A member at Union Fitness came to me for help with his programming. He's been a long time powerlifter- even training with Dave Kirschen back in the day. Cody has always been analytical with his training and always stops in the office with good questions, other times he just stops in to see my dogs. He accepts his weak points and is always willing to challenge himself and learn. So I was really looking forward to the day he'd ask for help because I think I can help him surprise himself with a few training tweaks.

I work with clients remotely (online) but I'm not a huge fan of it. I do it because I would rather help them than have them go to Joe-Schmo who won't give them half the effort or knowledge that I will.  It takes a lot of effort  and over communication to get clients up to speed in terms of technique, effort, and rest/recovery. But it's still worth it when you see them succeed and hit their goals. On the flip side,  working with someone in person is much more advantageous for both parties. I can tell when someone is run down whether it be bags under their eyes or slow bar speed on warm ups. I can poke and prod at them to change their technique. I can SHOW them what to change.

Cody primarily competed in gear up until recently and he's no stranger to Westside/Conjugate. So this will be a good test of "conjugate for the raw lifter."

Fortunately at Union Fitness we have almost every piece of equipment and specialty bar you will ever need. So I have free rain with what I can program for Cody.

His training maxes look like this...

50% 60% 70% 80% 85% 90% 95%
Squat 600 300 360 420 480 510 540 570
Bench 420 210 252 294 336 357 378 399
Deadlift 630 315 378 0 504 536 567 599
OHP 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

 

Week 1 looks like this...

ME Lower WEIGHT SETS REPS Rest
1 SSB, 1 avg band "max 3", RPE 9 3 240 sec
2 SSB Pause squats, 1 avg band 90% of top set 3 3 180 sec
3 Leg press dead stop RPE 8 3 8 120 sec
4 Single leg RDL 50s each hand 3 8 90 sec
5 Backwards sled -60 feet is one set 5 plates 6 1 40 sec
6 Hanging leg raises BW 4 10 90 sec
ME Upper WEIGHT SETS REPS Rest
1 Floor press - 2 chains/side "max 3", RPE 9 3 240 sec
2a DB bench 100 4 12 180 sec
2b DB chest supported row 80 4 10
3a Football bar tricep ext max 8 8 120 sec
3b Pendlay row 225 3 5 90 sec
4 Chaos Push Ups (or PVC bench) BW 3 20 90 sec
DE Lower WEIGHT SETS REPS Rest
1 Depth jump 30" box- step off/gather BW 10 1 20 sec
2 Straight bar, box squat, 1 avg band 315 8 2 60 sec
3 Dimmel Deads- ballistic 225 2 20 120 sec
4 KB swing w/ band* 80, gray/avg band 3 15 90 sec
5 Banded hip series- click for link red mini 3 10 60 sec
DE Upper WEIGHT SETS REPS Rest
1 Football bar bench, double red minis 185 8 3 45 sec
2 Seated DB OHP work up RPE 8 2 8 90 sec
3 Dips BW 4 15 60 sec
4 Landmine press 35 3 10 60 sec
5 Front raise-lat raise- bent over fly 15s 3 10 90 sec
6 Push up shoulder taps BW 2 20 60 sec

 

He cussed me out for using RPE, and I don't disagree, but it is a good tool to use in case I don't get to see every set he takes, which is often the case when I'm running around in the evenings at the gym. If we were training together, which is how powerlifting ought to be done, then we wouldn't be using that system.

His training days, in order, are Monday-Tuesday-Thursday-Friday. It's not ideal, but that's the way life works sometimes.

Some notes:

His max effort days are not true maximum effort. Cody knows how to grind. And one issue I had with conjugate as a raw lifter was lack of volume. So Monday basically worked out to be 6 reps on the SSB main movement, then 9 reps on the backdown/pause sets.

Speed work will depend on how fast he can move the bar. I don't necessarily use Louie's prescribed  percentages because it's dependent on the lifter. Cody isn't slow, but he isn't fast either. So we'll tweak the Dynamic Effort days until he's hitting the right bar speed within the given rest periods.

This is partially blasphemous- planning out ME movements ahead of time- but here is what I have planned for Cody over the next 12 weeks...

Rotations:    1 wks 1-3    2 wks 1-3    3 wks 1-3    4 wks 1-3
ME Lower SSB bands Camber bar to box chains Competition squat none Deadlift variation bands
ME Upper Floor press chains Pause bench chains Incline none Bench chains