Assistance work is essential. However, do you need to track your assistance? Here are my thoughts.

I have spent the past couple of decades training either 5/3/1 or Westside/Conjugate. Both require assistance work. Both programs give you some guidelines to follow as well.

When I did Westside, I didn't track my assistance work, I did it by feel. Must have worked pretty well considering I benched over 600 raw and hit a 900 equipped.

It was my understanding that at the actual Westside Gym, you might have a decent-sized group of guys jumping on the same assistance exercise. These guys weren't all in the same weight class or had the same strength, but they'd use the same weight on any number of exercises.

That would cause some guys to do lower reps and some to do higher. Hmmm, using a variety of different weights for various rep ranges can make people bigger and stronger. Go figure? They didn't even need a meta-analysis to show that.

WHERE DID IT GO WRONG

Now I primarily spend most of my time training 5/3/1. Wendler will kill me for this, but I have all too often done what he has preached to stay away from, "Majoring in the minors." I have been worrying too much about my assistance volume.

As with most people training for strength, I pay constant attention to the volume I am using on my main lifts. The problem is, I have been paying too much attention to constantly trying to increase the volume of my assistance as well.

Trying to drive volume up on both main lifts and assistance has caused me too much fatigue. I only wish I knew how I fell down this rabbit hole.

Perhaps social media bombardment has influenced me. Information overload with articles and studies has me constantly trying to improve upon my program. It's been bad. It also takes the fun out of it.

THE NEW ME

For all assistance work this week, I just picked a weight and ran with it. I did as many reps and sets that felt right.

Unlike the main lifts, I didn't care about my form. Some sets and reps were super strict. Others used a little momentum. Some sets finished with partial reps. I went by feel.

The goal with my assistance, get close to failure and feel stimulated. I think my body is a little more intuitive than my brain. I let my body dictate how much work I needed and smartly my brain agreed.

The next day I felt sore in the right places and the day after it relented enough that I felt ready to train again. Perfect. Now let's see how long I can go without f'ing this one up.