What do you think that exercise is going to do for my triceps that 680 just didn't? That kind of ties in a little bit to ...
I spent the last 14 years of this sport doing my training at Westside Barbell when it was still a very small place. We did what Louie told us to do. We trained our weaknesses and stuff like that, but for the most part we all learned from him. He taught us how to teach each other. When I'm asked what would I do differently, it's kind of like asking me what would I change if I could go back during those times, based upon what I've learned right now and do differently?
You would think that it's a lot. You really would, and that I've learned a lot. I have learned a lot, but what I've learned is it's different. What I've learned isn't all power-lifting focus to get ready for that next meet. What I've learned has been more health, conditioning, weight loss, fat loss, muscle building, hypertrophy, a lot of the things that weren't that important to me at the time, when it was all 100% strength-based.
I can sit here and say that, yeah, I may have done the accessory work different. To be able to understand this answer you need to be able to understand how we were training at the time. The Eight Keys article, which is on elitefts.com, explains that pretty thoroughly, but essentially we did our core exercise, which was the max effort or dynamic effort exercise, first. Then after that we did what I call a supplemental exercise, which was the main exercise to help build that core exercise. Then everything that followed after that were accessories.
If I was to change anything it would be how we trained our accessories, because everything else cycled. Everything else had waves on how it would cycle. The max effort wave would be one to three weeks. The dynamic wave could be anywhere between three to five weeks. The supplemental movements may change every one to three, sometimes four weeks. It depended upon what the movement was and how long you could keep breaking records with what you were doing. The accessory exercises really didn't change a whole hell of a lot. It was just kind of the shit we threw at the end: shoulder raises and band push-downs. It was just shit we felt that we had to do but there really wasn't a whole lot of thought put into it. You just did what everybody else did or whatever you thought you needed to do because for the most part, the training's done. You're just trying to train the stabilizers, train other body parts to help from getting injured.
When I think back and I look at that, I see that a little bit as a gap. It was something that we could've ... Knowing what I know now about muscle building, hypertrophy, we could've ... I guess a great example would be ... I wrote an article on this. It's called The Guide to Supplemental Exercises. There was an hour-long seminar video attached to the article, but an example would be dumbbell rows that we would throw at the end of the training, not as a second movement but just dumbbell rows essentially just to work your lats.
Looking back, doing 150 pound dumbbells for 15 reps or whatever the hell I would do, just slamming the shit up and down, wasn't working the lats anywhere near as effectively as what I could work that lats now if I was using a 70 pound dumbbell and really focusing on trying to get the muscle to stretch and getting a good contraction. Theoretically when I look back, I think to myself, the lighter dumbbell would've actually developed more muscle, would've increased the range of motion a little bit more, which I think was lacking with us some, at least with me, because power-lifting essentially is a short range of motion sport with everything that you're doing. You're trying to shorten the stroke on the squat, bench, dead-lift across the board. It would've opened some joints up that I think weren't being worked through the full range at the time. I wouldn't have lost anything strength-wise because we weren't really doing them for strength in the first place.
However what I did worked. It worked for me. It worked really well for me. It worked for everybody else who was in the gym. Who am I to say that if we would've changed the way that we did accessories it was going to work better? You don't know. I don't know. I do change it with the people that I work with now, and give advice to. I don't see the point of training those type of accessory movements balls-out super heavy and putting all that wear and tear on the joint when it's just being done to help build muscle, when there's other principles you can use to build muscle which are going to be less strain on the joints, which you've already pounded to begin with.
A takeaway from that is, I once heard George Halbert ... He held multiple world records in several weight classes for the bench press. Somebody asked him after he did a two-board press in the gym with something ridiculous like 680 or some shit like that. Then somebody came up to him and said, "George, what are going to do for your triceps next?" George's answer was, "What do you think that exercise is going to do for my triceps that 680 just didn't?" That kind of ties in a little bit to ...
You do those heavy things like that, which are real demanding on the joint, then you've got to really understand why you're doing the movement you're doing. Is it for muscle building or is it for strength or are you just going to shotgun in and say, "Hell, it's for both." That's fine. A lot of people do just shotgun. It's for both. You need both, but if you're going to separate it in your mind, and that's the way I did in mine, is towards the end of the workout it became more hypertrophy-based. If that's going to be the case, then I see value in taking the wear and tear off of the joints, but would it have worked better? I don't know. I advise it now when I speak to people. Is it working better for them than it did for the lifters that I was back then? I don't know.
The reason I don't know is I don't like working with people who are at the pro level. It's nothing against the people that are at the pro level. I'll do anything to help them out. Most issues are going to be technical or they need to back off a little bit. I actually know that better than I do know training beginners, but I'd rather help people at the intermediate level that are trying to get to that next level than trying to help an absolute beginner or a pro guy.
We were all at the top of the game at Westside at that time. It's comparing apples to oranges for me to sit there and say that it works great with these intermediate lifters when we were all advanced lifters. I can't make that comparison with that. Obviously things have changed over the years, that Louie has implemented with Westside Barbell. What those things are, that question would be better directed towards him, but I do definitely think that would be a question he should be asked. Anybody who speaks to him should ask, "How are you training differently now compared to how you trained pre-2005?"
Because we all kind of got a little fucked up. I think a lot of it was our mentality. We trained too hard. We didn't back down. We were told, I'm not going to sit here and say Louie was an enabler. He was telling us to back down.
We just chose not to.
I think he has guys now that actually are listening to him a little bit more from that regard, but he doesn't have the injuries that we did when we were in there. Obviously he learned from it. He would definitely be the person to ask in that regard. I do not want to sit here and speculate. I do think I know some of the reasons but I do not want to sit here and speculate or try to speak for somebody else. I won't do that. That would be a question for him, and a very good one to ask.
