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Welcome to the Westside Barbell Podcast. In today's episode, we're going to be breaking down the dynamic effort method. And with me today is my co-host, Burleigh Hawk. Burleigh, thanks for being on today. Burleigh Hawk, Burleigh, thanks for being on today. Burleigh Hawk, Burleigh, Good to be here. The dynamic effort method is that one method that drives everyone crazy. As soon as you start bringing in percentages and three weeks waves, it is the most confusing out of them all. Max effort seems to be a lot more clear cut, but I'm not sure what are your thoughts on the questions you got on dynamic effort.

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Most of the time it's folks that just are confused on velocity parameters or confused on how to appropriately control intensity over the course of a three-week wave. And as you know, most of the time when somebody fails at dynamic effort, it's because they're training too heavy. If we were going to start off with the purpose of dynamic effort training, what would you say it is?

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Well, the primary purpose is to focus on the improvement of the rate of force development, and we do that by training submaximal weights and lifting at maximal velocity. And then we generally try to carry an average of 0.8 meters per second for any rep we do, whether that's a lower or upper bench press squat deadlift.

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And to try hammering that home, it's lifting the lighter weights as fast as possible. We're not trying to lift the heaviest load. We're training our athletes to produce maximum force quickly. What are the parameters of velocity? Yeah.

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Well, like I said, every rep needs to meet the – we're ideally hoping to carry a 0.8 meters per second average. Some might be a little slower. Some might be a little faster. But the 0.8 meters per second average is what we're looking for. And that's every week, whether it's a 12 by 2 or an 8 by 2 or a 5 by 5, the velocity parameters stay the same. Yeah.

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Would you recommend using tender units all the time? Yeah, well, yeah, certainly, yeah. Like we've discussed, you know, nowadays they're readily available. You know, in the past they were available, but they were just very expensive. Now it's not so cost prohibitive. So, yeah, certainly if you're able to, I would, as long as it's a device that's connected to the barbell, I know there's apps out there, phone apps that use cameras to do so. I don't know if I would trust that as much, but, yeah, if you have a device that's connected to the barbell, it's, you know, probably getting decent feedback or at least feedback you can rely upon.

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Because we measure bar speed visually and by feel. We're doing it for a minute. But it is good to get a calibration by bringing in a tender unit every now and again. I'm with you. The quarter ones are the most accurate. But there's ones that are app-based. They are...

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pretty damn good but as coaches it is good to calibrate every once in a while just don't get locked in to using the tender unit for everything because you'll slow down the routine you'll slow down groups you'll start driving yourself nuts and your athletes nuts yeah so and if your coach is new to this stuff right the tender unit can kind of give you a frame of reference to learn learn how to eyeball barbell velocity then the um we kind of touched on it but the uh

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the rate of force development, why is this so crucial? Yeah, so, you know, our primary training methods are max and dynamic effort. So max effort develops absolute strength, which is the peak force that an athlete can produce. When we're focused on rate of force development training, we're focused on trying to improve or decrease the amount of time it takes an athlete to reach that peak force output. Yeah.

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They kind of play one into the other. One's focused on intensity, maximal effort, highest intensity we can train that day. And then the dynamic effort is a repeated effort, set and rep setting with the parameters of velocity included.

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And from coaching athletes, a lot of grapplers, rate of force development translates directly to enhanced performance. The dynamic effort is specifically designed to boost rate of force development. So if you're an athlete, it is a must. Same it is for if you were a lifter. Yeah. It's explosive power development, right? For sure. Then the three-week wave format.

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And I think this is the one that kind of people start getting lost on when we go 50, 55 and 60, but can you give an overview on it and why we do it? Yeah. So we follow the three week wave format and it's, um, we decrease volume while increasing intensity over the course of three weeks. And that's used as a means of, uh, you know, driving a certain amount of volume and intensity each week and, uh, control fatigue over the course of three weeks. And then once the three weeks is up, we go back to the 12 by two in the lower or the five by five with the lower percentage. We, we, we, we, you know, walk through the wave again.

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And that's just a way to control fatigue over the course of a training month training year. And we have, we can share the screen. But this kind of gives a visual representation for everyone who is watching this of the three week wave. Can you kind of talk through this a little bit early?

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Yeah, so we get a lot of questions on how we structure a three-week wave and how the percentages are broken up between bar weight and accommodate resistance. So here you see we got the 12 by 2 or the 5 by 5 waves included for the squat. We typically don't do a 5 by 5 wave with the deadlift for the bench press. If we were going to do a 5 by 5 wave with the bench press, we would just do a compensatory acceleration wave, you know, with just bar weight only. But anyways, as you'll see, you'll see the breakdown in bar weight and accommodate resistance. Accommodate resistance is going to stay the same throughout all three weeks at 25%. The bar weight's what increases over time.

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You'll notice on the 5x5, we decrease the training percentage by 5%, and that's to allow athletes to maintain velocity over the course of a 5x5 workout. Obviously, when you're doing a 5x5, there's going to be more intra and intercept fatigue accrued. So lightening the training weight slightly is going to hopefully keep athletes able to reach their velocity marks.

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That's a huge point. When we started doing 5x5s with the fighters and grapplers, we realized as soon as we got to week two at 55%, rep three, four, five, and six were not as quality as we need them in terms of velocity. So by just dropping the bar weight down 5%, keeping them with the same accommodating resistance, it was a game changer for them to get correct technique throughout the lift and to generate the required force on it.

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Yeah, and with a 5x5, especially if you're using bands, as an athlete, if you're training too heavy, athletes get fatigued, you'll start to see some really poor technique exhibited as athletes get tired towards the fourth or fifth set.

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And having stuff based off objective percentages is huge. It removes a lot of the guesswork. And this kind of gets into, we get a lot of questions on RPE and rate of perceived exertion. And there's times where it's somewhat advantageous and then times when it's just subjectively or objectively incorrect to use. Where we kind of use RPE is when we're talking to the athletes before the workout.

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How are we doing? How are you feeling? And if they're going to give us an RPE of 8, okay, at least we know they're feeling something's happening, but we're not changing the objective data. We know we're not changing the objective of 50, 55, 60% bar weight plus 25% accommodating resistance. Whereas if you're going to use RPE to where like I am feeling awful and you're reducing weight based off that, well then you've never really trained through adversity.

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You have to be able to train through these because if you're an athlete, you can't just say, hey, my RPE is not good today. I'm not going to do this. I'm going to tailor it down. You have to perform at your best. Do you have anything to add on to percentage training, like a superiority to RPE?

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Yeah, the reason I prefer percentage training is because it creates an objective mark for an athlete to meet. And then, you know, if an athlete can't meet that mark, say, for instance, if an athlete's struggling at 75%, you know, the 50% with 25% economy resistance, to maintain velocity over the course of, you know, the workout, over the course of a wave, you know, study C issues with bar velocity, then you can start to look for issues in the training that's causing that.

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So we're always looking for correspondence between the level of absolute strength and then the ability for an athlete to move a particular bar weight at a particular velocity. So that's why I think that percentage is important because it gives an objective mark to meet. And then with RPE, it's always relying on the credibility or the experience of the individual. You have some athletes that might perceive what is actually an RPE 5 is an RPE 9. And then you might have some athletes that what is actually an RPE 8, they'll register at a 6.

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So depending on who you're working with, the reliability of an RPE report can vary. And for those of you who are looking at this graph, before the question comes up, the sets that we've got 12 sets of two, 10 sets of two, 8 sets of two, these are stuff that we manipulate based on three week waves. So we might have a descending set and rep scheme like this. But for some of our athletes, we may just keep a standard 12 across the board, depending on how much density and volume we want to calculate.

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put in the workout. These are aspects of the dynamic effort method that you can tailor to your needs of what you need to get done. It's just like when I was watching when you guys were training from powerlifting. You guys are lifting so much load. The weight is a whole lot and the speed is... Tapering down makes a lot of sense in terms of the reps or the sets, should I say. But then sometimes you'll do an 8x2 in week three and then start working up at the end.

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There's so much ways that you can manipulate dynamic effort, which again, I can understand where that causes confusion. But just know that sets and reps, everything here is guidelines, but you're able to manipulate them to get the required density and volume you want from your workout. Yeah, definitely. You know, we always recommend that beginners, you know, will follow the standard recommendations. But as you know, as your knowledge increases in relation to the conjugate method, as you get more experienced coaching, this becomes a strength conditioning operating system that can be manipulated in a variety of ways.

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Okay. So if we get into executing dynamic effort, what is the importance of execution and competency within the exercise?

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Well, you know, execution is so important because we're moving at, you know, maximal velocity. So for that to be possible and to be safe, we have to make sure that athletes are technically competent and then also able to exhibit proper technique, both, you know, at the beginning, the middle and the end of an exercise. You don't want an athlete that on set 10 to 12, they're totally losing their technique. And then, you know, the dynamic effort work becomes dangerous.

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Something I would recommend for beginners that might not be used to counter-existence, it can oftentimes benefit to start with compensatory acceleration to just learn how to move underneath bar weight in a higher velocity setting. A lot of people that are new to training are just their tempo squatting or they're just trying to find their squats. So before you move on to higher velocity movements with a common resistance involved, it might be best to go with a compensatory acceleration approach.

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I think a lot of people have a lot of misconceptions of Westside in terms of it's all like a lot of people think it's just lifting the heaviest amount of weight and that's it. But it was never just about how much weight you lift. It's how effectively you lifted that weight too. The two of them go hand in hand. So mastering form, developing that competency and technique and ensuring that you have the right patterns of firing. Because sometimes you're in a box squat and you don't know how to come off the box.

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You'll start incorrectly. You'll round over into a good morning. All these things we do and we try to hone in on proper technical execution of it, obviously paying attention to the velocities. But all this is done to minimize risk and then maximize your strength gains.

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Well, and as you know, like Louie used to say about the dynamic effort training structure, it offers a lot of first rep opportunities, you know, gives you a lot of chances to get that first rep perfect. And then, you know, another thing that we want to focus on with dynamic effort is, like I said, it's, you know, you got 12 by 2, that's 24 opportunities to really focus on technique under, you know, training percentages that are somewhat relevant to what we'll see in competition. A lot of people want to work technique under, you know, a...

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broomstick or very lightweight, dynamic effort is just the right amount of intensity to where you can consciously make changes to your technique and not take the risk of having to do so when you're approaching a max effort single. And as you know, Louis was a huge stickler for technique. I think a lot of people think that we just get under a barbell and give it hell, and that's not the case. People will criticize some of our exercise variations like forward pulling bands. Well, the reason forward pulling bands became a thing is because Louis was trying to correct people's ability to create a correct brace and upper back.

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stability when they're lifting the squat bar out of the rack. So, yeah, the dynamic effort is not only an opportunity to increase your rate of force development, it's also an opportunity to really dial your technique in.

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It's one of the most important days from a coach. Yeah. To be able to get a lot of feedback from the athletes. And back to the forward pulling bands, that came from Jerry McNamara when he came over. He was doing it on the squat and the deadlifts, and then Louis started implementing that to help with technique. And two, if you ever came and visited when Louis was coaching with you guys as lifters, he'd also coached a lifter to who they were. He understood what proper technique was, but sometimes there's people...

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weren't able to execute it. He knew what their form was and what limits how to coach them. So there's a big difference between coaching a Laura or coaching someone who doesn't have the hip flexibility or can get into the positions. So he knew that and then he would vary on the spot what coaching aspects that athlete needed.

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And when we're talking technique, everybody's going to have their own technique that's unique to their biomechanics. You know, you might have some individuals that are able to squat and bench deadlift to a textbook standard. Then you might have certain guys that have a unique style to them, but it gets results in competition. There's even been, you know, all-time world record holders that have very unique styles of squat and bench and deadlift. And so just because it doesn't fit the YouTube, you know, example doesn't mean that you're squatting, benching, or deadlifting wrong.

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When it comes to accommodating resistance, we had a lot of questions of, should I use bands? Should I use chains? Should we just do straight weight? Um,

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From my experience, I love using bands because they really teach intent. I like using chains because they're very good at stability, especially for unracking and staying stable throughout, and then combining both of them. You get the best of the both worlds. But can you go into, like, just say some of the advantages, disadvantages you've seen with using bands and chains, and what is the purpose of really accommodating resistance?

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Yeah, so a common resistance is to lessen or increase the amount of weight placed or the force an athlete has to exert based on the joint angle. So when an athlete's at a disadvantageous joint angle, there's unloading that occurs, allows them to have an advantage at that particular disadvantageous joint angle. Then as the joint angle advantage is gained,

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more load is applied. With bands, we have over-speed eccentrics involved. The band increases the kinetic energy of an athlete as the athlete moves through the range of motion. Because of the active tension, we know we refer to it as an active tension. When you pull the, when you lift the barbell out of the rack, the bands are wanting to pull you down, right? As Louie used to call it accelerated gravity.

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Uh, there's more benefits using bands. Like you can, of course, become more explosive, more rate of force development will increase, uh, at a, in my opinion, at a faster rate. However, it can be more fatiguing. And then as we know, the bands can also kind of track you in a way to where athletes lose their, uh, ability to brace and feel stable under free weight, uh, because they're so used to being tracked by the band. So in that case, that's why we alternate the chain.

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Chain is just purely accommodating resistance, doesn't have an overspeed eccentric aspect to it, but the trade-off in that is the benefit of increasing trunk stability and balance in the squat bench or the deadlift. I should say real quick though, in the deadlift we don't use chains as much because it's kind of difficult to get them set up correctly and they become a hassle, but in the bench and the squat we will pretty much alternate between bands and chains wave to wave.

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And I guess a lot of people too want this perfect linear program of changing in and out, but everything is made for a purpose. They're tools for a job. And you're right, there are some athletes who are very good at writing the groove of the bands and they can keep them in perfect form. But our job is to find the exercises to give you the most carryover. And that's when you implement the change.

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And I prefer bands myself. I only really throw chains in when I'm feeling fatigued from the bands. You know, something George Halbert told me a long time ago that I've always remembered is he said that, you know, bands will give you the most amount of return on your investment, but they also can take the most from you if you're not in control of how often you use and, you know, the frequency you use. Kind of from that, it goes like the importance of coaches and the ability to evaluate sets. Yeah. We kind of touched on it on the start, but I think to kind of do a little bit of a deeper dive into that aspect. Yeah.

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Yeah, so like we said, you get a lot of first reps, and of course there's second and third reps if you're benching. But if I'm evaluating an athlete, that dynamic effort day gives you a chance to see their first rep execution for 8, 10, or 12 sets. And like I said, under those parameters, you've got a lighter intensity, so you can feel safe making technique adjustments and not worrying about, like, I'm not going to give a guy a technique adjustment when he's about to go for a top set max effort. The risk of injury increases, and you don't want to create doubt.

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But in the dynamic effort training structure, that's a lot of opportunity for a coach to, you know, establish good technique and then, you know, really refine technique over time. You're never going to have perfect technique. The goal is to find, you know, technique that fits the parameters of safety, then refine that over time. It's all about being optimal. Exactly.

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Being a coach is crucial because execution matters. Coaches should never be viewed as the ones who just count reps. When you're running, just say a squat, we're there to evaluate bar speed, technique breakdown, and seeing where you're breaking down fatigue-wise. Is there one muscle group getting tired before the others? Then distill that analysis and then give feedback. And then if we're giving feedback, we're ensuring it is precise, it's not overcoached,

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It's not all the shit about cueing this, cueing that. It's the minimal effective cue to get the job done. And if there's something that is blatantly going to hurt them, we will jump in and stop. But if not, it's at the end of the workout. We'll talk to them and work on, okay, hey, here are steps we're going to do to fix this or improve that. Our goal is to ensure optimal training quality and athlete progression.

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Yeah. And the thing about cues you said, I want to say is, you know, some people will diss our cues, you know, the big air. And, you know, I see people say that, you know, Louis arch cue is wrong because they think that he's, you know, encouraging people to enter lumbar extension. Really, when he would say arch, all he's saying is really to push your upper back, mid back into the bar and resist.

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any sort of chest collapsing. Louie always taught correct trunk bracing. He always understood stacking, having the shoulders in line with the hips and making sure the ribcage is braced down. We weren't ever trying to lift in lumbar extensions.

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The cues, Big Air, the cues, Chest Up, the cue, Arch, they all work. They've worked for many athletes at Westside. A lot of coaches, they'll come up with a new cue, and it pretty much communicates the same thing that we were communicating with our cues. It's just that everybody likes to criticize Westside, and everybody likes to come up with something new so they can have some content based on a new cue.

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It's context dependent. If you're a Westside, you knew exactly what was being said to you and why. There's no ambiguity with that cue. Maybe people visiting who weren't used to how Louis would cue. And each training partner was basically a coach too. Everyone had a purpose there. They're giving feedback to whoever is under the bar.

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But it's highly context dependent. And if you're a coach, find your own cues, go for it. Find what works, but don't get stuck in them. Your job as a coach is, we've always been taught, give the minimal effective dose of cues. Because it brings the flow. You want to get them to a point you don't even need cues, right?

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For sure, because they're training themselves. And there's a time to be where maybe a little bit of motivation is there, but we're not going to be cheerleaders either. We're all there for a purpose and a job, and our job is to make sure the athletes are getting the best possible training they can to progress in their sport. Yeah, and you know something funny at these meets you'll hear guys, the coach wants to scream the cues, and sometimes they scream them so loud the coach becomes – they want their moment too, right? The coach don't want to be off camera not saying nothing. They've got to yell so they can be part of the moment.

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To each their own. But don't diss our cues. They work. They work for us. Maybe they don't work for you. They work for us. They've produced over 150 world record holders and the strongest powerlifting gym in the world. True. And transferred into high-level athletics, MMA, best grapplers in the world.

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all based off the same simple cues. Because it's just like you go into someone else's gym, you don't know what their culture is, you don't know how their equipment works. Like even knowing if you're in a monolith, how much the hooks will sway if they don't sway, you know it internally, inside and out. So therefore you have cues based on your culture, your gym, your equipment. And that's the way it is. Like we're not here to criticize others, but at least be open-minded and analyze it. I wonder why they're saying that and what does it mean?

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And something you said just a minute ago about training partners, that was the great thing about the power offering groups at Westside Barbell. You know, everybody's experienced. So, A, we didn't need a ton of queuing anyways. And then, you know, the second part is I didn't so much need a queue before I went. It's just after the set, the guys that I train with, I trust their word. They'll tell me, hey, man, next set, try to get this right, get that right. I didn't even need the queue by the time I get to the barbell. I already am thinking what we talked about between sets and just going to adjust accordingly. Two, you guys were trained so hard that nearly the meat's got in the way of the training.

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You know, well, you know, everybody knows I don't compete too often. I always enjoyed lifting at Westside as much as I enjoyed going to a meet. Because as anyone knows, I mean, we don't try to compete outside of the realms of safety to where we're killing ourselves every day. But every training day at that gym, there's dynamic effort, max effort, or even, you know, accessory work, you're trying to beat somebody.

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To move into the proper lifting equipment to use on dynamic effort today and just in general, I think the core aspects is a belt, wraps, and shoes, maybe straps. But what comes to mind to you when you think of proper lifting equipment to have in the gym?

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Well, the first things I think about was related to the box squats. So with box squats, we never want to wear knee wraps. We can wear knee sleeves. We generally don't. I don't recommend box squatting in heeled shoes, any sort of an Oli shoe. We want flat shoes. I recommend Chuck Taylors. With the bench press, if you like a belt, wear a belt. We always like to wear wrist wraps. Just protect your joints. You could be a tough guy if you want to, but over time, I'm 37 years old. Now you get older, you start feeling that shit.

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If you have the availability of a belt, you know, wrist straps, knee sleeves, you know, use them. There's times, too, you know, you might get shoulder pain, some bicep tendonitis. I'll use sometimes deadlift straps for the speed deadlifts just to give my shoulders, my biceps a break, you know, because I'm going to grip and rip that bar.

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on a speed day so sometimes the straps work just to keep stress off the biceps and the shoulders so you know use those things to your advantage you know a lot of times guys think i like to train beltless sometimes but i use it more as a tester i don't use it to prove nothing because there's nothing to be proved right who gives a shit what you can squat beltless anyway you're not gonna do the competition so uh never avoid using proper lifting equipment because you're trying to be a tough guy or prove something use you know use the things like louie always used to say you're gonna need that shit some the less you use it now the more you're gonna need in the future so you might as well just use it not beat yourself up

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If it's not an advantage, it's a disadvantage. Exactly. So choose what the advantage is. And belts to me are the best feedback for bracing. They're phenomenal. They're phenomenal to cue how to push out against it. You get way more out of your exercises. It makes it safer with intra-abdominal pressure. But to wear a good quality belt. And today, our intern Cam was wearing those Nike Metcon shoes and we're doing a sumo deadlift.

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And I was camo. I'm not sure if you can feel this, but you're basically in a sumo off a one and a half inch deficit because those soles are so thick. Yeah. So he took off his shoes, his form instantaneously changed. Yep, exactly. And that's the power of just having good flat sole shoes and knowing, like, the purpose of it. If you're moving around, if the shoes are so cushy, we've seen people come in here with, like...

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Really expensive trainers that look great, but as soon as they start squatting, the lack of stability on the ankle and the feet starts happening and it completely screws the workout up. 100%. It's going to decrease the amount of force you can produce because you're coming from an unstable platform. And then real quick, something I want to say about the belt that you mentioned about the interabdominal pressure. I don't know if there's any studies on it. I can't quote a study at this moment, but I can say over my experience, I feel like wearing a belt has helped me increase my trunk strength because it gives you something to press against. It's essentially when you're bracing against a belt, it's somewhat of an isometric trunk contraction, would it not be?

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Yeah, and the trick is not to have it too tight or too loose. There you go. Just right. If you have it too tight, then you can't flex your belly out, and if it's too loose, it's going to do nothing for you. Our rule of thumb is when you put on the belt, you can just about squeeze your fingers in there because that's just enough to push against it. Yep. You've got to have something to breathe into. You've got to have some room.

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Yeah, and make sure too for deadlifting, if it's too tight, you can't get in position. And then you can go down the rabbit hole of different thicknesses of belts, depths of belts, etc. But if you just have a genuine good all-around belt, it will serve you and last you a lifetime. Yep. And if you're going to get a belt, a prong belt, get a single prong, double prongs. Every week someone gets the double prong at the gym and we got to try to get them out of it. Double prongs are traps. Do you like single prong over lever?

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Yeah, no, I prefer pronged belts because of the ability to adjust on the fly and also being a super heavyweight. You know, the size of my gut can vary depending on the day. So, you know, lever belts, like you said, if I'm deadlifted and I'm a little bloated that day, you know, that lever belt, I'm going to have to get the multi-tool out and adjust it because I can't get to the bar. It's not a straight leg pull because I can't, you know, set my hips down. My gut's too big that day. So I think if you're a bigger guy, it's, you know, the single prong is probably the best bet. I think the single prong is the best bet for everybody, but I'm biased.

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I love the convenience of the lever, especially for accessories going from sleds to maybe light work. But I just love the security of a single prong. Yeah. That's the thing, too, to mention, right? Sometimes, depending on what belt maker you've got, the latch can break. So if you're squatting 1,000 pounds and the lever breaks, you're going to be in some trouble.

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Shout out to Steve Cordillo, who makes our lever belts here that have tried and true. But it comes up with the single, the double, and the lever belts. And I think Louis hammered home into us single-prong belts. Yeah. Because you're right, even in the gym, a visitor will come in, they get stuck in the double-prong, and we have to get the pyres out and try to peel them out of it. Yep. Moving on to rest between sets. And let me share this screen.

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So if we're going to talk about the recommended rest times between sets, and if we start with max effort, dynamic effort, and repeated effort method, these are just rules of thumb, but max effort is going to have your biggest amount of rest periods. And Burley, can you break down why that's important to have longer rest for max effort?

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So we're looking for optimal ATP regeneration. We're also just looking to make sure that the athlete has the time to, you know, relax from the last set. Not relax in a total go to rest mode. Relax mentally, you know, reevaluate technique, you know, make adjustments as needed. The two-minute is generally on the way up. You know, the warm-ups, usually as we get to the top sets, you know, the last two warm-ups, you might have, you know, three minutes between. And then usually that top set anywhere between three to five minutes.

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And it's always dependent on the athlete in the day. There's sometimes, you know, we might be able to push the pace a little faster. And there's some days the athlete might need a little bit more rest. But the intent on max effort day is to lift the heaviest weight possible that day. So we're not so much worried about training density as we are about training intensity.

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We get lots of questions in, and we had one who was an athlete whose coach was using three-minute breaks. Yeah. That was for dynamic effort. For dynamic effort. Yeah. And they were doing 10 sets of two. So that's 30 minutes of inactive time. Yeah. One, I don't know who has that amount of time to spend that training. Yep. But altering your rest between sets is a great way to increase conditioning. 100%.

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Low-hanging fruit. For sure. For our athletes, we started off with a 45 seconds to one minute to where now they're basically, when it's their turn up, it's their turn up. It's less than 30 seconds. But they were able to build up that conditioning aspect from manipulating rest between sets. The same with max effort.

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Max effort, there is leniency to where two to five minutes, I would say three minutes on average because it goes by rotation usually. But it is something you can manipulate as a coach when it comes to your programming. And remember, it's strength and conditioning. And the rest, manipulating that affects the conditioning hugely.

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And there is a caveat here with the rest period. So as we get a dynamic effort, repeated effort, you know, it's 45 seconds to a minute. That would be Westside barbell gym standard. If you're someone that's new to dynamic effort, you might need to take a little bit more time, maybe even up to two minutes. My advice would be to take as much time as you feel you need to be able to execute the next sets and reps.

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to standard you know we don't want to see a big breakdown just because you're trying to push density because you're new to the methods if you're new to these methods you know maybe you got to go to two minutes between but you shouldn't need three or four minutes even the beginners shouldn't need three or four minutes you know two minutes really max but just make sure you're setting yourself up for success each set so let's move on to discussing the benefits of the volume of max effort day

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Yeah, so the thing about the volume is that dynamic effort training is the opportunity for us to accrue a ton of training volume. On a max effort day, the training volume of the main exercise is very limited. We try to make up for that as much as we can with the accessory exercise, but you can only do so much in a day.

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Dynamic effort training is where we really accumulate volume and meaningful volume. You know, it's our main exercise work is, you know, performed between 70 and 85 percent. So those are training intensities that, you know, make a significant difference in the long run. And then, you know, on the first week, you're, you know, stacking 24 reps at 75 percent.

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That's a pretty good tradeoff. You know, it's obviously the focus of that day's rate of force development improvement. However, you know, there is still a absolute strength development occurring as well, just not at the rate that would occur at, you know, max effort intensity.

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For us, the volume of dynamic effort day is our worst kept secret for athletic performance. The amount of density and intensity and volume we can accrue in a dynamic effort day ranges from on the low end, 150,000 to the extreme end of 400,000 to 500,000 pounds of volume. For our athletes, this is what develops their engine, develops their strength endurance along

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speed strength dynamic effort just became like one of the most crucial powers for athletic development and because of the volume the amount of volume you get done and we do a total body day compared to the standard splitting up between upper and lower and that is we do that to give the athletes another opportunity for skill acquisition throughout the week

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But understanding and calculating volume is huge. And when you reduce rest periods again, you can now get in more sets and reps attributing to volume and make sure everything is purposeful. You're not just doing exercise for the sake of doing exercises they have to carry over. A big trick we use if we want to increase total volume, we'll increase either trips on the sled or the weight on the sled.

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Sleds can add anywhere from 30,000 to 80,000 pounds of volume per workout right there. They're hugely important. But yeah, the volume on this day is huge. Yeah. Yeah, it's the day that we get the most volume accumulated in one day. It's also, what I like about this is whether you're talking about athletes or powerlifters, it's a good day to judge an athlete's conditioning and fitness, right? If we see a guy that's struggling to get through the sets that he should be able to make,

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uh you know at the proper velocity we know that either he's carrying excess fatigue so we got to look at the training and maybe change something up or we just know that they're lacking conditioning we maybe need to increase the you know the sled work that just the general uh you know physical preparedness work the conditioning work and again back to the line of effort you were training through fatigue yeah you have purpose purposeful set fatigue that you're training through and it's going to increase that work capacity all around

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No, we both see it in the gym, right? You've seen guys that tested a certain level of max effort, and you assume that they can handle the percentages that dictate they should be able to work with this weight for this many sets at this velocity, and then it doesn't correlate. And a lot of times, like I said, it's either fatigue or we know that they're just not fit enough. And how many times you see guys that are new to the gym, those first few weeks you're puking in the parking lot. And it's just because it's a different level of volume, a different level of velocity. It's just a different level of go. Like we're going, we're moving. That brings up another good point is it'll teach you how to pace yourself too.

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Yeah. Like, if you try running at the top, like, you're going to have a very unhappy outcome, which is puking the parking lot, of which we don't condone puking. To me, it's your body rejecting exercise. But sometimes you have to get a few bumps along the way to understand what this day is. But it's...

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Yeah, it's huge. I can't stress enough the importance of volume, exercise selection, and manipulation. And that kind of brings us onto selecting the main exercises for dynamic effort day. And if I bring up the screen. We've done a graph on that. If you can run through that for me, Burley.

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Yeah, so this just shows how we might change up exercises over the course of, this is six total waves. So as you can see, you know, we got the comp bar with bands, the SSB with chains, the giant camber with bands, and then we pretty much work right back through that with, you know, just changing the accommodating resistance up.

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The same principle applies to the depth and the bench press. It's not rocket science. It's pretty simple. This would just be like a standard starting rotation of exercise and barbell variations or combinations of specialty bars and a common resistance. However, really what we recommend is as you work with an athlete or you're training yourself and you learn your needs and what you're weak at is, for instance, if I got an athlete that's dealing with an anterior chain weakness in the squat or also maybe dealing with some posture issues in the squat, the SSB might be used.

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Uh, if I got an athlete that has weak hips and has issues with the chest collapse and the squat, maybe the giant camera bar gets used. So this is a standard rotation, but ultimately, as you get to know yourself or know your athlete, you can start to manipulate the rotation based on the athlete's needs.

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And each wave represents three weeks within it. And then if you're looking at that, so this is six waves. So you have multiples to choose from. And a little change means a lot.

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And if you don't have a lot of equipment, that is completely fine. You can change stances, change box heights, change types of accommodating resistance. So with one bar, you can come up with six or seven different ways to get different ways from it. So obviously, the more bars you have, the more selection you can choose from. But it doesn't have to be as huge as changing out the bar.

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Yeah, I work with people all the time that just have standard gym setups. Really, all they have access to is a standard 45-pound power bar, and we still work through plenty of different, you know, accommodating resistance and stance combinations, box height adjustments, like you said, a lot of different grip adjustments on the bench. Yeah, because right there, that's 18 weeks. Yep. So it's just use your imagination, and whatever equipment you have, just make little adjustments. That makes a huge difference. Yep. All right.

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So then we've went into the rotation of accommodating resistance. We rotate barbells. So the rotate accommodating resistance is just the same. You just pick a chain, pick a band, or pick both. Yep. Do you have any rhyme or reason when you bring one in for the other?

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Like I said, I prefer to use bands because I think the overspeed eccentric effect can't be understated. It's going to give you more return on investment. You know, you're going to get stronger and more explosive. You know, rate of force development will increase, in my opinion, faster. The only, like I said, the tradeoff with that is that they can become more fatiguing. And they can also start to create aches and pains. Like there's been times where I'll get what almost feels like shin splints in your forearms because, you know, from using the, a lot of times excessive band on the pressing.

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But yeah, so I use chains when the bands are causing excess fatigue. I try to stay with bands as much as I can. But like you said, what we discussed earlier, there can be an issue with athletes losing the ability to feel stable under free weight. If you're an athlete like that, it might be good to just go one wave band, one wave chain. But if you're an athlete who doesn't have stability issues, I think use band as much as you can.

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Also, too, using the regular squat bar, like that straight bar, can put a lot of stress on shoulder joints, especially if you're a big guy. So that's where the advantage of having a bow bar or a camber bar comes in. So if you're noticing that after squats, your shoulders are tight or sore, there's a good chance it's carrying over from that squat bar. And then that's why you should look into investing into different rotations of bars from safety squat bar, bow bar, joint camber bar, etc.

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Yeah, every specialty bar has a unique training effect, and it also has a lot of them take down or reduce the stress placed on the shoulder. So SSB does that, Bow Bar does that, Camer Bar does that. So great bars to have in your arsenal if you can afford them or you have access to a gym that has them.

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And if you try the homemade method of dropping a bar onto pins, best of luck. Some have tried it, and it never works out that well. So the importance of a proper box squat technique, we have queued up a video Laura has done on this, and I think we will let her talk through it.

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When setting up for a box squat, finding an appropriate box height is important and should be something consistent in your training. It is common to use a 10 to 12 inch tall wooden box that is approximately 24 inch by 24 inch or larger. Using rubber mats to stack on the wooden box is ideal so that multiple training partners can work together in a session and adjust the box height easily. Your box height should be set to parallel where your hip crease is in line with the top of your knee.

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In a wide stance, root your feet into the ground to lock your hips in. Put pressure into the bar with your upper back and brace your abdominals and low back. Your whole body should be loaded up into the bar. Squeeze your glutes and hips to fully unrack the bar, keeping your upper back and head in place. Hinge your hips back and then start to spread the floor or push the floor apart as hard as possible. Do not roll onto the outsides of your feet.

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Keep your whole foot in contact with the floor and stay pushing into your feet through the whole rep, even when you are seated on the box. You want to have as much speed as possible while maintaining control of the eccentric portion, sitting softly to the box without plopping or hitting hard. Without losing tension in your abs and low back, release the hips and hamstrings into the box, then fire them as explosively as possible to reverse the motion. Do not rock back and forth to use momentum to come off the box.

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Hinge and keep your upper back in the starting plane, forcing yourself to use your posterior chain to reverse the motion off of the box. To ensure that you are sitting back far enough and that your stance is wide enough, but not too wide, look for a shin angle that is vertical from the side and from the front.

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I would say the vast majority of videos and questions we get from people on doing box squats incorrectly is one is plopping on the box. Yeah. And two is trying to force a rock. So they think we're actually rocking rather than releasing the hips. Those are the two aspects that a lot of people get wrong. And that's where that gives box squats a bad reputation. Yep.

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Because plopping on a box is definitely going to jar your back. You should always keep tension going down. And thinking that we're rocking, especially I've seen people bring their feet up. I have no idea how they're balancing. They put them back down and off they go. What are some things you've seen with box sports but done incorrectly?

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Well, like you said, the biggest thing is people crashing to the box. So it's important to, obviously, as Laura mentioned, you want to sit to the box as softly as possible. And the benefit to that is, you know, deceleration. You know, to have the ability to decelerate under, you know, it's eccentric force output is what it is. So that's obviously a good training aspect of the box squat. And then also when we're sitting on the box and then we're releasing the hips,

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and performing the concentric portion of the box squat, we're focused on achieving two things. We want static overcomby dynamic work and then relaxed overcomby dynamic work. And that's gonna create a higher level of force generation. It's gonna actually help you improve your rate of force development at an increased rate compared to just standard squatting.

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If you're going to, you know, you see some guys do the touch and go box technique. To me, that's useless. It essentially makes the box as a depth marker. And then it also, if you're training a little bit heavy, you could increase the chance that you do crash into the box improperly. And all you're achieving at that point is a static overcome by dynamic aspect of the box squat. And in my opinion, you'd be better off just, you know, doing a pause squat versus using the box in that capacity.

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Yeah, our goal is to create an imperfect collision so that the energy goes into the box that gets dissipated. So you need to come back up, you need to recruit more. And it's a great way to judge depth because you can have the box at the height for the people you want. I will say, I'm not sure if it exists out there, but if anyone wants to make a box that has fast adjusting...

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height, that would be amazing for big groups. It doesn't wobble. Yeah, they all wobble, right? It doesn't wobble. That doesn't have pins. It goes up and goes down. That's why the tried and trusted two and one inch mats is by far the fastest way we have. Yeah. But if that exists, let us know that it's stable. We've seen some things that are pretty janky. But yeah, that's the power of having those inch mats because you can, depending on the height of the person, add and subtract as need be. Moving on to

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the deadlift I don't know who that guy is but yeah

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And that's just the intent of this is just to show that we're moving fast, but we're still moving with technical proficiency. A lot of people will grab the bar and try to move as fast as possible, which is what we want to do. We have to do that within the realm of proper technique. So try to find that mix of solid technique and optimal barbell velocity. And if we go to two, I can try to do a very crude way of starting you at the start here.

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But when you start that bar, pulling into it, getting a good base is huge. I've seen too many people who just grip and rip the bar. Yeah. And getting that, again, dynamic effort gives you an opportunity to do perfect execution time over time. But pulling some of that slack out of the bar, putting that tension in, getting set in, and then you see you've got a maximum acceleration through. Yes. Yeah.

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If you can do double overhand, go for it. It's by far one of the most advantageous grips, but makes grips completely fine. And for some people too, a lot of our guys will use straps, especially for our grapplers. If they're going to have a grapple heavy day after training, that's when they'll bring in straps. But if you don't have to use them, don't.

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No. And the danger of mixed grip is really having hinge in your elbow. As long as you can keep the elbows locked out and the arms straight, you're going to have no issue really with the mixed grip. If you get heavy enough, say if you're pulling in, you know, 850, 900 or 1,000, something crazy like that, you're...

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Any barbell grip can rip a bicep, both distal or proximal. But for speed work, as long as you make sure the arms are hooks. We're not trying to bicep curl the bar off the ground. Use the arms as hooks. You should be good to go. But that's another important thing is that I'm loading my arms first and then sitting into the pool. I'm not using my arms to move the bar. I'm using my legs.

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I think a lot of people, they don't see the minutiae of what's happening. Some of the mass pullers, they're loading themselves up before that bar comes out. Especially when... How do you deal with slack in the bar? When you're pulling 800+, you're going to have...

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like a moment where not all the pace come out the bar. Like, do you wedge yourself in when you're going for a max effort? So the technique varies depending on the lift, right? So for dynamic effort, I will actually pull the slack out of the bar because what I'm trying to do is get as braced as possible and pull that weight off the ground, I guess, as fast as possible, which is what I'm trying to do when I'm lifting heavy, but it's a little different technique. So when I go to max effort, I don't pull slack out of the bar so much. And, uh,

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I always say I try to hit the bar as hard as I can. I try to almost pop it off the floor, if that makes sense. So I'm not pulling the slack off it when I'm going for a max effort. I'm almost trying to hit that bar so hard that it kind of creates oscillation and then take advantage of the oscillation, almost like catch it as it bounces off the floor and try to time that. Another thing I do that –

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is I try to shorten the hamstrings. So I'll sit into my pool a lot of times, I'll do one sit, two sit, third sit, breathe, you know, and then pull. And I try to, you know, there's no concentric portion of the deadlift, so you can't make kinetic energy, right? So what I try to do is I try to drop in and kind of use my body weight to create some sort of kinetic energy to try to get, you know, some sort of advantage of stretch reflex off the ground. So I use a mix of, you know, kind of performing, I don't know, some sort of air squat,

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Mixed with, you know, popping that bar as hard as I can off the ground, create that oscillation, just try to catch it and pull it up the legs. I know it sounds probably confusing to most people, but that's the way I think about it, the process I work through, and it works for me. Yeah, and you'll have some lifters who will get that tension in the back of their hamstrings. They'll grab the bar, straighten out the hamstrings, then pull themselves back in into position and pull. Yeah. Yeah.

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Two is bracing, holding your breath. It's very hard to hold your breath when you're bent over grabbing the bar. The breath should be taken when you're standing up fully and then grab it down. And if you can't hold your breath for that long, it means you're taking too long to set up and you're overthinking it. But I've seen far too many people who try to take a breath as they're bent over. There's no way you can get a full breath of air and brace against that belt correctly.

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Yeah, so yeah, we want to lengthen the hamstring, take the air, fill the trunk, you know, then shorten the hamstring pull. Boom. And let's go over to one last video on the bench press.

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Again, this is just to show standard bar speed. I mean, maybe we want to be a little faster than that. That was more of just a demonstration. But like I said, we're trying to move, you know, maximum velocity. We're trying to move under control of proper technique. And that's the thing. If my bar speed's looking great, but my technique's looking like crap, we got to find that crossover to where everything is matching up, right? The bar speed matches the technique. So never...

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You want to go as fast as you can while remaining technically proficient. If you're going too fast and you lose your technique, that training will eventually catch up to you. Oftentimes, within the second wave, you'll be trashed.

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Especially when a lot of people lose upper back tightness, like that scapular retraction when you pull out the bar. And as they're blasting it up, they'll go loose and hyper-extend the arm. Flat back. Yeah, exactly. That's another thing to think about, man. Even though these are sub-max of weights, they can still hurt you. So you go flat back and let that bar dump back in you and perform a ballistic press, and all of a sudden you've got a pec string or, at worst, a pec tear.

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To keep Hamer home the point, you have 24 reps of bench to practice this. Is that my math right? Bench would be 27. 27, sorry. Squat first week would be 24. Yeah, it's 9x3. And that's something that we should mention. It's 9x3 throughout the whole three-week week. Yeah, and you're changing your grips. You're starting with your weakest grip, moving to your strongest grip at the end. So it's going to be three sets of your weakest, three sets in between, or someone might be out wide, and then three sets finishing off in your strongest grip.

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And for beginners, I will say, though, if you're a beginner and you're not confident in a close grip or a wide grip, you can go for the first wave, you know, one standard competition grip. Then maybe the next wave you go close grip. But, yeah, for us, if you're an experienced athlete, you're familiar with the methods, we like to go, you know, we got nine sets. That's three sets of close, three sets of wide, three sets of comp. If we go into...

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Accessories that are common and dynamic effort lower. What are the ones that come to your mind?

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you know, it really, the standards are going to be, uh, inverse curl, reverse hyper belt, squat, walks, uh, sled drags. We usually don't do too much, uh, extra as far as multi joint work, strenuous work, because if you think about the, you know, the dynamic effort lowers two main exercises, we're going to have, you know, consider them on a squat volume, consider them on a deadlift fine. So, uh, we don't need as much accessory volume during those days. So a lot of times, you know, it's a squat, uh, deadlift. Then we get something like, you know, hypers, abs, sled, we're out the door.

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For upper, obviously, the volume, we don't have two main exercises, I should say. So we're going to load the accessory volume up a little bit more. And really all that means is that the accessory volume of a max effort upper and a dynamic effort upper are going to be comparable.

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Yeah, and it's, there's a long list of exercise to rotate between. And it's just making sure that there's purpose behind it. Don't put in an exercise because it's hard for the sake of being hard. Everything has to have purpose. When we're setting out dynamic effort days for the athletes, we want to make sure that the way we lay it out,

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It's a terrible analogy, but it's like the worst compound interest ever. Every accessory exercise adds on top of it, so the workout gets harder and harder as you push through it. But it means we can use lighter weights to get the most from it because we understand they're going to get more fatigued. And by throwing in something like jumps or like sled works in the middle of a workout completely disrupts the flow. But again, it forces you to work that work capacity and just try problem-solve as you're going. Because you will see within the groups...

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when they're going from accessory exercise to exercise, they will start finding the ways of the most optimal path of how to get it done. Yeah. And then from a Profit's perspective, what we'll do is we'll, you know, we frame the accessory exercises. We usually, if we, you know, multi-joints are involved, we're going to start with the multi-joint. Really what we're going to do is the highest amount of energy demand will be performed first, and then, you know, we'll perform exercises based on their demand. Yeah.

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But yeah, no, it's similar. And then something I want to say about exercise selection in terms of accessory exercises. You know, people think when they hear about our training, they think we're totally concerned with weak point training. And we are concerned with weak point training, but we don't become so consumed with it that we let it dominate our accessory selection. So oftentimes our selection of accessory exercises is going to be a standard rotation of exercise with maybe one or two exercises based on a particular weakness.

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But we don't want to just bias our accessory exercise selections all towards one weakness because then we're ultimately detraining other muscle groups and causing new weaknesses. So, you know, a standard rotation of your basic accessory movements mixed in with maybe one or two movements selected based on current weaknesses. For simplification, the way I attribute it, I have an A group, a B group, and a C group of exercises. Yeah, yeah. And that way I'll rotate between them all depending on what is necessary. And usually I have...

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a bunch of exercises that I know it's going to carry over. So if we know we've got competitions coming up, I'll start pulling within from a lot more from that A group than I will from B and C. But throughout the year, I'll try to spread everything in. And how do I allocate that? It's just based on feedback from our athletes. What's carrying over, what's not carrying over. And sometimes something that doesn't give high return, we haven't done it in one or two years, we'll bring it back in and lo and behold, it's a great stimulus now because we haven't done it.

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So like we've talked before about like the exercise matrix of an athlete, every athlete has a grouping of mains and accessory exercise that's going to give them the highest return on their time invested. So it ultimately, you know, start with standard selections. But as you mentioned, you work with certain athletes, you start to know what they respond best to, what maybe they don't respond to, and then you start to manipulate the exercise selection accordingly.

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And if you have that one exercise you don't want to do, more than likely, that's the one you should be doing. Yeah. You know, another thing, too, is correlation, right? I can sometimes maybe PR on a dumbbell bench press, and I can, you know, start to think, okay, we might have a PR coming up on the bench press because I just, you know, the 150s just went up for, you know, five extra reps than they were back when I was benching, you know, 550. So now maybe I can think, hey, maybe 575s on the horizon, you know, the bench press is moving. Other things like, you know, downsets with closed grip, all of a sudden you start to go up 25 pounds on your downsets.

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You can start to correlate that with maybe a close grip bench PR coming up in the future. So you can use your accessory exercises as predictors for future PRs. And the way I do accessory exercises is from week one to week two, we're increasing percentage.

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Yeah. And then from week two to week three, we'll increase percentage further. So we're always progressing up in weight. But there's another option is you can add either another set or more reps. Like there's variance to that, like from the athlete perspective, because we're trying to get more intensely into it. Yeah. But a lot of questions we get, do we keep with the same weight throughout? I'm like, no, there's an adjustment somewhere in the accessory exercises every week. What about from your aspect?

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My suggestion is always, and this obviously depends on the honesty and the work ethic of the athlete, but I always say use the heaviest weight you possibly can while remaining capable of performing all sets and reps to strict standard. Because after the main exercise, you can't always predict the level of fatigue that the athlete's going to carry away from the main exercise. Yeah.

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It does become difficult unless you work with an athlete directly in the gym. It can be difficult to prescribe specific training weights to accessory exercises. So just to make sure your training intensity is on point, oftentimes just training with the heaviest weight you can while meeting all sets, reps and technique parameters is a good approach.

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But like your approach is because we work with the guys in the gym, so you know how to make those modifications. I guess I'm talking more if I'm working with someone online or someone out in person. That's the directive I usually give. I will say that is hard when you're trying to give some kind of a generalization to coaches or to people online.

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But when you have someone in-house, context is key. You know them well enough to, like, we've got to change this up. And we had coaches visiting, and we're doing dumbbell floor press as an accessory work. And without thinking, went over and, like, hey, we're not doing this. We're going to go up 20 pounds to 75. And they're like, well, how did you know that? I'm like, did you not see how fast they're moving? 50. Exactly. So just because the percentage says it's this doesn't mean you have to stay there. It's moving too fast. We have to up the weight. Yep.

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Another thing that people get confused on is max effort accessory volume versus dynamic effort accessory volume. Can we go into the differences between those? Yeah, so max effort accessory volume is always going to be a bit more because we have to drive the volume of the training day through the accessory exercise considering that the main exercise, it's not very volume dense. So typically going to be more accessory exercise selections on the max effort days, particularly on the lower day.

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Like I said, max effort upper and dynamic effort upper, the accessory exercise volume will be somewhat comparable, but there is a discrepancy between max effort lower and dynamic effort lower.

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Considering that we have two main exercises and dynamic effort lower, we want to make sure that we're not overtraining or over, I shouldn't even say overtraining, but overdoing it on the accessory exercise selections with max, I mean, dynamic effort lower. And there's going to be times that you might think, well, hell, I can, you know, I got no problem doing a full battery of accessories. I feel great. Well, you might not feel great next week. So sometimes it's important just to keep a, you know, a governor on things to some extent to make sure you're managing fatigue appropriately and not running yourself into any walls.

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Ultimately, we're trying to improve performance. We're not trying to prove how hard we can train. People get confused from when we say on dynamic effort with the accessories, it's maximal intent. But the intensity of dynamic effort day is moderate. On max effort day, the intensity is high. So on your accessories, your intensity is high. And even though there's going to be maximal intent involved, there's a very different stimulus happening on max effort day compared to dynamic effort day.

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The rest periods to a max effort a day are going to be greater because you're lifting at a higher intensity and by product you're lifting a heavier weight.

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Yeah, yeah. So like, you know, people think that max effort is the difficult day. Really, that's a walk in the park. You know, the fatigue that you're going to feel after performing your main exercise on a dynamic effort training day, particularly dynamic effort lower, you know, you're going to be pretty tired. So to sit there and think that, you know, you can go through a standard amount of accessory work, you know, meaning, you know, four to five accessory exercises, not going to happen, you know, you want to stay between, you know, anywhere between two to three.

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and you don't want them to be overly intense. And oftentimes, like I said before, it's just abs, it's hypers, it's sleds, and we're out the door. And I've seen guys before that want to push the envelope on the training volume, really push the accessory exercise volume on their dynamic effort days. And then ultimately by the next wave, week two, those guys are burning out and tired and their velocity's crap. And then they're not having to deload, but they're going to have to start training with lighter weights for maybe a week or two to catch back up and be able to meet the velocity parameters again.

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And that's a good differentiation between working with the athletes and working with power lifters. Again, the way it's been used is completely different. And the end objective is different in terms of they have to go out for their sport. So for us, our volume is huge on dynamic effort day. But because we're using it, we combine both upper and lower, which again is going to add more volume. But there's no person who should be finished dynamic effort

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be sitting bright-eyed and bushy-tailed after it. You should have felt like this. We trained. We didn't just come for a workout. This was one hard training session. And normally it takes, if you're a high-level athlete, three weeks to adapt into it. For some, it takes three months. But again, you can manipulate dynamic effort into whatever your sport is. That's the beauty of it. Because we can adapt it for our athletes the way you guys adapt it for powerlifting to where you adjust whatever the weights, sets, and reps are.

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Like you said, you know, with the athletes, you want to obviously really focus on the conditioning and the density aspect of it. With the power lifters, you know, when you think about wear and tear, if you've got a thousand pound squatter, you know, 75 percent, 75, you know, that's 750 total, you know, total weight between the bar weight and the counter resistance, you know, for 12 sets of two. So it's a different level of wear and tear for a strength athlete versus, you know, a conventional sports athlete because the training weights are going to be much different.

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And that's where tracking volume is key. If you're a 1,000-pound squatter, well, then your 50% is going to be way different than someone who's 405. But total training volume, everything catches up towards the end. And it's pretty interesting to see the total training volume and dynamic effort for a high-level powerlifter for a high-level...

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Graffler. Well, like Louie used to say, too, about the profiting aspect, you know, the percentages assure that the athlete is accruing the proper amount of volume for the current level of absolute strength. So that's another reason that we're going back earlier to where we're talking about RP and percentages, which one's more advantageous. The percentages, if you're found a percentage and able to meet those percentages every week, you can rest assured that you're accruing at the proper amount of volume for your strength level.

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When it comes to putting jumps in, dynamic effort day, do you put them in before or after main exercise? Oh, it depends on the athlete's preference. Sometimes athletes jump better after the deadlift and the squat. I mean, the squat and the deadlift, sometimes better before, but your early preference. How about with the athletes? How about you? What do you go with? Yeah.

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It depends, right? Back to context. If we want to do something through fatigue, I like to put in jumps after the main exercises somewhere within the middle of the workout. So then they have to do something that's taxing to the brain to like, okay, I have to jump onto this box. So you're like basically jumping through fatigue. If we're trying to get more out of the jumps, then it'll be straight after the main exercise or before. Yeah. More like before. Really, if so, you're looking at it from like one aspect of conditioning or one aspect pure plyometric. Yeah.

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If it's going to be pure plyometric, we do it in a separate day. Plyometrics are super important. And we want to have correct sets, reps, and rest. So for our plyometrics, we do them in a completely separate day. But if we're putting jumps in, like we have depth jumps in this round of our three-week wave for dynamic effort. And we put that in. One, it's easy to execute. It's pretty taxing. But we want to get them to jump to do stuff through fatigue. Because it helps with the conditioning aspect.

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Well, these are guys that are going to fight fights that can last upwards of 25 minutes. They got to be ready for any and all sorts of dynamic movements and situations, right? Yeah. As we come towards the end, some of the troubleshooting. What do you do when the barbell moves too slow?

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Lower the training weight. Lower the percentages. Generally, the adjustment we would do is, you know, you're going to take 5% off of each training percentage of each week of the wave. And then sometimes that might have to be sustained for two waves in a row. But it's always more important to be able to meet the velocity parameter than it is to lift the training weight that corresponds to your current level of strength.

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And that's both because you want higher level of training quality, meaning you're going to get better improvement of rate of force development because you're training dynamic effort properly. And it's going to ensure that you don't end up with a fatigue management issue because you're training too heavy on your dynamic effort work.

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I will bring up something too when the bar is moving too slow. We get questions in that week one is fine, week two is slow, and then week three is they can barely move it. Make sure you're using up-to-date PRs. Yeah. That it's not off a PR that's two years old. Because some of us would love to lift some of the weights we used to back then, but it has to be off a fresh PR. Because then it's not correct percentages.

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Yeah, there's no room for any Uncle Rico's on dynamic effort day. You know what I mean? And for our athletes, we're testing, we're retesting records every 9 to 12 weeks. But it should be off a current one, not off one that is a couple of years old. 100%. Then another question is, what happens if it's too fast?

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Well, I would never recommend increasing the training weights. Uh, what I would recommend is, it's like, say if you're, you know, way fast on your SSB squats, well, I would suggest you after this wave, maybe that fourth week test that on max effort, just get a new max because there's a good chance you're set for PR. So if anything, it's, uh, it's, it's a good thing. It's going to be probably indicative of a squat PR with whatever barbell you're using. Um.

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But I don't think it's ever a problem unless you're moving like, if you're moving like 1.2 meters per second, maybe that's a little too fast, maybe a little too light, throw some weight on accordingly. But I mean, if you're carrying a one meter per second average, that's no problem. And the other things to check is that maybe it's time to get new bands. There you go. If you're using bands, like they might be well broken. Might I suggest the Westside Pro bands that have no issues with that? And that's not a sales pitch, folks. I've been using these bands for a year. They're great.

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Yeah, once they break in this, they constant tension and they self-centered themselves. A shameless plug for our band. They were. Yeah. And then the other thing is calculating the volume. Sometimes people get confused between bar weight and band weight, and they'll combine both of them.

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So they might have a very light bar weight, but correct band weight. So just make sure you're doing 50, 50, or 50, 55, and 60% of your bar weight, which is the barbell plus the weights, and then 25% of accommodating resistance. And that's measured at the top. And then it's both bands. It's not one band versus the other band. Bands are just like plates. Just make sure your math is correct, because sometimes I can throw people off.

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Yeah, the fish and game scale or luggage scale to make sure that you got matching tensions. Definitely. When to reduce training percentages for beginners or fatigued athletes?

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Any time that you notice fatigue being present, so that's going to be an athlete struggling to either complete all sets and reps with proper technique, you know, or obviously it's going to accompany that. It's going to be a decrease in bar velocity. And then for beginners, oftentimes, even if everything's looking good at the max effort, they might not have the fitness and the conditioning to perform 12 sets of two at 75%.

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That's where we're going to drop that training percentage down 5%. And then even with beginners, we can go as far as 10% reduction. I'll reduce it to the point. My suggestion would be to reduce to the point that the velocity moves within the realms that's acceptable. The velocity dictates the training weight. The max effort is a suggestion, but the velocity ultimately dictates what the training weight needs to be.

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And for beginners or fatigued athletes, manipulating that rest period can be huge. Sometimes a difference of 30 seconds to a minute, that extra 30 seconds can make all the difference in speed, especially for beginner athletes here. And it normally takes, I said, people here three weeks to three months to be able to get up to the level of everyone else. But just manipulating the rest alone can allow you to keep the same bar weight and band tension.

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Yeah, yeah. Work at your pace. You know, nobody walks in the gym. You're not going to be Chuck Vogelpohl off the bat. You know, you got to have many years to get to that kind of level. And then you still won't be Chuck Vogelpohl. And you still won't be. Yeah, you're still going to be Chuck Vogelpohl. We got one guy that's close, Jake Anderson. But yeah, there's only one Chuck, right? Can we go over how excessive band tension can wreak havoc on your joints? Yeah.

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Oh, yeah, it'll kill you. You'll feel it pretty quick, too, if you're using too much band tension. You'll feel it in your ankles. You'll feel it in your knees if you're squatting and deadlifts, and you'll feel it in your elbows. You'll feel it in your shoulders and your forearms if you're benching. And sometimes, you know, if we're dealing with beginners that are new to economy resistance, 25% economy resistance, especially in the bands, can be a bit of a shock. So sometimes, you know, you can go as low as 15% if need be, and then we just make up the difference on the bar weight.

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The 25% is preferable because that's going to give us, especially with the bands, that's going to give us the overspeed eccentric effect we're looking for. But yeah, if you're someone that's noticing, even if you're an experienced athlete and you're getting beat up by the bands, we're either going to change out to chains or we can reduce the common resistance percentage 5% to 10% and then just kick the weight back to the bar.

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Another thing, too, to look at is band placement. If your bands are too far forward on a rack or too far back, it's going to put you in a whole different groove and put a lot of stress where it shouldn't. Especially if you're doing a box squat where you unrack the bar and go down to the box, it should be in a straight line. It shouldn't be too far. Remember in the old red monolith back in F497, there was bands at the front and there was bands towards the middle.

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Yeah. And it's like, depending on who was squatting, they knew which bands to get. So just make sure the bands are set up custom for you. That when you unrack them, it's going to keep you in that groove. Because a lot of times they're too far forward or too far back and it's pulling you out of position, giving you undue strain.

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Yeah, setup's crucial. And there is a video on our YouTube of Louie. If you'd go into Westside, and I think it was just YouTube band setup, Louie discusses how to attach them to the monolith. And then something real quick I also want to say when we're talking about setups is with chains. When we're training with chains, sometimes you see folks that have half the chain link laying on the ground.

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So when we're talking about chain weight, we weigh a chain, we're weighing the entire chain, right? So to ensure that that chain weight's applied to the barbell properly, at lockout, we're looking for only really, you know, one to two, maybe three links at most touching the ground. So, you know, if you're training with a certain chain weight and you weighed that chain, you need to be having most of that chain off the ground when you're at full lockout for that accommodate resistance to be properly applied.

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And if you're the tallest guy in the group, good luck. Yeah, that's another thing too, man, is like how we formed training groups at the gym. Oftentimes it was based on height, so you didn't have to do those extreme adjustments. So sometimes, or if I trained with a guy that's shorter than me and there's two people in the group, you go first, I'll let you run through yours, I'll go after, because adjusting the chains is a total hassle. Yeah, because if you're going against someone who's 5'4", and you're 6'4", you got all the chains off the ground, and then they'll have the perfect links in between.

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I remember one time Louis was actually fucking with me and he had somebody training with me and I was at full chain length and they were at half chain length and Louis was bitching at me because they're squatting fast for me. And I said that, you know, they're at half chain length. He goes, I don't give a fuck. And I'm thinking, man, this guy is going to kill me today. It's the same with band tension.

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When you had someone like Chris Spiegel, who's nearly seven foot, band tension. Yeah, his wingspan's incredible. And I just say squatting with someone like Coker, like different height-wise, but to Lou, band tension's the same. It just is what it is, so you got to treat it that way. Well, he understood the difference, but he didn't give a shit. He looked at it like if it's tougher for you, good. You know, you shouldn't be able to handle it. You're good enough to be here, you should be able to handle it.

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Awesome, Burley. Well, that wraps up this podcast. Any questions you have on it, just send them over our way. It's been a pleasure. And until next time, see you.

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you