Dr. Squat - Dr. Fred Hatfield

Shouldn't you still make the stopping point where the reps slows down?

That would seem to be the key indicator of neural fatigue... and would make a lot more sense to stop then than to stop before then simply because you got to a certain rep.

Dr. Squat has always said to do CAT with say 80-85%. That is what a lot of the old school powerlifters used to do with linear periodization. He says that is the best. Yet Louie Simmons says the WSB methods are the best. Both have been proven to work incredibly well. But to prove which one is better you would have to actually do a statistical analysis with two groups with all other factors remaining the same. Due to various factors it's not as simple as that. Who would agree?
I've used both methods and they both work very well. I think an athlete should just try and see what yields the best results for them and go with it.

If you use bands/chains, then the numbers are close to 80-85% at the top.

Kid, you are missing a lot!
I get the idea that your initial introduction to weight training was from bodybuilding just the same as most Americans? The purpose of these different sports is different. The goals are different. And therefore the training must be different. If an olympic lifter used the same rep schemes as a bodybuilder they would surely be no good. If a bodybuilder used the same rep schemes as an olympic lifter then they would have an incredibly hard time getting huge.
It would take me a lot of writing to try to explain the details of these matters and even then you probably won't understand it. Why? Because it can't be summed up in one little article. And experience makes a difference. For some time years ago when I was doing bodybuilding I could not understand why I wasn't getting incredibly strong. I was big, but weak for my size and I did not know why. And I decided to try some powerlifting programs and gear my interest towards the sport of powerlifting for a while. I learned a lot and it was fun. And now I might try playing with some strong man training and maybe even compete this year too. I never competed in powerlifting and eventually lost interest; that might change.
My point is that one of the best ways to learn the difference is to play around with one particular sport for a while. Read many books and aricles, get the experience from the training. An article or book can only tell you so much. It's when you get experience in life when the real learning takes place.
Speaking of experience, what about personally training athletes whom are in sports that are not in the same sport as your own? Dr. Squat has done that. And I believe that is a learning process in it's own. For example, he knew better not to tell Holyfield to train the way he did as a powerlifter. And that takes years of experience and knowledge to know that stuff. A person without that knowledge, intelligence, or experience would not know that stuff. I won't mention any names, but I have seen cases where an excelent heavy weight powerlifter told a youngster who was new to weight lifting in general and was not a powerlifter to do box squats and train like him. Sorry, but that's idiotic. I'm sure that big guy knows his stuff on powerlifting and probably how to teach one how to excel in that sport, but he doesn't know how to differentiate between the individual needs of different athletes for different sports.
You seem hungry for knowledge and that is a good thing. You are a seeker and I have do doubt that you will find! You will learn the difference, but it will take time.

If your max bench press is say 300lbs and you could not possibly do 305lbs then the maximum force you can produce on the bar at that time is 300lbs (The weight would probably move slowly).

A person with a max bench of 400lbs can use that same 300 lbs and create 400lbs of force on the bar by pressing it as fast as possible even though this is only 75% of the max. This is called compensatory acceleration. The object is to force the muscles to contract faster which is why sub-maximal weights are used.

Many sets of one rep are used, not just one rep. Don't get caught up in the percentages. Each individual has to go by "feel" because of fiber types, goals, current physical condition, etc. Some individuals may use 50% while others use 85%.

Have you read Todd's "Functional Hypertrophy"?

I think you are compartmentalizing a portion of the West Side protocol and not looking a the whole. There are many on the forum more versed in it than I, and I am not a fan of WS. But you have to give the whole program a look, and not just the 'speed' day.

Briefly, for both upper body and lower, there are two training days in a week(or 10 days as some apply it). The maximum effort day you work up to heavy singles in a given exercise, essentially maxing out in that lift, and then changing the exercise frequently to avoid over taxing the CNS system (i.e. board presses for two weeks, then close grip, etc...) The second day is the speed day, where you don't necessarily want to tax the CNS system to that same degree, but rather work on the speed of the competition lift, form, and the benefit is in training the CNS to fire the muscles to optimum effect without taxing it to the degree you do on max effort day. The use of bands force the lifter to maximize speed at the bottom of the lift, to overcome the higher load at the top, has taken speed day to a new level, as I hear.

Not having bands, when i tried the WS method for about 10 weeks, I used speed day as a recovery workout and for form perfection. Using CAT to the extent i could, without throwing a joint out of socket, it was beneficial, and there was carry over to my max effort on the competition lift.

So Kid, i think you are right, if all you did was speed work, i doubt it would be effective. In conjunction wit hthe max effort aspect of the plan, it seems to be highly effective for many. maybe Marcus will weigh in with a better explanation of WS method,

Marcus,

Would you say that speed work with bands/chains prioritizes the top of the lift and in that same note not using bands/chains would prioritize the bottom?

With bands the weight is lowest at the bottom and more at the top?
185 lbs w/bands might be 275 @ top, but 185 @ bottom

Without bands the weight is heaviest at the bottom and lighter at the top?
275 without bands might be 185 at top, but 275 @ bottom

I don't use bands/chains for speed work, but then again I try to emphasize maximum force @ the bottom.

Is this line of thinking accurate? (I was just plugging in numbers for bands because I don't know the poundages applied to the bar)

Before I get too deep, the question about prioritizing the bottom of the lift. Speed work is great for that. The idea behind it is you have to continually accelerate through the lift to maintain a constant bar speed with a band/chain. To do that, you need to be in optimal position at the bottom and achieve max force deployment. That's obviously going to help the bottom of the lift.

Ok, I'll try to explain because this is bigger than speed day. Yukon is right you have to look at the whole thing in context. I'd consider myself someone who uses Westside methods to train. What's that mean?

My core training sessions are: ME squat/deadlift, ME bench, DE squat/deadlift, and DE bench. I train in 3-week waves which are followed by a deload week without bands or powerlifting gear. The deload week is the key to allowing your CNS recover. That's all that the basic template is.

Of course people started to ask questions so Louie created guidelines. The percentages are just guidelines and a place to start. Ultimately, you need to judge for yourself what weights and bands to use. If you're still moving the bar fast, then you can use a heavier band or add weight to speed work. If the bar is moving too slow, then make it lighter.

Speed work also isn't strict. Not many guys actually do all their sets with the exact same weight. Most will do 4-6 sets with the same weight, then work up a little heavier (80-90% of 1RM) on the last sets. Again, this is done by feel.

If you want to look at something important, then look at ME exercise selection and assistance exercise selection. To me, that's where the success/failure of the program lies. It's all about picking things you suck at that target your weaknesses. This is where you can't just copy someone else's training and expect it to work. If you don't want to invest time into learning the details of the lifts, what failure at different spots means, and what exercises target different weak areas, then don't train Westside because it won't work.

Assistance work is done to target lagging muscle groups. It's done more bodybuilder style using 4-5 sets in the 8-12 rep range. You'll see a lot of lat, hamstring, ab, and tricep assistance stuff.

2. doing different exercises on different days allows the nervous system to recover.

Kid, I will try to answer these questions, although I reserve the right to question the things the West Side Boyz say. Someone on this thread said that he never knew anyone who succeeded without bands and chains. Ummmm. ME! And al the other guys whose records haven't been broken using the same gear we had.

I'm not as big on bands and chains as WS, and in fact ended up turning my back on them two or three dozen years ago (before they came in vogue) because of two very important developments: CAT and the MiniGym. When the MiniGym went out of business, I settled on CAT as the sole means of achieving overload throughout the movement (despite some minor shortcomings, CAT reall does the trick beyond what bands and chains can accomplish, because CAT is in your MIND!).

OK...question 1 is a non sequitur. In the pre-season stage, EVERY day is a speed day, dammit! Show me ONE PERSON who can actually lift 85-90 percent in a slow, deliberate way! Can't be done! It's all-out or you fail! OTOH, because of the TUT principle, you have to do as many sets/reps as necessary to get the requisite time to force adaptation! One rep ain't gonna cut it, dude! Neural fatigue is avoided by sticking to a carefully devised program! NOT by doing one rep!

Maybe that's why the WS group is still trying to figure out how to break some of my records...and Kaz' and Bridges' and Rickey's, and Joe Bradley's. Maybe that's why they're resorting to multi-ply canvas instead of spandex! Sheesh!

Question 2 is also a non sequitur. You do the exercises that you need. In the off-season it's to shore up your foundation and to grow stronger generally (within a weight division, this usually means losing fat and putting on muscle). In the pre-season, you have to go with your strengths. Your strengths determine both your competition strategy and your technique. Switching around a bunch of exercises is cute, but non-productive. While you may be eliciting stimulation through different neural pathways, it still boils down to this: What are ya gonna do on the day of competition? THAT is what you ought to be training!

Doc, I'm not saying you can't be successful without bands or chains. I'm saying I've never seen someone successfully employ Westside speed principles without bands and chains.

I think you and Louie are more similar than most people think. The biggest difference I see is adaptations Westside makes because of modern powerlifting gear. I think you'd make changes as well given the extreme difference in equipment. It'd be awesome to see you two discuss training.

The thing I like about bands is it FORCES you to accelerate. Sure you can try to lift as quickly as possibly with only barbell weight. I haven't seen many people do it though. Once you experience bands it's like a light bulb goes on. At least that's what it was like for me. Now all of my warmup reps are much faster and more explosive. I actually have to be careful or the bar hops off my shoulders at the top of my warmup squats.

The rule of thumb for bench is all 3 reps in 2.5-3 seconds. Squatting you want to be under about 1.5 sec per rep. Most people have to pause to get air again to stay tight. Deadlift is under 1 second for the 1 rep.

Liberty University had a device that measured bar speed at one time, on loan from somewhere I believe, and they used it on their equivalent of DE day. they would perfom a couple of base line sets at maximum speed, then continue to do sets at maximum velocity, until the bar speed dropped significantly. When the bar speed began to slow, time to move to something else. Not sure how effective it was, but I would be interested to see how maintenance of bar speed over sets at a certain percentage as measured by this device would compare to the Prilipen chart.

And Charles, i would say yes, it is possible to lift too fast, if the weight is insufficient. I would imagine the momentum of a light weight thrown up at a high velocity could put your joints at risk. Not 55 or 60% of your max, most likely.

Doc,

You make an interesting point. Brian Siders is one of the top IPF SHW lifters in the world. His lifts are amazingly fast. It always looks like they are warmup weights and he could lift far more. He's said that it's not true. He either makes the lifter very fast or not at all.

Now I have seen guys in multi-ply gear lift slowly. Rob Luyando is a perfect example in bench. He's had lifts take 5+ seconds for the press portion. How can he bench 900+ lbs that slow?

Here's what I think about the speed of lift aspect.

Take Siders for example. His lifts are either fast or not at all. In order to generate a fast lift, you have to produce much more force than is required to move the bar. The reason he is all or nothing is because he cannot maintain that level of force for a long enough duration. I'm certainly not telling the guy how to train, but if I were him, I would work on my ability to grind through longer lifts. However, this doesn't mean conciously slow down as a bodybuilder might.

The other example was Rob Luyadno(sp?). He can grind a ridiculously long time, so he is only capable of producing about as much force as is on the bar (assuming it's an all out effort) because more force would result in more acceleration. He has the ability to maintain that force for a long period of time, hence his ability to grind out weights. If I were him, I would work on developing the magnitude of force he can produce. I absolutely DO NOT think the answer is speed reps as WSB reccommends as I feel the reccommended percents are too light. I think that could be better served using some of Doc's approaches from his conditioning program (5x2x80%) and possibly some plyometrics.

See, it's really just another level of weakness correction. Instead of saying, "oh, my hamstrings are weak" you can also look at the magnitude and duration of force production.

I agree with you, Marcus. I came to that conclusion after watching some of the Westside tapes. I noted that thier barspeed whas similar to mine whenever I did 80% of whatever exercise I was training. Example: If my max squat with blue bands was 500, I could do speed reps with 80% of 500. I only mentioned that I wouldn't do WSB Style speed work b/c I think too many go far too light on the percents. Other than that, it's not bad, though 8-10 sets can sometimes be excessive depending on the situation. I suppose I should have been more clear on that.

I watched a clip of a seminar Louis Simmons gave on westside methods for throwers. He recommended the following 3 week percentage wave for box squats without bands - wk1: 75% wk2: 80% wk3: 85%. All this for multiple sets of 2 reps - I believe you start at 12x2 the first week. So the percentages for straight weight are quite a bit higher than 40-50% of 1rm.

I believe Simmons said those percentages would be used if you are squatting without bands or chains on the bar.

The percentage is based off the max for that particular box height. Every third wave the box squat max would be tested OR they would switch to a different bar(ie. safety squat bar, buffalo bar, etc). If you want to watch the video, it is hosted on www.macthrowvideo.com . You have to register. It was a segment of a seminar at the National Throws Coaching conference.

But reading from some of Charles Staley's stuff, the idea to use 78% of your 1RM or so, since thats where the greatest degree of force is produced, and lift as fast as possible until the speed of your reps decreases, since thats around the point at which you've reached "speed-failure", for lack of a better term. When your reps start to slow down, thats when you stop.

So which is best, and which is better?

You have to play with the percentages at times to make them work. If you have ever done West Side then you kinda have an idea why the low percentages are used. With West Side you have to factor in the chains and bands which add another 20%+ at the top. You also have to remember that your doing two ME days which really beat up on your body. So if you did come back and try to do speed work with 80% it would be pretty damn hard to do. West Side you usually do 4 workouts a week.

Looking at Docs 90 day peak cycle it looks like you really only do 2-3 workouts a week. He also doesn't factor in the use of bands in chains or the super ply gear they have these days.

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