The potential for what a lifter can accomplish without using performance enhancing substances is far greater than most people assume.
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.
Even the strongest lifters in the world can’t figure everything out themselves.
What has changed about 5thSet over the course of its rise to popularity? And what is it like being an elite lifter that hands his training over to someone else?
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.
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?
Most people just suck at time management. Have you ever paid attention to how much time you spend every day doing stupid shit that doesn’t matter?
You want debate? Go to a powerlifting meet and ask the lifters in the warm-up room if you should be focusing on your quads to build your squat. You’ll hear a lot of opinions. Who’s right?
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?
What holds you back as a beginner is not going to be the same as what holds you back once you reach the intermediate or advanced stages.
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.
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?
All in one spot, check out the entire 7-part discussion with Dave Tate and Justin Harris. Pre-workout energy, GPP, muscle loss while dieting, and training age are just a few of the topics discussed.
Dave’s back at The Table, and this time he’s answering your questions back-to-back with no preparation.
Stories of Westside, vomit, blood, cysts, spine health, circa max training, pizza, and more…
All in one article, we revisit Dave and Maliek’s discussion on sticking points, longevity, equipped powerlifting transitions, and challenges a lifter must face when following a percentage-based training program.
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?
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.
Joining Dave for another video, Maliek discusses the challenges faced by lifters who attempt to compete both raw and in gear.
In this video, Dave and special guest Maliek Derstine discuss the topics of sticking points and longevity for raw lifters vs geared lifters.
He holds the all-time world record for powerlifting total in the 181-pound weight class. He is better in that class than anyone else has ever been. When he talks about training, it’s probably best for you to listen.
There’s a lot of history shared between these two men. Now they’re adding to it.
Raw records have been dropping at unprecedented rates in recent years — and Dave thinks he knows why.
If training is getting lost on your daily to-do list, change your approach.
This week Dave answers the question: If you could only pick one exercise as a secondary movement for squats, what would it be and why?
Mentally preparing for a meet isn’t easy but what if you also have to worry that the other lifters are lying about steroids?
A lot of lifters say the lats are the most important part of a strong bench press, but few know how to train them correctly.
What did a typical day in college look like for Dave back in his 20s?
The people who really don’t know what the fuck they are doing are the ones that are taking the business from you because you are too wrapped up in the wrong things.
You can use a sled or a prowler for a lot of reasons. People like them for conditioning but I think they’re best used for recovery and restoration when you’re getting ready for a meet.
Should you do twice as much pulling volume as pressing volume? Some people think so, but it’s not that simple.
For someone over 350 pounds, the rules of dropping weight are a little different. There are a few things you need to remember.
If you want to build your total, you need to pick the right accessory movements for all three lifts. Here are my favorites.
Somehow this all ties into real-world experience and the steps taken to reach success as a business owner. Trust us.
Screw up your back and being unable to squat or deadlift won’t be your only concern.