch should remain strong the whole time, and the lifter needs to push
through the press with their triceps.
If the lifter has problems with speed off of the chest, look at the upper back, and even the
triceps. Lifters with long arms will have the elbow drop below the shoulder with the bar on
the chest. This is a disadvantageous position for the pecs. This makes the upper back and
triceps very important.
A straight line is the shortest distance between 2 points. If we want the speed to carry the lift
beyond the sticking point, we want to press straight up. Any horizontal movement will
decrease the speed at the sticking point and it will eventually lead to a missed repetition.
Phase 5: This is when the lifter receives the “rack” command and brings the bar back into
the rack. Nothing should move until the bar is back in the rack. Lifters will sometimes shift
their feet and lose tightness. This can lead to a red light in a competition due to moving the
feet before the “rack” command.
Common Faults in the Bench Press
Speed off of the chest: Strengthen the upper back and work on pressing in a straight line.
Make sure that the wrists are straight as well.
Elbows Flaring: Work on the lats and triceps.
Trouble controlling the weight to touch the chest: Lats and forearms. Forearms play a large
role in controlling heavier weights and keeping the wrists straight.
The coach should find a variation that punishes these technical inefficiencies. For example,
bands will punish every single technical fault listed above. The coach can also alter tempo
to slow the lifter down to work on those inefficiencies. From there, we use pins, boards,
bands, chains, pauses, and floor press. About 75% or more of our bench work is performed
with a grip inside of the rings to really focus on the triceps.
Deadlift
The deadlift is the only lift without an eccentric portion preceding the concentric. This makes
it seem more simple, but it can pose some problems in the setup due to the lifter needing to
load the weight into the body while the weight is sitting on the ground.
It is easiest to think of as a high squat with the bar on the floor instead of on the lifter’s back.
This makes it more difficult to load the weight into the hips, hamstrings, and back. This
makes the start position of the deadlift very important.
How you start in the deadlift determines what muscles are used, the speed the bar travels,
and the efficiency of the movement. There is less room for error here.
Phase1: This includes the time before the lift up until the lifter is setup. There are basically
three options for foot placement here. There is the conventional deadlift, which has the feet
hip width or even more narrow with the hands outside of the legs.
There is the medium stance sumo deadlift. This is when the foot position is wide enough for
the hands to be inside of the legs, but the feet are still a few inches away from the plates and
the widest position possible. Lastly, is the sumo deadlift. This is where the lifter places their
feet close to the plates. This is different for each federation as the ones that use a deadlift
bar allow for a wider stance.
The wider your feet are, the more upright your torso needs to be. In all stances the toes
should be turned out a little more than the squat. This allows for the hips to be closer to the
bar. The shins should be in contact with the bar, with the shoulders directly over the bar or 1
to 2 inches in front, but not more.
We do not want the shoulders to trail behind the bar. The shins will be slightly forward to
touch the bar. The wider stance, the more vertical the shin will be. Mikhail Koklyeav, the
great Russian strength athlete, told me once that the shins should not be forward more than
10 degrees.
The head should be straight or chin slightly elevated. A Russian study showed a 9%
increase in power with the chin slightly elevated when compared to the down position. This
gives the back muscles more leverage to exert force. Also the body will go where the head
goes. The eyes being down can lead to the chest falling forward off of the floor. The head is
very important as it dictates what muscles are being used.
The back position should be one in which the lower back is arched. Again, a Russian study
showed an 8.3% increase in power when the back is arched. This gives the legs and hips
greater leverage to exert force.
Phase 2: This is when the lifter is set and ready to pull up to the time the barbell breaks the
floor. The center of gravity (COG) of the barbell needs to be inline with the COG of the lifter.
If the lifter’s weight is in their heels, the lifter’s COG shifts behind the barbell. Weight shifting
towards the toes and the COG moves forward of the barbell.
A shorter lifter will rely more on the back off of the floor and a taller lifter will rely on more leg
strength. This is due to the varying amounts of knee flexion required to reach the bar and
get into the proper start position.
The start of the pull is performed from the knees and hips extending. Quads, hamstrings,
and glutes are very important here and all movements need to be in sync. The back
muscles hold everything in place and allow the chest to rise first while maintaining contact
with the bar and the shin. When the hips extend so does the low back. The lower back
needs to be strong for big lifts in this sport.
The quads get the barbell moving and the glutes and hamstrings receive the transfer of
force. This is why this position is its own phase. Can the lifter coordinate the movement well
enough to transfer the force appropriately? Some believe that the glutes and hamstrings
actually pull the pelvis down to give the erectors greater leverage to maintain back stiffness.
Phase 3: This phase goes from the barbell breaking the floor to lockout. The sticking point
of the conventional deadlift will be about 2 to 3 inches below the knees, this is where the
larger muscles have the least amount of leverage. For the sumo, it is actually 2 to 3 inches
above the knees. This is contradictory to popular opinion where it is more difficult off of the
floor. The back muscles must work very hard to keep the barbell moving through the
sticking point.
The last third of the pull is when the upper back gets the shoulders back. Many lifters will
get stuck here as a result of a rounded start position. The more the back rounds, the more it
needs to extend to lockout the weight. This makes it easier off of the floor, but much harder
at lockout.
The knees should lockout just slightly before the torso. There should not be a large,
noticeable, gap in time between the two. The torso should also not be straightened before
the knees are fully extended. If this happens the lifter is leaning back too hard and not using
the legs and hips.
Phase 4: This is returning the barbell to the ground. Upon receiving the “down” command,
the lifter needs to remain in contact with the bar until it is back on the platform.
There is more disagreement amongst research specialists on the deadlift than the other two
lifts. Some say that the sumo deadlift is 19% less work and the majority of the people should
pull that way. Sheiko seemed to be one that believed in manipulating the ROM to the best of
your leverages and train those angles. Our strongest joint angles seem to change over time.
I am a big believer in being strong at all angles and choosing which ones are strongest close
to a competition.
Sumo does seem to be easier to load the hips and hamstrings before the lift and potentially
to keep the bar closer. This seems to be the largest technical fault that I witnessed as a
coach. The setup and breaking the ground as one unit is a very difficult skill to learn.
Pauses, deficits, bands, chains, we use it all.
The deadlift requires the weight to constantly be accelerated into lockout. This requires a lot
of force to move large weights from a dead stop. Getting stronger and improving the rate of
force development will go a long way here when matched with solid technical efficiency.
Periodization
Periodization is defined as the systematic planning of physical training. The goal is to be able to
“peak” for the most important competitions of the year. The training usually consists of specific
periods where certain physiological components are stressed more than others.
The idea of periodization came about due to Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS). GAS has 3
stages, the alarm stage, resistance stage, and exhaustive stage. Basically, the organism will respond
to stress by adapting to it. However, too much stress can lead to overtraining, and too little can lead
to limited or no adaptation.
Selye performed experiments on rats where he placed them under extreme levels of stress. What
he noticed was a typical response by the rats to this stress. This typical response became known as
GAS and the basis of training stress.
The alarm stage is what happens when the organism encounters the stressor initially. This is known
as the “fight or flight” response. Heart rate increases and cortisol is released alongside adrenaline.
This is the body’s way of preparing to fight or flight.
Next is the resistance stage. After the initial encounter with stress, the body begins to recover. The
body works its way back to homeostasis. It is doing this while still remaining aware that there may
still be a threat present. After a period of time without encountering the stressor again, the body
lets go of the high alert state.
If the stressor is not removed, or the body encounters stress for a prolonged period of time, the
body remains on high alert and continues to secrete the stress hormones, primarily cortisol.
Eventually the body adapts to the prolonged stress and learns to cope with it.
If we get too much exposure to this stress, the body struggles to cope with it and we enter the
exhaustion stage. This is where the fatigue sets in and the organism can experience physical and
emotional ailments. The immune system becomes weakened and there becomes a greater risk for
infection.
The idea of planned training is to keep the organism within the resistance stage without ever
reaching exhaustion. This is where preplanned deloads come in, usually following a period of higher
workloads. During this period of lighter resistance, the organism adapts and recovers to a new and
higher level of performance. This is known as supercompensation.
Russian physiologist, Leo Matveyev analyzed the results of Soviet Olympic athletes from 1952 to
1956. He compared the training plans of the most successful athletes and came up with a plan for
the Soviet athletes for the 1960 Olympics.
The Soviet athletes had enormous success and the world wanted a piece of these Russian training
principles. This is where the idea of periodization spread and was further developed by Tudor
Bompa. Bompa’s texts were part of my undergrad and grad school readings still today.
As periodization became more popular and was used more widely, many adjustments were made to
the original ideas of Matveyev. The Russians began instituting a longer term athlete development
system. This was known as PASM (the process of achieving sports mastery).
Children were selected at young ages to attend schools that focused on the sports that they were
selected to. These sports were run like a school subject. Multi-year training plans were laid out to
bring these athletes to the level of Master of Sport and beyond.
These schools focused on training many athletic qualities at a young age. This is contrary to the
West where early specialization dominates. The idea is that by developing a greater set of motor
skills at a younger age, athletes will have a greater foundation to build more specific skills off of.
This is where Yuri Verkoshansky comes onto the scene. His earlier research looked at the Principle of
Dynamic Organization. He viewed sport as a problem solving activity in which movements supply
the solutions. Since movement is controlled by the CNS, training should be utilized to enhance and
create more efficiency within the CNS. These movement solutions are constantly changing as the
body is always looking for more efficient solutions. Dynamic Systems Theory and a Constraints-Led
Approach build off of this principle and form the foundation of my training philosophy.
Verkoshansky saw problems with the concurrent style of training, training multiple aspects at once.
The athletes required too much volume in order to address all of the qualities of athletic
performance. This is where Block Periodization came in.
Each block would focus on a specific athletic trait, while the others were being attempted to be
maintained. This was known as the Conjugate Sequential System (CSS). This often gets confused
with the conjugate method made famous by Westside Barbell.
Westside does not use conjugate periodization. They use a concurrent training style, also known as
complex-parallel training. They train multiple aspects at once, max effort, dynamic effort, and
repetition effort. Verkoshansky describes this type of training as being only appropriate for low level
athletes.
Keep in mind these training programs are being written for Olympic athletes. These were not being
written for powerlifters or weightlifters. A lot of the ideas spread into that training, but it was not
the primary focus.
Field athletes need to be fast, agile, strong, flexible, quick, conditioned, technical, tactical, and so on.
They require so many different physical qualities to be successful at the highest level. This is why
block periodization makes sense. In order to focus on all of those qualities in the gym and also their
sport specific training, it would require too much volume and the athletes would risk injury.
A barbell sport is not that complex. The training in the gym is also the sport. This fact alone cuts
down the required time of the sport significantly for the athlete. The list of traits to train are much
smaller as well. A powerlifter needs absolute strength, rate of force development, and some
technical skills for the 3 lifts. The need for breaking up training into blocks does not make sense to
me for powerlifters. For field athletes, maybe.
This is most likely where daily undulating periodization (DUP) comes in. Instead of breaking training
into blocks, each aspect is given its own day. Hypertrophy is one day, strength is another day, and
power is another. Sounds a lot like Westside’s conjugate method, but we can continue to argue
about that on the internet.
The main difference is how each of those days is setup. Many of the DUP programs are much higher
volume and maybe higher frequency as well. There is usually very limited maxing out on singles.
Another major difference is with the use of variation. The conjugate method uses a lot of variations,
while many DUP programs only use the comp lifts.
The argument is for sports specificity. I have a hard time understanding this argument as a set of 6
reps is not specific to the sport of heavy singles. It is not more specific than moving your feet out an
inch or two, or the bar an inch higher on your back and hitting a max single. Max singles are the
sport, so wouldn’t that be specific?
I think the argument would be that max singles are too difficult to recover from. People will look at
the Bulgarians and discuss the burnout and the negatives of that training system. They do this while
missing the positives, they were the best in the world.
Russians were dominating the strength sports for a period of time as well. This may just be a
byproduct of time in the sport. They started at a young age lifting weights and building very solid
technique. A 20 year old in Russia has over 10 years of learning the lifts, while here in America they
may be picking it up for the first time. Culture matters in many ways.
I wonder if the heavy singles were shied away from with field athletes and that fear of “overtraining”
due to the belief that GAS is true, just filtered into strength sports? I know that Sheiko did not use
heavy singles because the technique would break down. Perhaps this is a common reason as well
due to Verkoshansky’s Principle of Dynamic Organization. If technique is breaking down too much
due to heavy weights, perhaps the body cannot seek a more efficient way to complete the task.
Sheiko’s goal in training was to get every single rep to look the same. This trains one stable
movement pattern. As technical efficiency increases, the athlete will lift more weight. This gets back
to what Verkoshansky said about training the CNS to be more efficient and the Principle of Dynamic
Organization. No one can argue the success that Sheiko had as a coach utilizing these methods.
Sheiko visited Westside and spent a whole day with Louie Simmons discussing training. He said the
difference between his style and Simmons was that he focused on technique first and Simmons
focused on strength first.
This does not mean that Westside doesn’t focus on technique. They do. Their dynamic days are to
work on technique with lighter weights. They also focus on attacking weaknesses, just like Sheiko,
but just do it differently. Sheiko would alter the ROM on bench and deadlifts to lift higher absolute
loads and use chains on the squat, so it is not like absolute strength was not addressed in his
programs. Multiple ways to skin a cat.
The problem we ran into running a more submax type program was with the psychological
component of training. Psychological arousal can alter movement patterns. The only way to get
that psychological arousal is to put heavier weights on the bar and lift at or near maximal.
No one denies that maximal singles elicit the greatest motor unit recruitment. Many of those
Russian texts state that after a couple of weeks of maxing out, the athlete will see a decrease in
performance. This is absolutely true. However, this is where variation becomes important. Change
the lift, and this issue goes away as long as the plan is flexible and adaptable to meet the lifter’s
needs at any given time.
Is periodization necessary for strength sports? First off, GAS does not really apply to training. Selye
electrocuted mice and weighed their brains afterwards. This doesn’t mean that it is entirely wrong,
but it is definitely not a principle to base training around. However, the idea that the lifter needs to
recover from an adequate amount of stress is mostly true.
Recovery is important and that will be individualized based on genetics, motivational factors, life
stress, nutrition, sleep, and so on. You can only train as much as you can recover from. Powerlifting
is the one sport that people seem afraid to actually practice THE sport.
Nothing will build better 1RM strength than taking 1RMs. The science is pretty strong on this topic in
support of this idea. This requires some paying attention to by the coach as after a few weeks, we
can see a drop in performance. This is where variation comes into play.
Load management is also important. Some variations will require more absolute loads and others
the lifter will lift less weight. The lifts with high absolute loads are testers, and the lower loads are
builders. The coach can structure training in a way to limit or to push absolute loads in any way they
see fit to meet the individual’s needs and current abilities to recover.
Like any coach, a powerlifting coach needs to address the skills of the sport. This means building
absolute strength, rate of force development, and technical skills. There are physical and
psychological pieces to all of this as well.
All of this needs to be structured in a way that allows the lifter to recover. So, there needs to be
structure, and it needs to be flexible and adaptable, but it does not need to be periodized. The goal
is to get as many max effort lifts in as possible over the long term. This is the sports specific training.
Think of it as practicing for the sport. The more you practice, the better you get.
The other days need to work on technical skills as well as rate of force development (the ability to
generate force more quickly). Think of this as more GPP for powerlifting. These days will not
directly influence the 1RM, but they help the lifter learn more efficient movements, and improve
their ability to generate force more quickly. They then can take these new acquired skills and apply
it to the max effort lifts.
This does not require training to be broken up into blocks. I have found that the longer a lifter is
removed from max effort work, the harder it is to get back the psychological components of lifting
heavy. Too much time away from lighter weights being moved quickly and the lifters get slower.
Training works best if we focus on all of these aspects in a more concurrent training program.
Block training may work better for high level field athletes, as they still practice their sport which
includes all aspects of their sport. This will at least allow them to hold onto sport specific skills while
training in the gym is more specific to one of those physiological components. Every sport does have
an off-season where they take a break. This helps for mental and physical recovery.
Most lifters will get breaks throughout the year due to vacations and life circumstances. The
competition schedule for powerlifting is not as grueling as field sports. Most lifters compete 2-3
times per year. In field sports, 2-3 competitions in a week is very common.
I find deloads to be completely unnecessary as life usually takes care of that. We do not need to
pre-plan a deload. This does not mean that the program should not be flexible and adaptable to
individual needs. It needs to be, and each person comes with their own set of individual
circumstances.
Instead of planning a month of training, or more, we plan 1 week at a time. Based off of how that
week goes, and life circumstances upcoming in the next week, we plan the following week. If a lifter
hits a true max in one week, the following week we will use a percentage of that lift and just hit
some sets and reps. This serves as a nice psychological deload so to speak.
These reps also serve a greater purpose. We need enough practice with the lifts to improve our
technical efficiency. Using a max effort deload, and replacing it with reps, helps us be sure that we
are getting in enough technical work. I use these positions to work in the 80% to 90% of 1RM
ranges. This makes it a bit different than the lighter ranges we use on the other training days.
Heavy singles are best at developing intramuscular coordination. This includes the synchronization
of motor units, the recruitment of motor units, and the rate coding (how fast they are recruited) of
motor units. Heavy singles are not as great at developing intermuscular coordination. This is where
the ability of the nervous system to coordinate movement comes into play.
This is why Sheiko was not a huge fan of heavy singles. His whole training philosophy was to become
more technically efficient, leading to greater gains in 1RM. Heavy singles increase intramuscular
coordination so well, that is why Louie Simmons loves heavy singles. Again, more than one way to
skin the cat.
It is not as if weights in the 80% to 90% of 1RM zones do not help increase intramuscular
coordination. They do, but not as well as max singles. The goal of training is to develop all of the
skills necessary to increase strength. Sheiko focuses on technique first, but uses weights that will
still improve intramuscular coordination. Simmons focuses on strength first, but still utilizes lower
intensity lifts on dynamic effort day to target the intermuscular coordination. They both alternate
high and low stress days to push for adaptation and to also allow the lifter to recover.
Let us get back to planning a flexible and adaptable training program. If a lifter’s week gets dragged
out into Sunday for a day 4 where they squat, we will change day 1 from squats to bench, allowing
them to get more recovery to maximize the max effort squat session. We do all of this while rotating
exercises every 3 weeks to help psychological burnout by keeping training fun and interesting, and to
also follow the law of accommodation, which states that over time the organism’s response to a
stimulus will decrease the more they are exposed to it. This is why Sheiko was very adamant on load
variability being very important.
Having a plan is very important for the athlete seeing continued success and staying as healthy as
possible. This does not mean that we need a periodized program. The plan just needs to be flexible
and adaptable to accommodate the individual.
There needs to be structure to the program as well. This is a lesson that I learned the hard way.
There is so much uncertainty with performance as it is a nonlinear dynamic process. There are so
many variables that can influence it as well. Far more than just volumes and intensities.
Biology is a complex system. There will be peaks and valleys. My theory is that this is the way that
the body is recalibrating its self-organization into the most efficient means possible for the ever
changing environment in which it lives. Earthquakes are another example of a complex system.
We cannot predict when they will occur, but we understand the regularity in which they occur. We
also cannot predict how strong or how weak the earthquake will be. The same goes for training. We
cannot predict the success or failure of our lifters.
Very often the same interventions will have success or failure on the same individual. What works
this time around may not necessarily work the next time around. The coach needs to be able to
make adjustments as they are monitoring training.
Due to this uncertainty, I let the training process get away from me too much as a coach. I wrote
programs as if we lived in a perfect world. We were running a linear periodization program, where
we would start at 5 reps and taper down to singles over the course of 4-6 weeks.
The lifters would work up to 1 to 2 hard sets. These were sets that would register between an RPE
8.5 and RPE 9.5. This was done 4 days per week with squats making up 2 to 3 days, bench 3 to 4
days, and deadlifts 1 to 2 days. This was a similar format to when we ran a lot of higher volume
submax work, but with heavier top sets. Variations remained the same.
There were rules for the lifters to follow on when to take lighter days. This whole process was
extremely eye opening for me. In hindsight, I feel I should have been smarter and just listened to all
of the old timers, but I needed to learn this for myself.
At first, everyone’s lifts began to explode. We were seeing large PRs across the board on all 3 lifts by
a large portion of the group. We ran this into a competition and 15 of 16 lifters hit PR totals.
The lifters’ confidence and the way in which they competed was much stronger. No one was afraid
of the heavy weights because we were lifting heavy every single day in the gym. Technique was not
as sharp as it was in the past in some instances, but I was ok with this because the totals were
increasing by quite a bit.
Everyone was having fun and the culture of the group was shifting towards one in which we pushed
and challenged each other in a constructive way. There were also examples of lifters going on these
hot streaks where they were hitting PRs for weeks at a time. Sometimes upwards of 8 or more
weeks. I had one lifter PR a deadlift in 15 of 16 weeks. This was truly blowing my mind.
I began to question everything that I was ever told about training and fatigue. I even logically
connected the dots between the higher workloads of competitive sports that I had partaken in for
the majority of my life. Lifting weights competitively seemed like far less work.
Eventually, things came back to reality. After about 6 months of pushing it hard from 5s to singles,
day in and day out every week, lifters began to have a lot of nagging things pop up. I began having
to be more reactive to the day to day instead of being proactive by being more patient in the training
process.
Sheiko had always scheduled high stress, medium stress, and low stress training days and weeks
throughout each training cycle. This was to keep the lifter as healthy as possible and progressing
forward.
My idea was that each lifter would self-organize into these high, medium, and low stress days based
on how they were feeling that day in the gym. All too often though this did not happen. They would
continue to push hard. Sometimes coaching is protecting the lifter from their competitive selves.
I also noticed that technique was not improving. We were lifting at high RPEs with variations that
are used to help improve technique. These variations included box squats and pauses for example.
This is a good example of heavier weights not improving intermuscular coordination.
When the weights got heavy the lifter would bounce off of the box instead of pausing, and the
pauses became very short or almost non-existent. We were no longer focusing on technique and we
were seeing the results of that. We were getting slower as a group as well.
During this time I had a couple of conversations with Dr. Jeremy Loenneke, a researcher out of Ole
Miss University. These conversations would be extremely important to me at the time without even
knowing it.
Dr. Loenneke’s stance on strength and hypertrophy is pretty controversial. He argues that an
increase in hypertrophy is not necessary to increase strength. This throws a wrench at the block
periodization model as hypertrophy is a typical block of training. This also throws a wrench at the
DUP programs as well as one day of training is focused on increasing hypertrophy.
In his article titled “The problem of muscle hypertrophy: Revisited” he states that there is little
evidence to suggest that hypertrophy plays a significant role in increasing strength. He points out in
the literature that there are situations where one arm is trained, the other side is not, and the
untrained side gets stronger.
There are similar increases in muscle size with high loads and low training loads as long as the efforts
are taken at or near maximum. There are also examples where muscle size is lost, but strength is
maintained.
This same research shows that the closer we train to 1RM, the more specific training is, and we see
higher increases in strength. Dr. Loenneke was a guest on my podcast, Boston’s Strongcast, and he
said something that really struck me.
We were discussing the periodization literature and how a lot of studies report that a periodized
program leads to greater strength increases (not all of the literature shows this result. Some show
that non-periodized can work just as well).
Dr. Loenneke stated that he believes that these studies show positive findings because each week
the periodized programs get closer to singles. This makes the training more specific to increasing
1RM than just performing the same number of sets and reps each week.
This really struck me because this is exactly what we were doing in the gym. We started at 5s and
worked up to singles. This made me rethink a lot of what we were doing. I see technique
improvements stall, recovery was becoming an issue, but we were seeing a lot of success.
After thinking about this for a while, I reached back out to Dr. Loenneke via email and asked him
about performing more singles in the gym. He said that in principle, training at or near 1RM makes
the most sense to increase each lift.
He also stated that the mental and physical well-being of the lifter needs to be taken into
consideration, as well as the need to perform multiple lifts, the squat, bench press, and deadlift.
He also said that regardless of what is done, the specificity component of training at or near 1RM,
should be the focus of powerlifting training. This means that we want to train at 1RM as often as
possible, but we need to take into consideration the real world practical application of this process.
We definitely can’t just max out each lift every day. I wish we could because my job as a coach
would be very simple.
However, the max effort singles should be the focus of the program as it is the sport. I had enough
experience messing around with different ideas in the gym. It was time to take that information and
structure the most efficient and effective program that I could.
Max Effort
I began to have this obsession with certain weightlifting cultures, especially those that would
max out frequently. This would include the Greeks as well as the Bulgarians. I was lucky
enough to get my hands on a breakdown of the Greek training system and it was very
interesting to see.
One thing to keep in mind with weightlifting, is that they do not deadlift or bench press. They
max squats, but the clean and the snatch are submaximal lifts when compared to their
squats. This poses a problem for powerlifters attempting similar training styles.
The Greeks have a long term system setup very similar to the Russians. They begin
building movement skills at a very young age and start teaching them the unloaded
movements around the ages of 8 to 10 years old. They require the lifter to be 13 years of
age and have 180 days of training to compete.
At this stage of their career they have 8 exercises that are programmed for them. During
this first year of training, the training loads are determined by the coach. After the first year,
the athletes are tested in 4 exercises and those maxes are used to determine the training
loads.
It is worth looking at these 4 exercises. They are the snatch, clean and jerk, back squat, and
front squats. Every one of the lifts is submaximal in load to the squat. It is not as easy as
plugging in deadlifts for front squats.
Their training is broken down into long and short training sessions. The long sessions are
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. They consist of 4 to 6 exercises with a total of 25 to 30
sets. The duration of training is 120 minutes. This does not include the 30 minute breaks
that they may take between an exercise or two.
The short training sessions are 90 minutes in duration with no more than 4 exercises. The
sets are dropped to 20 to 25. The athlete will work up to sets at 80% to 85% of 1RM. Every
10 days they are allowed to go up to 90% of 1RM. Twice per month they will work up to a
max on these days. These days are lower volume, lower intensity, and lower duration.
As the athlete matures and gets older, the long training sessions happen on Monday,
Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. The short training days are Wednesday and Saturday with
a warmup day on Sunday. These athletes are in the gym every single day.
The program is implemented in 2 to 3 week cycles. The 3rd or 4th week will be a lighter
week. In these weeks the volume is cut by 30% and 10kg to 15kg is removed from the
barbell all done for 2 to 3 sets of 1 repetition.
I am explaining these parts of the Greek weightlifting system because I have borrowed quite
a few of these ideas to help organize our current training system. There are not many
powerlifting programs out there that utilize a lot of singles. In fact, I can only think of one,
Westside Barbell.
Westside breaks their training into 4 major training sessions and up to 4 more smaller
sessions. The 4 major sessions are max effort lower, max effort upper, dynamic effort lower,
dynamic effort upper. The 4 smaller sessions are GPP work for 20-30 minutes working on
weak muscle groups.
Westside alternates the lower body exercise weekly. This can be either a squat or a deadlift
variation. The upper body max effort work is also rotated weekly. The argument that louie
Simmons makes about rotating exercises is that the body will accommodate quickly to a
stimulus, especially in the high level lifters that he coaches.
Also, the variation allows the lifter to max out weekly without suffering the burnout and
decreases in performance that occur when the exact same exercise is used. He has been
doing this for over 40 years and has a list of world record holders that have come from that
gym.
The dynamic effort days are higher in volume and lower in intensity. The bar weight plus
accommodating resistance equals between 75% and 85% of 1RM. The total sets and reps
can be 10x2 for squats and 9x3 for bench press. Deadlifts are mostly performed with
singles. I believe Louie Simmons utilizes Prilepin’s chart to determine optimal rep ranges
and number of total reps completed at a given intensity.
This is what is out there for the information put out by Westside. They do experiment quite a
bit with their dynamic days. There was a period of time that Louie was big on 5x5s for the
squat on dynamic days. This may be still true today.
There is plenty of information out there on Westside so I am not going to go any further into
that. These are the main ideas that I had to work with to come up with a plan for my lifters.
One major issue I had with Westside was that they do not deadlift enough.
Multiply totals are made by large squats and large benches. The deadlift is there to pull for
position still, but I felt we needed to deadlift more often than what they do. I also did not
think this would be impossible as we are not in the same gear, and we are not on drugs.
The absolute loads will be much smaller. However, there is so much to be learned from
those lifters that are lifting those absolute loads. Do not brush their lessons aside.
What I came up with was a blend between the Greeks and Westside with some Sheiko
thrown in there. Westside runs their dynamic waves in 3 week cycles. This matches the
Greeks 3 to 4 week cycles so we started there. I decided to run everything in 3 week waves.
I also noticed that most variations would run their course in 4 to 6 weeks. This means that
you could see a lifter progress in one movement for that time period before performance
would stall out, or even move backwards. Using 3 week waves allows me to bring back the
same exercise sooner and get more out of it and analyze the progress of the lifter.
We may use the same positions for longer than 3 weeks. We will just add different amounts
of bands and chains, and also we will utilize boxes and pins quite frequently. Changing up
some variable every 3 weeks is important though in my opinion.
More elite lifters need to change up the max effort exercise more frequently according to
Louie Simmons. I do not have the same caliber of lifter as he has. I have coached lifters
that have finished in the top 10 at the National level as well as a Junior world champion.
I have not found the need to cycle the max effort exercise each week. Instead, if week 1 of
an exercise was a true RPE 10, max effort, we will take a percentage of that number and
perform sets and reps with it the following week. Then we will come back on week 3 and try
to beat week 1’s number. The coach may also choose to take a bit lighter of a weight for
max effort as well. I do tell my lifters to leave 5-10lbs on the bar. It is ok to take a single
close to that near max, but leaving some room. The difference is negligible, unless the
coach wants the athlete to truly test his or her capabilities. That is important to do from time
to time.
In the case above, the max effort exercise worked for 2 weeks. We just inserted another
week of repetition work to focus on technique and give the lifter a psychological deload. This
repetition work can be done on week 3 as well if the coach does not feel that the lifter can hit
more than the previous week.
An example of this can look like the following:
Week 1: High Bar Wide Stance Squat for Max Effort
Week 2: High Bar Wide Stance Squat, 80% of last week for 4-5 reps
Week 2 (option 2): High Bar Wide Stance Squat, 80% of last week, 4-5 sets of 2-3 reps
Week 3: High Bar Wide Stance Squat for Max Effort, add 5lbs to week 1
Another example could be the following:
Week 1: High Bar Wide Stance Squat for Max Effort
Week 2: High Bar Wide Stance Squat for Max Effort, add 5lbs to week 1
Week 3: High Bar Wide Stance Squat, 80% of last week for 4-5 reps
Week 3 (option 2): High Bar Wide Stance Squat, 80% of last week, 4-5 sets of 2-3 reps
Sometimes the lifter will be able to add 5lbs to the previous week for all of the 3 weeks of the
same variation of squats. Each variation will have differences in how long each lifter sees an
improvement from them. One key note is that we try to leave 5-10lbs on the bar on week 1
so that we can go up on week 2. Often, the 5lb increase on week 2 is as easy, if not easier
than the lift from week 1. This leaves room for week 3. On week 3, if the 5lb PR is easy, we
go up. This is an opportunity for the lifter to really challenge themselves and to see what
they are made of.
I learned from using a more linear approach that progress can be stretched out further on a
single lift. One thing to keep in mind though is that a linear approach can be deceiving for
progress because the weights can go up, but estimated 1RM remains the same. There are
situations where estimated 1RM can decrease even though the weights are going up
because of the drop in repetitions.
The bench press is easier for the lifter to recover from, and I see less times that I need to
intervene and do rep work in place of max effort work. Bench Press in general tends to have
as many max effort days as squats and deadlifts combined. This works out to be 50% of
max effort lifts being lower body and 50% of max effort lifts being upper body.
We almost always use a closer grip than our competition grip on bench press. Wider grip, or
competition grip bench work makes up under 25% of the total bench volume. This is due to
the importance of the triceps in the bench press.
The deadlift requires the most managing for max effort days. The deadlift tends to be the lift
that is most difficult to recover from and hit continued progress on. Due to this, as well as
the squat being a good deadlift builder, we do less max effort deadlift work than we do on
the other two lifts.
Vince Anello mentioned that he wished he had deadlifted less in his programs in his lifting
career. Malanichev would deadlift 1 to 2 times per month, Ernie Hackett the same thing. So
many older lifters preach this element, that I feel we should not ignore it.
The deadlift rotates each week between max effort work and repetition work. Each lifter will
deadlift 1 to 2 times per week, and max effort attempts will be performed 1-2 times per
month.
Oftentimes, I will program a tester for squat with a builder for deadlift in the same wave. It is
very rare that I will use a builder of each in the same wave. Splitting it up like this makes it
easier on the lifter to recover. A tester will have higher absolute loads and a builder will have
smaller absolute loads.
On each max effort day the lifter will perform 2 to 4 reps of lifts that are above an RPE 8.5/9.
This is similar to a competition where you have 3 attempts on the platform. The lifter will
plan their attempts on each max effort exercise just like a competition.
For squats and bench press, max effort singles make up approximately 7-10% of the total
volume for each lift. This is only including all programmed top sets. For example, let us say
the lifter did 3 heavy squats above an RPE 8.5 on day 1 with 12 total repetitions as
backdowns. On Day 4, the same lifter performs 20 repetitions of the squat. This is a total of
35 repetitions. We divide that 35 by the 3 hard singles and it is 8.5% of the total amount of
work.
If we skip the backdowns, it would be 13% of the total volume. So there are situations that
go against these estimates. However, over the longer term it tends to fall within that range.
According to Zatsiorsky, 7% of all the lifts performed by the Russian weightlifters were above
90% of 1RM.
Due to the use of variations within our programs, we see a similar average when we look at
absolute loads. Since we use so much variation, we see a drop in absolute loads. On a
max effort day, the lifter may only get 1 to 2 singles above 90% of their competition max.
The same lifter above getting 2 singles, 1 at 90% and the other at 92%, would place their
number of lifts at or above 90% of 1RM, at just under 6%. If it was 1 rep, it is even less.
Over time, our total singles above 90% of 1RM are right around 7%.
I did not plan this out to meet these numbers. This just naturally happened from being
flexible and adaptable within the training programs. I find it to be a very interesting similarity
with the Russian texts stating similar numbers. The majority of our work falls within the 70%
to 80% of 1RM range, just like the Russians. This was more planned on purpose.
A mistake I often see with lifters is a lack of patience with the max effort work. Some lifters
try to get everything on one training day. We want to focus on getting better 5lbs at a time.
A long term focus is necessary to succeed in this sport.
On week 1 of a wave, the coach should make it a general rule to leave 5-10lbs on the lift so
that they can add that weight to the bar the following week. This puts the RPE around a 9.5.
We joke around in the gym and call these lifts RPE 9.8.
This keeps the lifter a little more fresh, and it keeps confidence higher by allowing for more
continual perceived progress. I say perceived progress because the lifter did not get
stronger over that week, they end up lifting what they could have lifted the week prior. Doing
it in this manner allows the lifter to get more max effort work in over the longer term.
The more heavy singles that the lifter can do, the better the progress the lifter will make.
This is due to the law of specificity. Heavy singles are specific to the sport of powerlifting.
The more the lifter can practice the sport the better that they will become.
Remember though, the lifter cannot just max out every single day. This can lead to
psychological burnout and a lack of progress. In some cases there will even be a decrease
in performance. This is why lighter days are necessary to keep progress moving forward.
Lighter days also give the lifter’s more exposure to the movements allowing for greater
technical efficiency to develop.
The coach needs to identify the weaknesses of each lifter. The weaknesses should be the
primary focus of the training program. If a lifter can strengthen their weaknesses, there is
almost always a guaranteed PR.
Over time the weaknesses will become strengths and the strengths will become
weaknesses. This is an ever evolving process for the coach and lifter. By always targeting
weaknesses, the coach can keep progress moving forward.
With that said plateaus do happen. All too often a lifter will assume the program has
stopped working and they need to do something different. Consistency is also key to long
term progress.
First, most lifters do not understand what a plateau is. A plateau is not 6 months without
progress. Yuri Belkin, widely considered one of the best, if not the best, powerlifter in the
world currently, went 5 years without progress on any of his lifts.
Daiki Kodama, the great Japanese bench press specialist, stated that “Sometimes progress
will stall. Sometimes it stalls for years. Just keep training and keep having fun.” This was
translated and relayed to me so it may not be exact, but the idea is there.
It is important to stay consistent and continue to train hard and make good training
decisions. It is also important to find the fun in training. If the lifter is not having fun they will
not stick with it for the long term. Heavy singles are fun.
To re-emphasize, the lifter needs to be patient and try to focus on getting better 5lbs at a
time. When the lifter does not see this improvement it can be easy to get upset. This is why
learning to enjoy the training process is important.
The lifter and coach needs to be able to identify the reasons the lifter missed the attempt and
they need to come up with a plan to attack those weaknesses. Sometimes it just happens
and the right move to make is just to continue with what they are doing.
The lifter and coach need to assess the recovery of the athlete as well as psychological
factors. Many times the lifter just gets psyched out and this leads to a breakdown in
technique and a missed lift.
Other times the lifter may have increased outside stress that the coach is unaware of. This
outside stress can lead to trouble focusing while training and make recovery more difficult.
Sometimes there is nothing the lifter or the coach can do about this stress and changes
need to be made to the program.
I choose to cut out the things that matter the least to increasing 1RM first. This means the
accessory work. The backdowns, dynamic work, and repetition work are next. Sometimes I
will only have the lifter perform the max effort lifts and go home. Then we gradually ease
back into more work.
Do not forget about the importance of sleep, nutrition, and hydration for recovery.
Psychological arousal during lifts can make it more difficult to recover from as well. There
are times where I will allow lifters to get psyched up for a lift and other times that I will
disallow ammonia and/or music. The coach can have many options to vary training to meet
each individual where they are at.
The coach needs to pay attention and observe their athletes to know when these
adjustments need to be made. This is not an exact science, but an art. This art is
developed over time by experimenting with ideas and gaining real world practical knowledge.
Dynamic Effort/Repetition Work
Westside Barbell brought popularity to dynamic effort days being performed in the gym.
Based on the readings online, it seems as though Louie Simmons added these dynamic
days because the lifters could not handle a second max effort day for the lower or the upper
body.
The idea is to train with submaximal weights, but with maximal speeds. This is to increase
the rate of force development, or how quickly someone can apply force. The other goal of
the dynamic effort day is to use the submaximal weights to improve technical efficiency.
This day will not build absolute strength, but is instead a compliment to the max effort days.
With that said, this gets back to Verkoshansky’s Principle of Dynamic Organization. If the
body becomes more efficient at a particular movement, this frees up more motor units to
then apply it to the max effort lifts. This was the basis of Sheiko’s program. He felt that this
was a safer alternative that led to long term sustainable success.
Westside seems to wave their dynamic work by using 50%, 55%, and 60% of 1RM plus
around 25% of accommodating resistance. This puts the weight at the top between 75%
and 85% of 1RM. This is where the Russians performed the majority of their training, so
Louie decided to do the same thing.
As someone who worked with Sheiko for as long as I did, I can say that those percentages
were the most used within the programs. One of the reasons was because the lifter would
be able to perform those reps with perfect technique. The lighter percentages were made
more intense by adding in pauses or accommodating resistance as well.
Louie will use more sets and lower reps than Sheiko did. However, the total number of lifts
was very similar. Both use Prilepin’s chart as a starting point for volumes(although both
have deviated and came up with their own charts). A.S. Prilepin was a Soviet weightlifting
coach that analyzed the training of (I believe) 780 Soviet weightlifters.
From his analysis he came up with a chart that is known as Prilepin’s chart. This chart has
recommendations for the number of reps per set, and ranges of total reps within a training
day for each percentage range of 1RM. This is a great starting point, but was made for
weightlifters and not powerlifters so there is some wiggle room here.
There is a lot of information on the internet that states that speed work does not work. I do
believe that there is some misunderstanding with what speed work is for. Louie Simmons
never said that speed work will make your absolute strength increase. It only works in
conjunction with max effort work.
The ironic part is that the lifters and coaches that are saying speed work does not work, are
utilizing programs where their top sets are between an RPE 6 to 7. This is basically the
same intensity as speed work. The lifters at Westside are just trying to apply more force to
the lighter weights.
This is due to CAT (compensatory acceleration training). Dr. Squat, aka Fred Hatfield, was a
huge proponent of CAT. The idea of this comes from the simple equation of force = mass x
acceleration. If we want to equal the force of moving heavy weights without actually loading
the bar heavy, the lifter needs to move the lighter weights as fast as possible.
The problem with this is that the bar needs to decelerate to reach a velocity of 0 at the top,
or the bar will go flying off of the lifter’s back. This is why Louie uses accommodating
resistance. The bands and chains force the lifter to continually accelerate the weight. This
is exactly what Dr. Hatfield was saying to do.
I did experiment with straight weight on the bench press for CAT. I could generate
tremendous force off of my chest by bringing the light weights down fast and immediately
exploding up with the weight. So much force that I would get incredibly sore in the
beginning. However, there was a point after the initial acceleration that the weight was too
light to continually apply force.
The spaces outside of the max effort lifts are where the coach can continue to try things and
see if those things work. The coach should always be trying to get better and learn better
ways of training. I am sure by the time I finish writing this book, I will have tried other things
that may or may not have worked.
With that said, there are some rules I tend to follow with these lighter days. It is rare that I
program dynamic work like Westside does. Sometimes I will though. The average
intensities are usually the same. All beginner to intermediate liters could probably use some
practice on being explosive.
The majority of the work that I prescribe on these days falls between 70% and 80-85% of
1RM. This was how my training was set up with Sheiko, and the fact that another highly
successful coach such as Louie Simmons, sets up his lifters’ training in those ranges makes
me confident that it is the best choice.
I vary the rep ranges of the sets based upon the variation I am using and what the lifter has
been doing in the current training cycles. I like the idea of Westside using more sets and
less reps with limited rest periods, but we definitely change this up frequently.
This forces the lifter to go on someone else’s time frame, just like a meet. At a meet you do
not get to go when you want to. I like having more sets as well because it lets the lifter really
work on the walkout and setup. They get more opportunities with those. The walkout and
setup is crucial to success.
The short rests also create fatigue. Maintaining technique while tired is more difficult. The
coach can use this fatigue to challenge a more skilled lifter. A less skilled lifter will need
more time between sets in order to complete them with good technique. In that case the
coach would be better suited to use a typical rep and set scheme. The coach does need to
keep in mind that the more tired the lifter becomes, the less explosive they become. There
is a give and take here. Sometimes longer rests are more appropriate and sometimes
shorter rests are more appropriate.
I alternate these methods frequently with lifters. One reason is due to the law of
accommodation. The more a lifter uses a certain weight, set, and rep scheme, the less
benefits they will receive from it. The other reason is to keep training fun and exciting.
Now, with that said I will repeat the same week over and over for recovery. A new stimulus
is more difficult to recover from than a more familiar stimulus. All of my lifters rate the last
set with an RPE score. If that score is an 8 or higher, I will tend to repeat that same week
over.
In that next week the coach should see the RPE drop. If that is the case, the coach can
choose to run the week 1 more time, or to add some more work. If it only drops to an RPE
7.5, I usually choose to run the week one more time. If it drops to an RPE 6, I will most likely
add more work.
The coach cannot forget that part of the lighter days is for the lifter to recover. These days
should not be putting the lifter in a position that makes it difficult for them to recover. If they
are experiencing difficulty recovering the coach needs to be aware of the lifter’s outside life
stress, sleep, and nutrition and make any changes accordingly.
There may be times that the coach needs to use less volume on these days. Westside’s use
of lighter bar weight and accommodating resistance can be easier to recover from. The
coach can use lighter band tension than Westside recommends as well.
Westside lifters are top-level multiply lifters. The absolute loads that they are lifting are
going to be much higher than most. A raw lifter will not lift the same loads and training can
be adjusted accordingly. This is one reason why we are able to get max effort deadlifts in 1
to 2 times a month with the squats.
Raw lifting being a newer sport means that the majority of the lifters are beginners to
intermediate level lifters. These are very different from the lifters at Westside. The lighter
absolute loads make it easier for the lifter to recover. Also, newer lifters do not possess the
same ability to strain under heavy weights like elite lifters can. This also makes recovery
easier for the newer lifter. This gives the coach many options.
The coach can use lighter loads and make them more difficult by adding a variation to them.
For example, a pause squat at 70% of 1RM is more difficult than a comp squat at 70% of
1RM. When I feel a lifter needs less work at a given time due to outside stress, I will use a
day 4 that looks like this:
2 second pause Squat at 70% of 1RM for 4 sets of 3 reps
Sumo Deadlift w/ 2 sec Pause 2 Inches Off Floor, 70% of 1RM for 4 sets of 3 reps
The squat and deadlift work the same muscle groups for the most part. This lifter is still
getting 8 quality sets of work and 24 repetitions at 70% of 1RM. These repetitions are more
difficult than 70% of 1RM, so the intensity is up a bit. 12 to 24 reps between 70% and 80%
of 1RM is optimal according to Prilepin’s chart. The time under tension of these sets is also
increased and should be accounted for.
Under ideal situations I will program 12 to 30 reps of squats on that day and 10 to 20 reps of
deadlifts on that day. This volume is much higher than the example I listed above. The
higher volume makes it more difficult to recover from. The coach needs to know their lifters.
In some cases, the inability to recover from higher workloads is the lifter’s weakness. In
order to get stronger we need to be able to do more work over time. If the lifter is incapable
of doing more work than progress may stall.
Bench press dynamic and rep work is usually done on day 3 before deadlifts. The deadlifts
will rotate between max effort work and rep/dynamic work each week. The lifter should
always perform some form of exercise before deadlifts because deadlifts are the last lift of
the competition. With Sheiko, I always benched before pulling and have kept it like that
through the years.
General guidelines that I follow for these days are:
1. Working weights between 70% and 80-85% of 1RM
2. Squat reps between 12 and 30, bench reps between 20 and 30, and deadlift reps
between 10 and 20 reps
3. Squats are usually 2 to 3 reps per set, but 5x5s will be done occasionally, bench
press sets are usually triples, but can be as much as 6s at times, deadlifts are usually
1 to 3 rep sets. Occasionally we will use sets of 4 and 5, but less frequently than the
other 2.
4. Minimal rest should be utilized on this day, but keep in mind that fatigue will impact
technique and explosiveness.
Part of our repetition work also comes in the form of backdowns. Westside Barbell seems to
break up their training as high intensity low volume days and low intensity moderate to high
volume days. Again, Westside has much different lifters than I do. This makes a lot of
sense for their skill level and the absolute weights that they are lifting.
Westside will do heavy sets of 3 to 5 reps with good mornings after the max effort lower lift.
This will be followed by 3-4 GPP exercises to target weaker areas. There is still quite a bit of
volume here on these days.
Having started my powerlifting life with Boris Sheiko, I am still of the belief that the work
being done within the lifts is far superior than anything else. I would rather get as much work
within the lifts as we can recover from. The variations allow for us to still target weaker
areas, but at the same angles and within the same movements.
The variations allow us to target weker areas within the lifts themselves. This has a higher
carryover to the main lifts. By changing stance width, hip angles, and so on, we can put a
greater emphasis on a specific muscle group to bring it up to speed with all of the other
ones. After this work, we will do some accessories to continue to target those weaker
muscle groups, but the volumes and intensities of these accessories are much less than
what you will see from a Westside program.
Another reason that I like the backdowns of the main lift is because of mental focus. After a
lifter takes a max effort attempt, they need to be able to focus and work on technical skills of
the lift.
I had a lifter run a mental fatigue squat block before a competition. He would take a typing
test for 5 minutes between each attempt in training. Mental fatigue will increase the
perceived effort of given weights (RPE). This we saw with the squats.
We removed the mental fatiguing task from the training session. He smoked a squat PR and
ended his competition with a 22.5kg total PR. This proved to me that there are strong
benefits to training the mind.
Instead of having my lifters all perform typing tests, we perform technique work within the lifts
after our max effort attempts. The focus and psychological arousal from the heavier weights
induces this same mental fatigue.
With these backdowns I tend to program them like I would for a lighter day when I was
working under Sheiko. They will be between 3 to 5 sets for a total of 8 to 15 reps. The
percentages usually range from 65% to 80%, with occasionally hitting 85%. These
percentages are taken from the max single of that day.
For example, if the lifter has a competition best squat of 600lbs, but only hits 500lbs for the
max effort lift of the day, the lifter will use the 500lbs of that day to determine what load will
be placed on the bar. Backdowns are always done with the same bar and same stance.
Sometimes I will add in a pause. The accommodating resistance always stays on the bar as
well.
There are times that I will cut the backdowns for recovery. I sometimes just plan blocks like
that. There will be times where we are performing rep work in place of max effort work for
that given week that I may remove the backdowns from. In most cases I will bring them back
in the following week. I try to keep the backdowns between an RPE 7-8. They should be
technical and not make the lifter strain, but still hard.
If the lifter is straining too much under lighter weights, it is best to cut the training session
there and adjust the following week. It is important for the coach to understand what is going
on in the lifter’s life and how their sleep and nutrition is. In some cases the lifter is detrained
and just needs to progress gradually to meet the level of conditioning that we are looking for.
Between all of the max effort, dynamic effort, and rep work, the lifter may perform as little as
10 repetitions of the comp lifts up to as many as 50 repetitions in a week. This is dependent
upon the lift first of all. The deadlift is the only lift that gets down to 10 repetitions in a normal
week (one without adjustments). The squat typically will only see a minimum of 16 to 20
reps in a week, and bench press very seldom sees under 30 reps in a week. Again, these
are all repetitions of working sets only. I do not track warmups.
An average week of training for my lifters is around 100 lifts. This includes all variations of
the competition lifts. This only includes the top working sets. If we added in the warmups,
the average weekly number of lifts would be around 130 lifts per week, give or take.
The majority of our work is performed between 70% and 80-85% of 1RM. We get roughly
7-10% of our volume from reps over 90% of 1RM, and some work at lower intensities,
especially for less skilled or less experienced lifters. Due to the higher amounts of work over
90% of 1RM, our overall number of lifts is lower than what Sheiko recommends within his
programs. If we benched with higher frequency, our numbers would almost line up.
The coach needs to select the appropriate intensities and workloads for each lifter. Outside
stress, nutrition, sleep, hydration, and past training history need to be considered. The
dynamic effort days and repetition work should be done with a high level of technical
efficiency. This is a big reason that the lifter is performing this submaximal work.
Sheiko would want every single repetition to look the same in training. His argument would
be that if we performed the squat differently on all 20 repetitions, we would be training 20
different movement patterns. Every repetition performed by the lifter on these days should
be fast and technical.
The lifter should not be straining on these reps as strain will make recovery more difficult. I
prefer these sets to be completed between RPE 6 to RPE 8. If there is too much strain the
coach may decide to lower the weight or drop the number of sets. In these cases, I will
sometimes just repeat the exact same day over the following week, and maybe even the
week after. These RPEs do not need to be exact, but the coach should know the speed and
technical efficiency in which they want the repetitions executed.
Each time that the lifter encounters the same stimulus it should be less difficult to recover
from. A new stimulus is most difficult to recover from. If the RPEs are not dropping from
week to week, this tells the coach that the lifter is not recovering as well as they could, or
that their conditioning is low.
In the next wave, the coach may want to use lighter weights and/or lower workloads to allow
the lifter to build their conditioning and to improve their recovery habits. We do not want the
lifter getting too far behind the 8 ball for recovery as we can end up digging a large hole that
takes a lot more time to climb out of.
In summary, the dynamic effort days and repetition work days will not directly improve the
lifter’s absolute strength. The max effort days are there to do that. These days are to work
on the other skills of the sport. This includes the rate of force development and technical
efficiency.
The coach should always keep in mind the ability of the lifter to recover. The lifter is only
able to do the amount of work that they can recover from. This will be different for every
lifter. Genetics, motivational factors, training experience, sleep, nutrition, hydration, and
outside stress are all factors that influence recovery.
Fatigue
It seems that in powerlifting, athletes and coaches fear fatigue. It is this fine line that you
need to walk with caution. Most coaches and athletes understand that you need some
fatigue to adapt, but if we get too much we will get injured or suffer from overtraining.
This comes from Hans Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS). This research was
performed in the 1930s on rats. Selye was very mean to these rats and then weighed their
adrenal glands.
I am not too sure what this research even has to do with resistance training. I think people
just assumed this is how all stress enacted upon the human body. Basically, the human
would encounter a stress and react by releasing various hormones.
This increase in stress, if well programmed, would lead to adaptation. However, if we
stressed the organism too much they would suffer injury and potentially even death. This
makes sense logically, but does not give the body much credit for having mechanisms to
keep us alive under stressful scenarios.
The view that the strength sports has of fatigue is something that I have always struggled
with. It just did not make sense to me that a lifter could not do hard work three to four days a
week.
How can one or two near maximal, or even maximal sets, tire out someone so bad that their
central nervous system would get “fried?” I have used this example many times. If a lifter is
performing a maximal single on a squat it might take about 3 seconds, give or take.
In football this would be half of a play. In powerlifting we take three to five minutes between
attempts in training instead of forty seconds like they do in a football game. In football there
is maximal effort and potentially change of direction and even a collision. I would argue that
the play in football is actually more work.
During my years of playing sports, if we were tired during games or practice, we would work
harder. We would not say “Hey, we are fatigued. We should probably pull back so that we
do not get hurt.” We literally would increase the work we were doing, and guess what? We
adapted and our fitness increased.
Did athletes get hurt? Yes, absolutely. Injuries are part of every sport. I would not say that
they got hurt any more often during these periods of time. It was usually a rolled ankle or
something.
We cannot prevent injuries. I do not think we can even reduce injury rates. This is as long
as coaches are being smart and not doing stupid things like making a 100m sprinter run a
marathon without training for it.
The idea that we can increase performance and decrease injury risk is a golden unicorn.
That will never be the case. There are smarter ways to train for sure, but this comes with the
coach and athlete having a strong relationship and effective communication.
I think too often coaches make decisions based off of this fallacy and it holds back their
lifters. When a lifter feels tired and sore, the coach will typically pull back a bit. Perhaps
giving a deload week. I am not saying that this is wrong, in fact, I do this often as well, but
we will get to that later on.
This goes against the culture that I was brought up in. When this happened, we trained
harder. I am not saying that the coach should ignore the lifter’s pains or concerns. Instead
discuss those pains and concerns and come up with a plan of action.
The plan oftentimes is to continue to push through. Many times when we push through we
see large increases in performance once the pain and “fatigue” subsides. This increase in
performance we would not have seen if we had pulled back.
When the coach has this conversation with the lifter they are educating them. This will help
to update the lifter’s beliefs about fatigue. This is as long as the lifter trusts in the coach.
When the lifter continues to train through it and nothing bad happens, the lifter is getting an
expectation violation. The expectation and belief that fatigue is negative and dangerous is
widespread. When nothing bad happens, and the pain actually goes away, the lifter violates
their previous expectations and we get a newly updated belief.
Over time of doing this we can actually build a very resilient lifter. One that expects to be in
pain at times, but is smart enough to navigate it appropriately to not get injured. Sometimes
this means we alter positions a bit to relieve some of the discomfort, sometimes it means we
just continue to do what we do. Very rarely do we need to pull back, but at times that is the
best call. All sports require some rest days. However, keep in mind that most powerlifters
train 3 to 5 days per week, so there are built in rest days from the sport.
I observed this play out over and over. When I first started coaching strength athletes, I
would program lighter days as I would expect fatigue to be high at those given time periods.
As a newer coach I just was not comfortable telling the lifters to just keep pushing it, even
though I believed that deep down in my soul.
Eventually I found what I was looking for in the literature. I stumbled upon an article titled
“Fatigue is a Brain-Derived Emotion that Regulates the Exercise Behavior to Ensure the
Protection of Whole Body Homeostasis” written by Timothy David Noakes.
Our idea of fatigue is also derived from Hans Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome
research. Again, this research was performed in the 1930s on rats. In my opinion, this
study has absolutely nothing to do with human performance. Re-emphasizing this here as it
is very important to understand.
Noakes explains in his article that both the brain and the muscles alter their function during
exercise, and that fatigue is an emotion, that is part of a complex regulatory process, that
protects the body from harm and keeps in mind (pun intended) both short and long term
interests.
Basically, the brain analyzes all of these feedback loops and increases perceived effort
when it sees fit. These feedback loops include pain, motivation, effort, past experiences,
expectations, and beliefs among many others such as energy and core temperature.
Our brain will increase perceived effort to slow us down long before we have actually hit
exhaustion. This seems like a difficult concept to grasp for many. Most will brush me off and
tell me that being tired is not all in their heads. This is understandable as it goes against all
conventional wisdom. It goes against everything that I have learned in school as well. And it
is definitely not all in your head.
Humans love to attach themselves to things that we can measure. We love to have
answers. I also think this is a byproduct of not having enough philosophy taught in schools,
but that is a discussion for another day.
A.V. Hill was the researcher that is credited with discovering VO2max between 1923 and
1925. Interestingly, just like Selye who was mean to rats to induce these physiological
states, researchers were mean to frogs in this muscle physiology research. VO2max is the
maximal oxygen uptake of the body that can be utilized in physical activity. In grad school I
was lucky enough to get to do these tests in labs.
They fit a mask to your face to measure carbon dioxide and oxygen exchanges as well as
heart rate. This was performed on a treadmill, where there was an increase in effort as we
went along. The test is concluded when VO2max stops increasing, even when the effort is
increasing. This is a measurement of “peripheral fatigue.”
We latch onto the things in which we can measure. We can measure peripheral fatigue, but
to be able to understand how the brain works under fatigued conditions is a much more
difficult task.
I believe that Noakes uses stationary bikes in an MRI machine in his lab, but there are
downfalls to this as well. The MRI has a delay in capturing the picture. It does not
necessarily give the researchers feedback in real time.
As a strength and conditioning coach, measuring VO2max was always an important piece of
any initial athlete assessment. However, this test is not telling us much about fatigue. It
completely neglects the nervous system’s role in all of this.
Powerlifters though do not care about their aerobic fitness. VO2max is most likely not a
piece of any coach’s initial assessment on a lifter. This makes the fatigue scenario in
powerlifting even more interesting in my opinion.
It seems that the majority of the information we believe on fatigue in this sport is just passed
down from the lifters that came before us. I do not think that these messages should be
completely disregarded, but modern science has come a long way.
Noakes suggests that the brain induces fatigue to stop exercising before harm develops, not
when we actually run out of energy. Most of this research actually looks at endurance
athletes. Physiological work in powerlifting is very low compared to athletes running
marathons and ultra-marathons.
In all my life playing sports, we were not afraid of fatigue, it was just a thing. For some
reason the culture of powerlifting is the exact opposite. It is this thing to be scared of.
Perhaps this is the piece that coaches and athletes latch onto to explain the uncertainty of
things.
I think in part this is a combination of a number of factors. Typical periodization models will
increase volumes to a point of “overreaching.” From that point, volumes will drop and
intensity will increase. This is what is known as “peaking.”
Once we allow the “fatigue” to dissipate we get this phenomena known as
supercompensation. The lifter goes to a meet and performs well and they are convinced
that this is the way to do things and we are proving how fatigue affects performance.
This strategy fails to work as often as it actually works. When this happens the coach and
athlete will typically find something to blame. Sometimes it is things like the judges. Other
times it will be the weight cut, the quality of sleep the night before, or a number of other
factors. It is always easy to lay blame to some other factors here. Those factors do most
certainly play a role as well.
We never think of the psychological load placed on the lifter. Most lifters work full-time jobs,
have external stressors, may be cutting weight before the meet, and so on. Lifters tend to
push it a little harder closer to a competition too.
These situations may lead to periods of increased perceived effort. The brain is receiving
these feedback loops based on energy, effort, motivation, mood, and so on. To preserve the
body’s functions the brain may increase perceived efforts, but the lifter is willing to push
these a little more due to the upcoming competition.
All of a sudden the coach decreases the training requirements and the brain can, for lack of
a better word, recover. Add in competition day “hype” and we have a nice situation where
the lifter’s perceived effort of given weights should decrease leading to an increase in
performance. Motivation on competition day is always higher as well and this may account
for a 2.5% increase in performance that is often chalked up to supercompensation.
Since this process is so reliant upon the brain’s interpretation of all of these feedback loops,
it becomes important for the coach to pay attention and guide training leading up to the meet
in the most effective way. This requires a lot of work and a strong relationship with the
lifters.
From a physiological standpoint energy stores are not even close to being depleted from
lifting weights. Maximum muscle contraction only uses about 60% of the available muscle
fibers. Research struggles to induce nervous system fatigue from lifting weights alone
without an endurance component. The ones that have shown some types of fatigue also
showed that the CNS recovers in about 20 minutes. 24 to 48 hours between exposures is
more than enough time to recover from a heavy set. I actually like to stretch this out to 48 to
72 hours just to be sure.
The Bulgarian and Greek weightlifters will max out lifts multiple times each day. These lifts
will include squats. This should not be ignored and chalked up to drugs or other pieces.
This is something that needs to be looked at and taken into consideration. When the lifter
maxes out more frequently, the lifter will become more aware of the ups and downs of
training performance. This is not the case, and an argument for, a submaximal training
program.
Submaximal training programs use weights light enough where the lifter will not miss weights
in training. The argument is that this builds success and confidence. Lifters need to learn
how to miss and to not have it negatively affect them. They will miss at competitions at some
point and need to be able to recover and make the necessary adjustments. Competitions
have psychological components to them that should not be overlooked in training.
Competing is a skill.
There are no physiological explanations to explain a decrease in performance, or increase in
perceived effort. I do believe that training heavy can help to train this aspect. If the lifter
feels like 405lbs is heavier than normal, but their coach or their team is telling them to add
weight because it looked easier, and they hit that weight, they just challenged their brain’s
perceived effort. This helps to build the necessary mental toughness to be successful in this
sport.
Noakes calls his model the central governor model of fatigue. This model puts the brain as
the central governor, controlling perceived effort based off of the information it is gathering in
real time from the body and the environment. This explains the importance of psychological
factors for success and failures.
Interestingly, runners will always pace themselves at the beginning of a race, despite being
told not to or not knowing the actual length of the race. Once the runners are aware of an
endpoint and the brain is satisfied with the feedback, the runners will pick up speed at the
end of a race.
Endurance races all fit this U-shaped curve. Runners start out fast, pace slows in the
middle, and then they kick it into a higher gear at the end. If the body was a machine this
would make no sense at all as energy is lowest, dehydration and weight loss often occur,
and core temperature is the highest at the end. In spite of this, the runners are able to run
the last few laps as fast and sometimes faster than the first few.
No one’s legs feel fresh at the end of a race either. I have experienced similar instances in
my life too. In soccer matches that were close, or we found ourselves down as the match
was nearing an end, there was always an extra gear we could get into no matter how tired
we were.
The self-belief, motivation, and camaraderie of teammates, among other variables, allows
you to push further. This is the same with powerlifting, except we use far fewer physiological
resources in this sport. One minute of continued hard wrestling in mma was much harder
than any hard set of a lift I have ever done.
This comes back to the expectations, beliefs, and mental toughness of the lifter. The coach
can guide this process and help the lifter see what they are truly capable of. I have been
asked frequently if I think that lifting at high intensities is right for everyone.
There seems to be this belief that some people respond better to certain types of training. I
believe that high intensities are for everyone. The ones that seem to struggle just need to
train their mind to be able to accomplish it. Hard singles are the sport! In every sport that I
have ever participated in we trained the sport.
In every other sport we have this belief that everyone can go hard, but why not in
powerlifting? I believe that this is due to the cultural beliefs of the sport. I believe that this
can be coached and trained in every lifter and when each lifter learns this skill they enhance
the quality of their training over the longer term.
The physiological resources used in a training session are very low. As Tim Noakes
discusses in his research, the brain will begin to increase perceived effort, leading to a
decision to stop moving, long before you die or have utilized all available resources.
Elite athletes have the ability to push past that feeling of pain better than less elite athletes.
When research looks at fatigue in the muscles following exercise they look at voluntary
muscle contraction. Noakes is interested in the runner who comes in second place. He
believes that that runner accepts their placing long before the finish line. This is an
interesting concept to me.
What controls the voluntary muscle actions? The brain. The brain includes our
expectations, beliefs, past experiences, and all of the other feedback loops that the brain
monitors and analyzes.
These fatigue factors seem to only be able to be induced in a laboratory setting when there
is a long duration exercise. These are usually running, rowing, or cycling tests. For lifting an
example in current research was ten sets of ten at 60% of 1RM with two minutes rest. This
is an endurance test, not an intensity test.
Higher intensities do not seem to create the same levels of physiological fatigue
(psychological fatigue for sure, but very hard to measure) as high duration exercise. The
Bulgarians and the Greek weightlifters max out every single training day, often more than
one time each day. I have heard stories of some of them taking max squat singles up to
eight times a day.
This type of training can be very difficult on the athlete. It is not so difficult on the body, but
on the mind. The Greeks and Bulgarians have the cultural beliefs that this type of training is
the best way. This belief system allows them to handle the training much better. They are
also eased into it over years and years of training.
Here in America we argue that the daily maxing out of lifts is dangerous and can lead to
overtraining. If an athlete expects to be fatigued after a high intense set, they are more likely
to experience those physiological symptoms. Another reason that I like to add in backdowns
after the max effort work.
Frustration will be very high in these high intensity training scenarios. Lifters’ performances
will be non-linear. There will be down performance days. We see small peaks and valleys
that occur throughout a time period.
Each down performance day is an opportunity for the lifter to learn something to better
navigate their training. Error is what leads to learning. Sometimes we just chalk it up as a
bad day. Other times, we learn how to make better decisions for weight on the bar, or other
areas of our life that we may need to work at. It also highlights the breakdowns of technique
under heavier weights, where it really matters. The coach can see these breakdowns and
plan the program accordingly.
Powerlifters will have lives outside of the gym. They will have full-time jobs and families.
What is referred to in the literature as mental fatigue can be very high sometimes. This
mental fatigue raises perceived effort, lowering performance.
This makes mental training extremely important. Lifters will need to take time before and
during training to practice positive self-talk and self-organize into mental approaches for the
sport.
Getting back to the fatigue induced by training, I would like to discuss a study performed by
Zourdos and colleagues titled “Efficacy of Daily 1RM Training in Well-Trained Powerlifters
and Weightlifters: A Case Series.”
These researchers took two powerlifters and one weightlifter with at least five years of
training and made them take a daily 1RM for thirty-seven days straight. Following the 1RM
they would either hit triples at 85% or doubles at 90%.
All three lifters put on significant increases in their squat. They were 6%, 11%, and 9.5%
increases in 1RM strength. This flies in the face of much conventional wisdom. The lifters
were tested on day 37. This should have been when they were most tired and felt the most
beat up. These were consecutive days, not consecutive training days. In the real world
lifters train anywhere from three to five days per week on average.
They did take only one set of one repetition of 85% on day 36, providing a mini break from
the heavier weights. These were experienced lifters as well and this is probably not the best
course of action for a beginner.
These lifters have been lifting for a prolonged period of time. Their abilities to push through
pain are much higher than a beginner’s. Their training skill is most likely higher as well. If
they feel the weight to be a certain way, but see what it looks like, and they have a training
partner cheering them on and helping them, they are more likely to continue to add weight.
This raises the bar for perceived effort.
Heavier weights also come with an emotional response. However, the more you encounter
the heavier weights, the less of an emotional response that the lifter gets. The first few times
there will be a lot of nerves approaching the weight. However, over time those nerves go
away.
When those nerves come in before a lift the brain can speed up and the lifter will move faster
than they usually do. When this happens we see a loss of position on the lifts and
sometimes this leads to a missed repetition.
Whether the miss is caused because of the brain, or being too heavy is impossible to know.
Utilizing the CLA is still the most effective way in my opinion. By challenging those positions
where control is lost the lifter is forced to spend more time there and get more comfortable.
Utilizing tempos and pauses slows the lifter down. They also slow down the lifter’s brain.
They become more comfortable in difficult positions. This is raising the perceived effort of
the difficult parts of the lift. Speed them up again, and it feels much easier than it did before.
Changing pace (pun intended here) I want to discuss the Kenyans and their endurance
success. The majority of the top 100 times in the marathon are Kenyan and they have a
very interesting running culture.
They have a belief that they are the best in the world at running. The statistics back up their
claims. However, every young runner is attempting to fulfill that prophecy. They go out each
day and everyone trains together.
Little background on endurance running that I got from the book “Endure” by Alex
Hutchinson. In America, most runners will pick a pace that they can maintain throughout the
entire race. The Kenyans go as hard as they can as long as they can.
The Americans will have more stable outcomes, but the Kenyans will have some amazing
days and other days that do not go so well. I decide to coach PPS like the Kenyans racing
strategies and most high volume programs are like the Americans’ racing strategies.
The beginners in Kenya will take off and keep up with the leaders as long as they can. They
actually believe they can beat them here too. They hold on as long as they can and
eventually will drop behind. They will go home, regroup, and come out the next day and
attempt to beat them again.
This flies in the face of conventional training wisdom. To quote Louie Simmons “If you run
with the lame you will develop a limp.” The Kenyans are sure not running with the lame.
They are trying to keep up with the world’s best right from the start. This effort and push
from more elite runners is what has led to world dominance in endurance sports over a long
term period.
They are learning to push themselves beyond their comfort by trying to keep up with the
more elite runners. This is what lifting heavy in the gym does. It pushes the lifter each day
beyond their comfort zones and forces them to become better powerlifting versions of
themselves over time. This is also why having stronger training partners is important. Let
them set the pace.
At some point each of these runners makes a conscious decision to slow down and fall back,
or to stop. They are not running themselves into death. Perhaps Tim Noakes is correct in
thinking that they accept their outcomes before those outcomes are even completed.
Noakes’ theory does not come without its criticisms. Samuel Marcora has taken the ideas of
Tim Noakes and revised them a bit in his research. Marcora calls his theory the
psychobiological model of exercise tolerance.
In 2009 Marcora published a study titled “Mental Fatigue Impairs Physical Performance in
Humans.” This research showed that mental fatigue led to decreases in performance
without decreases in measurable biological functions such as cardiorespiratory or
musculoenergetic factors. To quote the conclusion of the study:
“In conclusion, our study provides experimental evidence that mental fatigue limits exercise
tolerance in humans through higher perception of effort rather than cardiorespiratory and
musculoenergetic mechanisms.”
This research looked at 90 minute cycling tests with and without mental fatigue. Powerlifting
is a very different sport. One that uses far less physiological resources than an endurance
event like an all out 90 minute cycle.
When we look at other sports, powerlifting utilizes far less resources than most. A heavy
squat triple might take ten seconds to complete. This is less than two plays in American
football where there will be a max acceleration, change of direction, and a collision. This is
often performed in various environmental conditions as well such as summer heat and rain.
Common sense tells me that there is no way that we shouldn’t be able to max out lifts every
single day, not to mention three or four days a week. Performing one to two near max sets
utilizes far less resources than a higher volume program. Again, in order to get overtraining
in a lab there needs to be a duration component. Humans are complex and this is not quite
the case though.
I am with Marcora in the thinking that fatigue is grounded in the athlete’s perception. If this is
true, it means that we can train that perception. The human body is not a machine and
should not be coached as one.
Noakes believes that the brain is responding to physical pieces of the body running out of
energy. Marcora believes this is more psychological. Marcora believes that most of us can
keep going long after our brain tells us to stop.
Marcora wrote an editorial titled “Do We Really Need a Central Governor to Explain Brain
Regulation of Exercise Performance?” This article breaks down the differences between
what Noakes is theorizing and what Marcora is.
In the beginning I had a hard time finding the difference between the two theories, but there
is a big difference and it lies in our conscious versus subconscious. Noakes believes that
the feedback received by the brain, and the increase in perceived effort is caused by the
subconscious to trick the conscious brain.
This is to ensure that the person does not push beyond their physiological limits. It is a
defense mechanism so to speak. Marcora believes that the athletes make a conscious
decision to push beyond those limits. I tend to agree with Marcora here.
According to Noakes, the central governor is in place so that when we encounter a situation
like a cheering crowd our conscience does not override the subconscious defense
mechanisms set in place.
In the gym I will see lifters that perceive a weight to feel heavier than anticipated. However,
they get encouragement from myself and the group and they go up in weight. They made a
conscious decision to go up and oftentimes they will be successful. Sometimes they are not
successful. Who is correct, Noakes or Marcora?
It is very difficult to say as I can see both sides of the argument. I can also find examples on
both sides that would fit the paradigm. I tend to lean more towards Marcora’s side of things
with the sport of powerlifting.
In his editorial he states that stopping a task is caused by two things; 1. When the effort
required is equal to the maximum effort that the athlete is willing to give 2. When the athlete
believes to have exceeded a true maximal effort and continuing to exercise is viewed as
impossible.
We know there are physical limitations to exercise. I cannot have a 300lb squatter just squat
500lbs by making them believe it. At the end of the day the brain is responding to both
afferent and efferent feedback. I believe that both Noakes and Marcora are less wrong than
the current paradigms of fatigue that view the human body as a machine.
The differences between the two lies in semantics. Whether we consciously override
subconscious processes, or the subconscious keeps the conscious in check, we may never
know. This is part of embracing the uncertainty of things.
What do we know? We know that psychology is most definitely an important piece of
training. It also makes sense to me that if we can train our muscles we can train our minds.
At the end of the day they just might both be right. Perhaps by training the mind, or using
positive self-talk, it changes how the brain is interpreting the feedback. Depressed people
experience higher pain. When their depression is lower, they tend to be less sensitive to
pain.
Altering neurochemistry most definitely changes the brain’s position on the feedback. We
see this with pain relievers increasing performance. Perhaps the subconscious does keep
the conscious in check, but with proper protocols and training, the subconscious untightens
the reins and allows for performance to be pushed to newer levels.
I was listening to a podcast with Keith Davids, he authored the majority of the texts I have
read on DST/CLA, and he brought up a really good point. He said that training should have
consequences. I also was fortunate enough to do a podcast on Boston’s Strongcast with
Keith Davids as well.
We have gotten very good at measuring the physical pieces of training. We can measure
volumes, intensities, heart rates, miles, and the list goes on. What we struggle to measure is
the psychological.
As humans we tend to avoid what we cannot measure. Almost tossing it aside as if it does
not exist. I would argue that the psychological is more important than the physical as
measures of internal load seem to be bigger drivers of actual adaptation and may be equally
important to the recovery aspects of sport.
A DST/CLA needs to take the individual into consideration. This includes more than just
measuring RPE. RPE is their rate of PERCEIVED effort. I think the art of coaching needs to
go deeper and uncover why each lifter is perceiving effort at those levels. This includes
when training is going well, as well when training seems to be on a downward slide.
Conversations with lifters is data collection.
Training is a mixture of peaks and valleys. These happen continuously over time, carrying
on in the background. We hope to see an upward trend over the long term of these peaks.
Understanding the lifter and the lifter’s emotions is a big part of that.
We can use these peaks and valleys to our advantage as coaches. This is how we can train
with consequences and get an emotional response from the lifter over the long-term. If we
have the lifter come in each day and work up to a hard set, they will attempt to do this on a
day that tends to be a valley.
This can drive up frustration and get that emotional response that the coach is looking for.
Over time, with guidance from the coach, the lifter learns to harness their frustration to make
the best training decisions possible on each given day. This leads to high training skill and
the highest number of positive training days to drive adaptation. This also develops the skill
of competing as sometimes we will need to compete when we feel like shit, cut weight, or
travel to different parts of the world.
If one lifter makes good choices 9 times out of 10 and the other makes good choices 7 times
out of 10, the first lifter will have 20% more good training days. Over the long-term this will
yield the highest return on investment. I would say a program with prescribed sets and
weights is probably “right” 7 times out of 10. I would rather coach my lifters to get the most
out of training than attempt to write the perfect training plan that does not exist.
Now, with all of that said, it may be easy to say that fatigue does not exist and we can just
train hard through anything. This is certainly not true. What the older lifters have passed
down about training should not be ignored.
Sheiko was very adamant that high stress, medium stress, and low stress days were needed
for continued progress and for the health of the lifter. The Greeks and Bulgarians did not
deadlift. Their clean and jerk and snatch numbers were submaximal to their squat numbers.
This means that powerlifters cannot just follow what they do.
The coach needs to understand that fatigue can be both physiological and psychological in
nature. If a lifter hits a max effort lift on week 1, and it is truly a max, on week 2 I will
prescribe a percentage of that number and perform sets and reps. This gives the lifter a
psychological break from maxing out while allowing them to work on technique to hit a larger
number in the coming week. Effort is still applied in training, and effort will yield results.
The deadlifts will rotate each week between max effort and dynamic effort or rep work. We
are deadlifting and squatting in the same week. Oftentimes both have prescribed max effort
lifts in the same week. The squat will drive the deadlift progress. However, I still think it is
important to practice the deadlift.
Deadlifting heavy with squats every week becomes too much for most lifters to recover from.
They may be able to do it for a short period of time, but in the long term it will catch up to
them. The coach needs to guide each lifter for long term success, not short term.
The dynamic work and repetition work is lighter to allow the lifter to recover from the heavier
max effort work earlier in the week. The coach can manipulate each of these days to allow
the lifter to better recover.
Max effort work does not yield enough practice to make each lifter technically proficient in
the lifts. Dynamic effort and repetition effort work gives each lifter a higher number of
exposures to each lift so that they can improve their technical efficiency.
The coach does not always need to increase weight or sets each week. Sometimes it is
best to repeat the same training day. Sometimes it is best to drop weight and/or total
workload. Other times it is best to skip it all together.
I tend to use little nagging pains as a sign that there is some building up of fatigue or some
less than ideal recovery occurring. In these cases I usually keep workload the same and
may just remove the backdown work on squats after the max effort work. Sometimes just
taking a day off works well too.
This comes down to the experience of the coach and the relationship that they have with the
lifters. Pain free powerlifting does not exist. The goal is not to have pain free training all of
the time. The goal is to navigate all of the variables in the best way for each individual and
their goals to increase performance over time.
Variability
The pendulum of programming seems to have shifted quite a bit towards specificity. This is
with good reason as specificity is extremely important. However, too much specific work can
lead to a decrease in performance and the monotony of training can lead to boredom and an
increase in injury risk.
Sheiko was very big on load variability. He would say that the more a lifter uses the same
exercises with the same weights and repetitions, the less effective those exercises become.
Exercises with Sheiko rotated every single week due to this fact.
This is known as the law of accommodation. According to Zatsiorsky, the law of
accommodation is when the response to a constant stimulus by an organism decreases over
time. This is why changing up training variables is so important.
Linear Periodization programs as well as DUP programs take this into consideration by
constantly changing rep schemes and weights. Many of these programs only utilize the
competition lifts with the argument of specificity.
You do not need to only use the competition lifts in those programs. Variations and special
exercises can be utilized as well. This is a choice made by the coach. 60% of the volume in
a Sheiko program came from variations of the main lifts.
The argument that I will make will lie with the specificity of the exercise. Many coaches will
argue for the specificity being in the movement. Many programs will then call for sets of 6
reps or more of competition lifts. I am not sure this is specific to the sport of powerlifting.
Powerlifting is about lifting maximal weights one time. Moving the feet, or grip a couple of
inches does not change the lift that much. I will argue that specificity lies in the intensity of
the exercise. A max single is sport specific as this demonstrates absolute strength.
A set of 2-5 reps is displaying speed strength, this is a different strength quality than the
actual sport. Sets with higher reps get even further away from that specificity. Building
absolute strength is necessary for success in this sport. Singles at or near failure are the
best way to build this skill. This is due to specificity and the SAID principle.
SAID stands for specific adaptation to imposed demand. The body will adapt to the stress
placed upon it. This means that if we want to get better at lifting heavy singles we need to
practice heavy singles.
Now, what about the law of accommodation? We cannot just max out the competition lifts
every session. This would physically and maybe even more so, psychologically daunting.
This is where we can alter the exercise. This allows us to keep training specific skills of the
sport and also we are following the law of accommodation.
We can then utilize a DST/CLA to target specific skills and weaknesses of each individual
lifter. Training is a constant exploration of movements to find strengths and weaknesses.
This is a non-linear process and strengths and weaknesses will constantly be changing.
This is why variability is so important to skill acquisition. The bigger the skill set, the greater
the ability to change something up and keep progress moving forward. There also may be
some efficacy to changing positions and a decrease in injury risk.
To understand variability we need to start with degrees of freedom. Degrees of freedom was
discussed first by Russia’s Nikolai Bernstein in 1967. The degrees of freedom are the
independent components of a complex system that can fit together in many different ways.
This is the definition given by researcher Keith Davids in “Dynamics of Skill Acquisition: A
Constraints-Led Approach.”
All of the joint segments, muscles, limbs, energy systems, and bones make up the complex
human movement system. The Principle of Dynamic Organization states that the body is
constantly looking for a more efficient way to perform a movement.
This means that no two movements are the exact same. Every time you reach for a glass of
water even, the movement is different. The environment may be different, such as reaching
around something or reaching for a higher shelf.
Powerlifting does not deal with a ton of changes to the environment, or positions in a
competition. The temperatures may fluctuate, what the lifter looks at while lifting, crowd size,
crowd noise, and equipment.
Technically, no squat will be performed the exact same way. Let us look even deeper into
this. Perhaps the platform has a divot and the lifter needs to adjust their stance around it.
Perhaps the bar is not in the exact same spot on the back as it is in training. Perhaps the
lifter steps back and the feet are not in the exact same positions as they are in training.
Competition weights and increases in nerves can add to the lifter doing some different
things. Also, not everyone gets to train on competition equipment all of the time. The lifter
better be prepared for these scenarios.
Ever seen a lifter take 10 seconds or longer to attempt to adjust their feet in a competition?
This is wasted energy. In the time the lifter spends to make everything perfect, the rep could
have been completed.
In this scenario the lifter is not focused on completing the task. They become too worried
about feeling perfectly comfortable before they lift. This can lead to a missed attempt that
the lifter was capable of lifting.
When the coach changes positions, the coach gives the lifter a problem to solve. The lifter
then needs to solve that problem with movement. When the coach changes positions, the
coach can more easily identify the strengths and weaknesses of the lifter.
Long term success in this sport is all about the ability to analyze strengths and weaknesses.
Strengths and weaknesses will constantly be changing and the program needs to be able to
help the coach identify that as well as target those weaknesses.
If we practice the same movement over and over, the lifter’s weaknesses will become the
limiting factor and the lifter can get stuck in a long plateau. Plateaus in this sport are
inevitable no matter what. However, an experienced coach can help guide the lifter more
effectively throughout these periods of time.
The lifter learns these skills through the coach. Many coaches choose to use a lot of verbal
cues to guide the lifter’s movement within the lifts. I fall more in line with the DST approach,
in that the learning should be centered around the individual lifter.
Every liter is unique and brings with them something different into training. Their
perceptions, beliefs, and past experiences shape who they are as an individual. The human
body is extremely complex and we have not even begun to scratch the surface of its
complexity.
We cannot answer all of the questions that come about during training. The answer to those
questions lies within each individual. It is the coach’s responsibility to put them in positions
and situations where they can explore and come up with their own solutions to the problems
presented.
This is known as self-organizing. Self-organization is also known as spontaneous order.
This is when some form of order arises from interactions between the intrinsic dynamics of
the lifter and their environment. This does not need controlling by an external agent. In this
case the external agent is the coach.
The coach can alter these interactions in ways that allow the lifter to explore and find order.
For example, the coach can alter the task to teach the lifter a specific skill while punishing a
movement pattern that the coach may deem as ineffective.
The use of maximal weights elicits a similar psychological response for the lifter as they will
encounter at a competition. The environment is pretty set in a sport like powerlifting.
Powerlifters will not encounter rain, wind, and slippery surfaces (hopefully).
However, the crowd, the noise, lighting, temperature, and the location can all have an effect
on the lifter’s performance. These are all potential problems that the coach needs to think
about.
If the lifter only performs the competition lifts, in their favorite rack, at a gym close to home,
with the exact same people around, they may have a problem when these situations change.
The coach may think it is important for the lifter to go to a different gym occasionally. This
will help the lifter to learn to complete the tasks in an unfamiliar environment, much like a
competition.
Part of being highly skilled in any sport is having enough tools to handle a constantly
changing environment and ever changing situations. The research shows an inverse U for
the amounts of variability seen in different level athletes.
Beginners and elite level athletes show similar amounts of variation in their movement.
Intermediates tend to show less than the beginners and elite level athletes. There is a
difference between the variability shown between novices and elite level athletes.
The variability seen in novices is more exploratory. They are not in control of the
movements yet, but trying to figure out what works best. This is an example of the body
limiting available degrees of freedom during this stage.
As the athlete gets more exposure to the problems, they begin to figure out what works best.
At first, they find a few solutions that seem to work. However, these are the only solutions
that they have. This is the intermediate level athlete.
Over time of constantly being given problems to solve, the athlete learns more solutions.
The athlete begins to learn how to be flexible and adaptable to any environment and any
competition setting. This is now seen as higher variability in movement again.
However, even though the body is always exploring for more efficient solutions, the elite
athlete has become integrated into the environment of their sport. They are able to find that
spontaneous order in situations that are never identical and seemingly chaotic.
Powerlifting is less complex than team and field sports. However, there are still many
problems that the lifter needs to solve. Each increase in weight brings about new problems.
This is very different from other sports. A free throw in basketball is always with the same
size ball and same size basket. The external environment is the only thing that changes
here.
To squat 400lbs brings about different problems, than 300lbs, and 500lbs brings about
different problems than 400lbs, and so on. Not everyone is capable of breaking a world
record squat. The coach’s job is to help guide the lifter to be the best lifter that they are
capable of being.
Variability offers up these problems that allow the lifter to build a large bank of solutions. If
the lifter only performs the lifts from one position in one environment, they may not have the
tools to overcome adversity.
Little nagging issues will always be present in competitive sports. We know that overuse
can be a big issue with causing these nagging things. If the lifter is experiencing some pain
that limits performance with their preferred competition stance, how do they solve that
problem?
In many cases just changing angles of the lift can alleviate symptoms and allow the lifter to
keep training. If the lifter is uncomfortable with a wider stance on squats, or a different grip
on the bench, or an opposite stance deadlift they will see a large decrease in performance.
If the lifter is prepared because they have trained all of those other angles, and they are
strong at those angles, they can continue to train and still compete for total PRs on the
platform.
Also, there is an argument that the lifter will be limited due to the weakest muscle within the
chain. For example, a powerlifter may have the strength to squat 600lbs in their legs, but
their lower back is only capable of lifting 500lbs. If this is the case this lifter will only squat
500lbs.
All weaknesses can be broken down into mental, physical and technical (I stole this from
Dave Tate, owner of EliteFTS). The example above is an example of a physical weakness.
In that case I like to target variations that will put a greater emphasis on the lower back. This
may include box squats, but also a lot of conventional deadlifts. The deadlifts will most likely
be on blocks to take the legs completely out of it.
Many coaches will use higher volumes with lighter weights. This may help to improve
technical efficiency. In my opinion this is not the most optimal way. The heavier the weight
the harder it will be to maintain technical efficiency.
If this is true shouldn’t the coach want to practice the technique with heavier weights since
the sport is actually lifting heavy weights? In my opinion, I believe this works best. Now, we
can’t just perform the competition lift with heavy singles and expect it to get better.
That is literally the definition of insanity. This is where changing angles and using variations
can come in. If the low back is the limiting factor, the coach can use box squats. This can
be done on the max effort days.
The goal of the coach should be to build up this angle and hit some PRs on these variations.
The coach may use the box squat in wave 1, box squat with chains wave 2, more chains or
bands on wave 3, then bring the box squat back in and see if there is improvement.
If the lifter hits a PR from this angle, the coach can be pretty confident that the lifter can hit a
PR in the competition lift. Usually at this point the strengths and weaknesses have changed
and the coach needs to plan accordingly.
A DST/CLA approach targets all areas on the lifter that may be a weakness. As humans we
like to cling onto the things that we can measure. For the sport of powerlifting this tends to
mean collecting data on things such as volumes and intensities.
This often leads to the Excel spreadsheet doing the coaching instead of the coach. In the
documentary “Belichick and Saban: The Art of Coaching” Bill Belichik explains this trend in
coaching leaning towards analytics.
He was telling a story about how he got on the plane after a loss and saw all of the coaches
with their heads in the computers. He goes, “Hey guys we did not lose because of
something in those computers. We lost because we couldn’t tackle.”
He then explained that coaches can make their way up the ranks pretty quick if they are
good with a computer, but he also said that many of these coaches struggle to be able to
teach the fundamentals of the sport.
This really resonated with me with the sport of powerlifting. It is a newer sport and many
personal trainers and strength coaches want to be a powerlifting coach. The best way to do
this seems to be to come up with a fancy spreadsheet.
I know because I have been there. When I first started to coach lifters, I paid someone to
come up with a spreadsheet that tracked everything. It tracked volumes, average intensity,
acute chronic work ratio, percentage of completed lifts with each lift, what percentage of the
lifts were variations, and more.
When things didn't go as expected I would bury my face into my computer and analyze the
numbers. I was the coach that Bill Belichik was talking about on that plane. Anyone can
come up with a fancy spreadsheet to coach. This sport is not overly complicated from a data
collection standpoint and manipulating variables based on some general principles.
There is plenty of information on how much volume and what intensity lifts should be
completed at. The coach can pick one example and apply some type of progressive
overload and be relatively successful.
The problem is that the lfter is not a machine. The lifter is a human. That human is an open,
complex, non-linear, system. Those general principles apply to strength training generally.
However, they get a little more complex when we narrow them down for each individual.
Each individual has their own past experiences, perceptions, beliefs, genetic makeup,
motivational factors, outside stress, sleep and dietary habits, and so on. All of these
feedback loops affect the results and the ability of the lifter to recover from training.
This is where the art of coaching comes into play. Not every lifter will be a world champion.
The coach’s job is to get the most out of every lifter. Many lifters do not recognize what it
takes to actually become a world champion.
Most will not make the sacrifices necessary to accomplish that feat. This is not a bad thing,
because most do not have the genetic potential to actually accomplish that feat, and that
would not justify making those sacrifices.
As a coach I like to educate the lifters on all of the things that can affect training and place
accountability on them. Accountability and self-efficacy go a long way to increasing strength.
Both are also skills that the lifter can utilize in everyday life.
The lifter’s total is on the lifter and no one else. It is not the coach or the program in most
cases. It is the lack of accountability to do what is necessary to drive progress by the lifter.
The coach needs to get that out of each individual to truly get them to succeed to the best of
their abilities.
This is touching on one major aspect that the data cannot quantify, the psychological pieces
of the lifter. This first starts with the coach/athlete relationship. The coach needs to have a
strong enough relationship with each lifter to have these conversations and to help guide the
process.
This requires tough love sometimes. The coach may need to let the lifter learn lessons the
hard way. This can be difficult because every coach is afraid of losing lifters. Decisions
cannot be made by that fear. If they are, progress will not be the best that it could be.
In sports, teams and individuals learn more from a loss than they do from a win. Earlier on
in a lifter’s career it is ok for them to experience some losses so to speak. This can help
build a more prepared and mentally resilient lifter over the long term.
In a more immediate sense, taking heavy singles has psychological consequences. No one
gets psychologically amped up to take 70% of 1RM for a set of 5 reps. A max single is a
completely different story.
This psychological arousal is present in competition, so it should be present in training. The
majority of training programs out there neglect this aspect of the lifter. In a phone
conversation with Vince Anello, the first under 200lb lifter to deadlift over 800lbs, he told me
that he believes that this sport is actually more mental than physical.
The body is only capable of lifting the weights that the brain believes are possible. Human
records get broken gradually over time. Secretariat is still the fastest horse ever. Secretariat
ran in 1973, the records still stand. This is because horses do not have the same
awareness of their existence and capabilities.
There was a time that a 1,000lb squat seemed like an impossible feat. Now, there are
dozens of lifters squatting over 1,000lbs. There are even lifters benching 1,000lbs now.
Once humans see the possibilities they are more likely to push themselves and accomplish
amazing feats.
The coach needs to get each lifter to see these possibilities within themselves. Not every
one of them needs to be told they will squat 1,000lbs, but the coach needs to find that barrier
they place on their potential and get them to break through it.
The variability in training and coaching that goes with it need to take this into consideration.
Sometimes the exercise selection and the weight is selected to break these barriers when
the opportunity arises.
Heavy singles not only elicit a psychological response, but the weight becomes part of the
constraint. If the lifter has a squat 1RM of 600lbs, chances are that the lifter will be able to
execute the lift with 405lbs, no matter what the technique looks like.
When I first started using a CLA, I ran a basic linear system. We would start at 5 reps on
week 1 and gradually work up to singles over the course of a few more weeks. What I
realized was that in many situations the lifter was still able to complete the task with less
than ideal technique, but only up to a certain weight.
I learned that it is not necessarily the position that I was putting the lifter in that was teaching
the lifter the appropriate technique, but instead it was the combination of the position and the
weight. Oftentimes this lesson was not learned until we reached the heavy singles. Other
times it would be with heavy doubles or triples.
Either way this was pretty telling to me. There were a few weeks that we were training
certain positions that were not necessarily having a carryover to the main lifts. I needed to
improve the efficiency of the program. This is one of the main reasons that we began to
utilize more heavy singles in training.
The sets of 4 and 5 repetitions were great to learn and get in a solid groove with a new
variation. This was not necessarily due to the heavier sets, but the total number of
repetitions in general. This is another reason why I decided to split up the days with higher
intensity and the higher volume days.
There are times when I will look ahead and plan a series of max effort exercises that I think
will be beneficial to a lifter. If one of these exercises is going to be very awkward, I may plan
to use it first on the lighter training day. This will give the lifter a few weeks of lighter
exposures to the exercise before we use it in a max effort slot.
Sometimes, I want the lifter to feel awkward and need to figure it out under heavier weights.
I will utilize this tactic more when I feel the lifter needs a break from higher absolute loads, or
they need to improve upon psychological aspects of the sport. This may include learning to
lift while frustrated, or even mental focus in general. A new and awkward exercise will
require the lifter to pay attention to detail a bit more to figure it out.
If a lifter gets frustrated when things do not go their way in competition, or in training, I will
use this frequently. Some lifters will miss a lift and immediately have negative emotions
come to the surface. This can negatively affect the next attempt. I feel it is important for the
coach to provoke some frustration in training, under similar competition scenarios, to teach
the lifter how to better handle their emotions. This is one way that I like to poke that bear.
The coach must know the lifter inside and out. Again, weaknesses can be mental, physical,
or technical. The coach needs to be able to identify which areas need to be improved and
utilize variation to improve those weaknesses.
This process never ends. This is non-linear. Once one weakness is strengthened, another
will rear its ugly head. The coach needs to be creative at times and always looking for that
new weakness. This is how long term success is achieved.
Psychology and Individual Differences
I am by no means a sports psychologist, but I do feel that psychology needs to be
addressed. We are dealing with human beings at the end of the day. Our physiological
makeup is very similar to one another, but there can be massive differences in psychology.
This has been a constant struggle of mine as a coach. Every program needs to fit the
individual. There are genetic pieces to this for sure, but I feel the majority of the program
needs to match the psychology of the lifter.
Lifters will say at times that they respond better to higher volume programs, or higher
intensity programs. Some may say they respond better to higher frequency, or lower
frequency. The differences are immense and this can be seen online when everyone argues
about which program is best.
This can become very confusing for a lifter trying to get better, or a coach trying to learn. I
understand that there are many ways to skin the cat to get results. Powerlifting is a big
enough world for all of these methods. In part, it is what makes this sport more fun. If
everyone was just doing the same thing it would be kind of boring.
I believe we need to analyze the sport and come up with a strategy to best prepare for
competition. The sport is heavy singles, so practice with heavy singles is very important.
There are different skills required to lift heavier weights compared to lighter ones.
However, there is also a psychological piece to this. Competition brings about nerves.
When lifters do not train with heavy singles frequently they can become more nervous of the
heavier weights. Training singles will elicit a nervous response from that lifter.
The mind can be strengthened just like a muscle. The more the lifter encounters this nervous
response, the more they learn to deal with it. In many cases, the lifter that says they do not
respond well to heavy singles, is probably getting an increased psychological response.
Remember that weaknesses can be mental, physical, or technical. The coach could use a
lower intensity/higher volume program with this lifter, or the coach could work on
strengthening the mental weakness. I choose to strengthen the mind.
There is a fine line with this. The coach cannot just keep throwing heavy singles at the lifter
with little regard for the psychological effects it can cause. Higher intensity studies do show
a high rate of burnout for the participants.
Now, these participants are not usually powerlifters. Powerlifters come with an increased
motivation to perform heavy singles, or they should because that is the sport. That doesn’t
mean that they cannot experience burnout. I think in these cases the burnout just takes
longer to occur.
We have discussed using variation to allow the lifter to maintain the physiological capacity to
continue to hit max effort lifts on a weekly basis. The coach also needs to add variation to
the program to allow the lifter to be psychologically prepared to hit heavy singles on a weekly
basis.
The variation the coach can use here is with the actual load. Sheiko discussed the
importance of load variability to keep an athlete healthy and progressing. He would use
high, medium, and low stress days to vary the loads. He also used variations to adjust the
intensity. A pause squat at 70% of 1RM is more difficult than a comp squat at the same
intensity.
I like to do a similar thing with the loads. This is to keep the lifter both physiologically fresh
as well as psychologically. If a lifter hits a true max on one week of a wave, the following
week they will get set and rep work.
For example, let us say the lifter had high bar wide stance squats for a max effort lift on
week 1 of the wave. That lifter hit a weight that was a true RPE 10. On week 2, that lifter
may get 80% of that weight for 1 set of 4 to 5 repetitions with backdowns, or maybe I will
program 4 to 5 sets of 2 to 3 repetitions at 80%.
In my experiences a lifter can often hit 80% of 1RM for 5 or more reps. This would place the
RPE at either a 9 for the 1 larger set, or a 6 to 8 for the multiple sets completed at 80% of
1RM. This is dependent upon what I see from the technique and how I feel the lifter is
recovering. Also, this varies between the max effort and repetition work for the load
variability reason.
A lifter that is ultra aggressive will get more of those repetition days in their program. There
are some lifters that just truly put the gas pedal down and max out every chance they get. In
this case, the coach needs to slow them down a bit.
At the other end of the spectrum is the lifter that is constantly saying a lift is max effort, but
there is a lot more weight that can be put on the bar. More than the 5 to 10lbs that they are
told to leave out there for the following weeks.
In this case the lifter will get more max effort days in their program. It will be rare that I need
to interject with a repetition day in these cases. Over time, by increasing the bar weight by
5lbs weekly, this lifter’s max effort days will get up to where they should be.
If we look at both examples, the first lifter might have 26 max effort squat days. Rotating
back and forth due to the higher effort on each max effort day. The second example, may
have 52 max effort days due to the lower intensity of each max effort day. They are still hard
singles and a good training stimulus is there.
At the end of a year each lifter should be in the same spot. The program matched the
individual needs of each lifter. Now, as a coach I want to guide each one of these lifters to
make better decisions.
The first lifter needs to be more conservative and the second lifter needs to be more
aggressive. Ultimately over time we should see a nice balance of good solid max effort
days, all out max effort days, and rep work to fill the gaps. I think 1 session per month where
the lifter really goes all out on a lift is a good thing. This lets them really test those
capabilities.
Psychology goes further than individual differences as well. This is especially true if the lifter
trains with a group or as part of a team. This is known as ecological psychology. According
to Kugler and Turvey, ecological psychology is as follows:
“Ecological science, in its broadest sense, is a multidisciplinary approach to the study of
living systems, their environments and the reciprocity that has evolved between the
two...Ecological Psychology...the study of information transactions between living systems,
their environments, especially as they pertain to perceiving situations of significance to
planning and executing of purposes activated in an environment” (Davids, 2008).
The earth is not a sum of each individual. We are all open systems that exchange energy
with one another. In fact, human physiology will sync up with one another when they are
placed within groups.
When Louie Simmons said, “You run with the lame, you develop a limp,” he was correct.
Science has shown this to be true. Our physiologies sync up with the people we spend the
most time with.
Training environment matters. The argument could even be made for the training
environment being the most important aspect of training. Being surrounded by other lifters
that push you to your limits is critical for success.
The training environment should be competitive, but also positive. Good training partners do
not just push you to be better lifters, but also better humans. If someone is scared of heavy
weights, they can quickly become motivated by the group to overcome those fears and
execute the lifts.
If a training group has strong leadership, the lifters will learn very quickly how to make good
decisions, and how to handle the bad decisions, or inevitable misses in the gym.
Encouragement is often offered before a big lift, but it cannot be understated the importance
of that same encouragement when a lifter misses a lift. This may even be more important to
the longevity of a lifter.
This is a sport that can be extremely humbling. You train for years for only a few moments
of success. PRs are easy to come by early on, but the longer you stick around, the harder
they are to come by. Having a strong training group to shoulder this burden can be very
important.
Lifters need to learn to love the sport of powerlifting. It is very easy to get caught up in
chasing numbers. If the lifter gets caught up in this chase they will become quickly frustrated
and struggle to find the joy in the sport. That joy is required for long term success.
The training environment needs to be fun for the lifters. The more fun a lifter has, the longer
they will last in the sport. The longer they last in the sport, the larger their total will be. This
is a sport that we can participate in throughout our whole lives.
John Kiely has done a lot of work with the placebo and nocebo effect on performance. I
highly encourage everyone to listen to episode 56 of the Clinical Athlete podcast, where he
goes into detail explaining this phenomena.
He explains that the placebo and nocebo effects are present at all times. For example, in a
study looking at the benefits of active pills, it is the active pill plus the placebo that is leading
to the outcome. The placebo group often takes an inactive pill. In this case it is an inactive
pill plus a placebo. The control group still has placebo present.
The coach is a walking placebo for the lifter. If the lifters are training in a group, they are
walking placebos for each other. This is a very important concept for the coach to
understand. The coach needs to do their best to try to push the lifter to having a greater
placebo than nocebo in their training.
A lot of this responsibility also falls on the lifter. The lifter’s confidence levels, frustrations,
and even perfectionist attitudes can all swing the pendulum one way of the other. This also
helps to explain why the athlete/coach relationship is so important.
Another important piece to this is the athlete’s beliefs. If an athlete does not believe in the
program or the coach, success will be difficult to come by. Oftentimes this scenario leads to
high levels of frustration in training which can also pull the performance down. This can
explain a lot of the individual variability we see with training and coaching styles.
The coach will have some lifters that are great fits, some that are good fits, and some that
are not very good fits and that is ok. Recognizing that can help the coach save some time
and frustration. When a coach takes on a not so good fit, it often ends poorly and can
negatively affect business and relationships with other lifters.
Final Thoughts
The world of powerlifting is growing at a rapid rate. There is plenty of room for various
training styles. This is the method that I found that has worked best up until this period of
time. This does not mean that I have all the answers, or that this is the only way to do these
things. It absolutely is not.
I plan to continue to learn and try things and adjust as needed. A coach should always be
trying to learn more and prove their methods to be less superior than other options. This is
how we push our lifters further as well as the sport as a whole.
I wrote this book as a way to get my thoughts down. It is more of a stream of consciousness
from me. I think this makes it easier to read. This is based on a lot of science. I just did not
put a ton of the references in it, or explain it in great detail.
I did however mention some really important textbooks and papers. These resources are a
start. They also reference hundreds of other papers. This allows the reader to get started
and find their own journey through the research. This also allows the reader to draw their
own conclusions based off of that research and develop a method that works best for them
and their lifters.
I have learned over time that everything within reason works. As long as the training plan
follows the general principles of strength training, it is adequate enough to get stronger.
Coaching is more than filling out an Excel spreadsheet.
The coach needs to know the lifter, make the right adjustments, and use the right tools for
the job at the right time. Always be analyzing weaknesses and attacking them in training.
Understand that progress in this sport is slow. Stay patient, do not overreact to
circumstances, and make smart decisions. If a coach and athlete does this, everything will
be just fine.