Back for his second series of videos with Dave, Dan shares how he’s currently eating and explains the approach he uses under the guidance of Stan Efferding.

You can make this system as complicated as you want it to be, but you can also make it a simple as you want it to be. Understand the basics first.

Following these guidelines and using isometrics in multiple positions, you can increase strength not only at a weak point but throughout the entire movement.

If you’re looking for a serious answer to a question about building a bloat, you’ve come to the right place.

If you’re a beginner or intermediate lifter, this probably doesn’t apply to you. But for advanced lifters, knowing how to alter workload without changing volume might be a big help.

Since retiring from powerlifting in 2005, Dave has tried a lot of different approaches to his training. There’s one clear winner.

Can you alternate specialty bars for different dynamic effort waves? What about for different weeks within the same wave?

Dave has responded to this question many times but, like the sport of powerlifting, the answer evolves. Based on the sport today, here are guidelines for expectations, performance, and how to design a program.

It isn’t the number of competitions they’ve won or what degrees they have that can tip you off to who’s good and who’s not. There are three types of coaches in this industry and you need to be able to tell them apart.

Due to time constraints or an inability to recover optimally, many lifters seek an alternative to the traditional template. The question isn’t whether or not you can use a modified split, but whether or not your results will be optimal.

Before the original Q&A, before the equipment, before the team, what was Dave doing?

No matter which style you use, there’s one rule with your wrists and elbows you always have to follow.

A busy work schedule can make it hard to train at the times you’d like to, but there’s always a way to make it work.

There are two types of people when it comes to using science in training. Don’t be the first kind.

There are people who have been in the gym for two years or less and now they have their own method. What’s the method? Tying their shoes and walking through the gym?

For a powerlifter on a conjugate or Westside style program, you first need to make sure you know the role of each exercise you’re doing. This will give you direction on how close to failure to train.

The mind-blowing lifts and accomplishments that have occurred in the S4 are too numerous to recount, but there are a few that stick out in Dave’s mind.

Conditioning doesn’t have to be complicated or require expensive equipment. These are the best options for a powerlifter.

The appeal of conjugate is the ability to build multiple performance traits at once, but this confuses a lot of lifters as they get closer to a meet. It doesn’t have to be so complicated.

You can’t just throw in extra workouts or recovery protocols and expect to get the most out of them. Like everything else in training, they need to be programmed strategically and used at the right times.

What’s the difference between a teenager who is an absolute beginner and an older lifter coming back from a decade-long layoff?

This doesn’t only apply to multi-ply lifters. How you add equipment in training should have a sequence to it, even if you compete raw.

This really shouldn’t be a debate. Mimic how you compete.

The potential for what a lifter can accomplish without using performance enhancing substances is far greater than most people assume.

There are different purposes, benefits, and risks of max effort work and submaximal doubles and triples. Which makes more sense for your programming?

How much time do you really need to spend with an exercise to know if it’s working or not?

Every lifter falls somewhere on this continuum. It will determine how your max attempts look and how you should train to increase them.

Over the course of seven episodes, Dave and Dan discuss building a base as a new lifter, limiting factors for lifters of all levels, rehab mentality, adrenaline levels in training, and more. Watch now!

To be on the board at Westside, at the time, meant you had to break the all-time world record, because that was pretty much everybody that was on the board.

You’ve probably heard it said that Westside became the strongest gym in the world by bringing in the best lifters from outside. This is a lie. What made Westside great wasn’t recruiting.

From 1990 to 2000, there wasn’t a single person who came to Westside and stayed who didn’t get significantly stronger. Everyone got stronger, wearing gear or not.

A circa max phase isn’t easy, and recovering from it isn’t either. Should you remove max effort training or keep pushing forward with it?

Is deloading a necessary part of improving as a lifter or is it just a weak excuse to be lazy one week out of every month?

Want to know how to have a better deadlift lockout? Look at what Pete Rubish has done in recent years and you’ll see it.

A good training program has three main parts: the main lifts for technique, the secondary movements for strength, and the accessory exercises for muscle-specific work.

A lot of strong lifters have come and gone through this sport, posting two or three big totals to then never to be heard from again. The best lifters are there, year after year, finding new ways to stay healthy enough and hit PRs. How?

How do you get your mind in the right place for a big lift in training? Should you treat it like meet day?

If you’re forced to take time away from the gym, where should your focus be? Maintaining strength? Maintaining size? Getting healthy?

If you don’t start on the right path, you might spend years training hard and making no progress.

The easy answer is that it builds mental toughness. The strength and conditioning answer, however, involves understanding the differences between lactic acid, glycolytic, and oxidative work.

You can control the physical demands placed on your body in the gym, but you can’t always control what happens outside of it. How can you ensure you’re recovered and in an optimal state once its time to train?

It may be tempting to put your entire trust in someone with experience, but there are a few things to consider first.

Number of competitions? Severity of injury? Conditioning and size? Powerlifting total?

Do genetic ceilings exist? How can you know if you’ve reached yours? Is it possible to break through?

Mark and Dave share their combined knowledge in both powerlifting and bodybuilding, gained from multiple decades honing their respective crafts.

Looking for an unconventional use for bands?

Have you ever eaten an entire box of Pop-Tarts in one sitting?

Reading directly from Instagram with no preparation, Dave answers 14 more questions on training, nutrition, and improving performance.

Dave’s back at The Table, and this time he’s answering your questions back-to-back with no preparation.

If you misidentify the cause of the injury, not only will you fail to solve the problem, but you may actually make it worse.

You can be certain that every great lifter you admire has mastered auto-regulation. If you want to be great, you’ll need to do the same.

What happens when an expert in powerlifting and an expert in bodybuilding train together for five years?

Dave covers training and weight gain principles through Freddy Krueger, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Hershey’s Bars.

Does being an elite powerlifter mean something different today than it did 10, 15, or 20 years ago?

Should you press in a straight line or in an arc, finishing with the bar over your face?

A high-rep squat set is a MFer challenge, there’s no doubt about it.

What do you think of the fitness community today and all the shitty gurus on social media?

If you feel you need more work on the competition movements, can you use them as max effort work instead of doing specialty exercises?

In this video, Maliek and Dave discuss the problems with percentage-based training and share alternative methods for strength programming.