But when you suffer an injury, lose significant strength and/or size, and cannot perform most movements you are used to, the athlete who really wants to succeed will set themselves apart. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. It takes fortitude, mental toughness, and discipline to train through injuries. Even though all injuries are different, I have found there are some basic principles that can be applied to most injuries to retain as much strength and size as possible.

Before getting into my personal experiences, I will first say I am not a doctor or medical professional and the first thing to do when suffering a serious injury would be to see a medical professional. Fortunately, I have never suffered a serious muscle tear but I have had my fair share of joint related injuries. I have torn the meniscus in both knees, labrums in both shoulders and both hips. I am not sure if it is a genetic pre-disposition to weak cartilage or just from playing football and competing in powerlifting at a high level for many years. The other major injury I have suffered and still deal with is multiple herniated discs. Outlined below are the major points I have found that have allowed me to retain most of my strength and recover faster from injuries.

• Rest: This is common sense but often overlooked. When first suffering an injury, it is important to give the body time to rest and heal. It could be as short as a few days and as long as 4-6 weeks assuming surgery is not needed. Research your injury, find out if what is injured is vascular or not. Blood flow to the region is what promotes healing. Seek out other athletes who have experienced the injury. It’s almost a certainty that you are the not first person to suffer this injury in your sport and circle of colleagues.
• Work Ranges of Motion: Every injury I have suffered did not give me pain through an entire range of motion. Unless it is a catastrophic injury, there will probably be a large range of motion that is pain-free. If the pain zone is in the middle, work the top and bottom end. Be creative with exercises. You can hit every possible range of motion by the use of a power rack, safety pins, and bands/chains. When I was trying to overcome my major torn hip labrum, the bottom 1/3 of my squat hurt significantly. So while I could not do a full squat, I could do high box squats, good mornings, RDL’s, lunges pain free. Keeping 2/3 of my squat strong and working the other 1/3 through rehab and more isolation allowed me to rebound from a serious injury pretty quickly.
• Get creative: Research and not only understand muscle groups, but movements, and how they affect each other. There is an incredible amount of angles, movements, and resistance methods to target nearly every muscle regardless of what is hurt. It takes creativity and experimentation. If your hand or forearm is broken, you can loop a band around your elbow/tricep and perform handless rows. Figuring out ways to rig bands and bars around a power rack will surprise you with how diverse you can train your body even with injuries. Even performing the same movements but with a different “groove” can be outstanding, especially if the injury was suffered performing that movement. When my hip labrums were bad, I found I was able to perform a full range of motion squat if I pushed my knees out more than I did before, or by using a very narrow stance. Even though the weight wasn’t the same, I was able to work a similar range of motion.
• Know when to push it: In order to return to the same level as you were pre-injury, you will need to push it at some point. The first goal needs to return to a painless full range of motion first. This needs to be accomplished quickly, but safely. Once the full range of motion has returned, it is time to start adding weight to the movement and regaining the strength back. Again, this needs to be done safely. Following an injury it is normal to feel hesitant about heavy weight. Especially once you start approaching the weight you may have injured yourself with. But at some point we need to get better again and this will take some guts to push past what your mind is telling you not to do.
• Learn: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. So every time you get hurt, use it as a learning lesson. Figure out why you got hurt and try not to do the same thing that got your hurt. Really analyze your programming, weight selection, form, and try to focus on why you got hurt. Was the weight too heavy? Were you not as focused on form as you should have been and got loose somewhere leading to injury? Were you benching again before you had recovered from your previous session? Understanding how you got one injury will also help you avoid future unrelated injuries. Train smart and stay healthy.

At the end of the day, everyone is bound to get injured at some point. In order to have a long successful career in a sport it will require rebounding from the injury and coming back better than you were before. Not all injuries can be avoided, but going through the healing and learning process will help reduce future injuries and allow you to compete more frequently and longer.

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Over the past few years, I have been pleased with my progress on some lifts, and not on others. I would try to change things from cycle to cycle, but always found myself working my way back into the same rut and same routine that I have for a few years. I would try to program in some different traits, and somehow always worked my way back to what I knew. These patterns are important and I go through them every few years. In 2012 I began working with Mike Tuchscherer on high frequency training and it opened my eyes to a new style of training and the knowledge I gained from communicating with Mike set me years ahead of where I would have been otherwise. So it was time for a new quantum leap in my training and I travelled to Columbus, Ohio to visit the godfather of powerlifting, Louie Simmons, in his mecca, Westside Barbell.

Working a corporate job and travelling frequently for meets across the world, it is tough to find vacation time to travel for powerlifting. I was able to get days worked around to spend nearly a week at Westside. When I first began to learn what powerlifting was and reading articles, Westside and Louie were some of the first things I saw. Like many young lifters around this time (2006 ish), I tried to run the Westside method of training called the Conjugate System, but did it grossly wrong. I dabbled in different methods over the years, but was always fascinated by Westside. I have read many things over the years about Westside and Louie, some of it being negative, and some of it being positive, but always strongly opinionated. I emailed the gym, asking if I could come out and learn and train. For those not deeply involved in the powerlifting world, there is a common set of stereotypes about different groups in the sport. The IPF (where I have always competed) is strong in their beliefs about drug free sport, strict judging, and single ply (and since 2012, raw) competition. The federations where Westside competes have looser beliefs about drug free, have been criticized about judging standards, and wear almost exclusively multi ply gear. On social media, members from both sides often clash claiming the other’s training methods don’t work, it’s only the drugs and gear working, the other side is weaker, etc. I didn’t know how my attempt at communicating would be received. Didn’t know if it would be ignored, made fun of, or welcomed.

A few days later, my phone rang and my knowledge of the strength world would be forever changed. I talked to Louie Simmons on the phone for over 30 minutes, and would continue to do so over the next few weeks. Though some may argue if the Westside method works, what can absolutely NOT be argued is their results. Nowhere in the world have so many strong people trained under the same roof, and actually been brought up and added strength from training in that gym. There are many stories of being invited to Westside, and people giving up careers, relationships, and their lives to move to Columbus and train here living out of their cars and small apartments. The methods may be questioned, but nowhere has there ever been such a draw to a gym that people uproot their lives to train there, and there is not even a remotely close 2nd place. I have never met a person so passionate about powerlifting and strength training. I thought my passion for powerlifting was the strongest in the world, but it doesn’t even come close to Louie’s. He is so hungry to help people – anyone – get stronger. Extremely giving and simply lives his life just to making people stronger. The purpose of this article isn’t to be a resume on Louie, his results of working with powerlifters, MMA fighters, NFL athletes, Olympic track and field athletes – this can be found elsewhere and is extremely impressive. With that being said, let’s get on to the list.

1. They care about getting stronger above all else.
One of the most common stereotypes I’ve heard is that it is just the multi ply gear and drugs that make them strong. Boy was this wrong. 99% of their passion goes into simply getting stronger. I’ve spent years lifting equipped in the IPF and can assure you that the average IPF lifter spends MUCH more time trying to use the gear differently to get more pounds than Westside spends. I was really blown away by this. The vast majority of their training is done raw, or with minimal gear to protect the hips. They really care about getting stronger. Period. Their training methods allow them to get an accurate projection of where their strength will be with the gear, then it comes on closer to a meet. Their results aren’t from magic gear, magic drugs, but from incredibly hard, dedicated, passionate work. They just simply want to get stronger more than anyone else does.

2. Your bands are too light.
Like I said before, I grossly tried to train Westside when I was younger, but had a poor understanding of it. Even in my recent training, I incorporate bands. What I didn’t understand was how much band tension is needed for someone at my strength level. I just want to use an example from Max Effort Squat/Deadlift day when I was there. We were doing deadlifts from the floor against a monster mini band with 4 laps over the bar. I thought, “oh that’s a small band, won’t be too heavy”. I went to pick up 135 and was utterly shocked. This band tension was 280 lbs. at the top, but the way it hits you is like a semi truck. The same was true for squats. The band tension used in their training is no joke.

3. Westside/Conjugate is HARD WORK and HIGH VOLUME.
I’ve written before about how often I think Volume is misunderstood in the powerlifting world. One of the common critiques I hear about the Conjugate method is that it is low volume. This probably comes from the uninformed opinion where on the outside, it looks like they just hit Max Effort singles as the base of their training. The ‘Volume’ on the competition lifts may be lower than what some are used to, but the volume on the muscles is insane. In special exercises varying anywhere from good mornings, to dumbbell extensions, I’ve rarely heard of powerlifters pushing it so hard. These guys absolutely hammer their bodies on special exercises and train harder and more balls to the wall than any other group I’ve seen.

4. Louie is a man of his word.
I’ve spent hundreds of hours over the years watching and reading the work of Louie. And there was always something in my head that didn’t make sense. Some of the negative things I’ve read make it seem like he is unapproachable and closed off to the world outside of Westside. But so commonly in his videos when the man himself speaks, he says to call him, or come visit Westside and you will learn something. I was entirely blown away by how true this is. He was so approachable, so open to teaching me, did not care where or where I haven’t competed. All of the positive things I had ever heard about the man were drastically understated, and all of the negative things I had heard were not remotely true. He is one of the most genuine, brilliant, and passionate people I have ever met in my life, and had an impact on my training that I cannot begin to describe. Louie preaches living his life like a Samurai, and he embodies it in every way.

5. Westside is hardcore.
This word ‘hardcore’ gets thrown around way too much in powerlifting these days. I’m not even sure what it means. But it seemed like a good word to describe the training atmosphere. I’ve been in high school weight rooms, college football weight rooms, powerlifting gyms, bodybuilding gyms, and commercial gyms for 15 years and have never experienced an atmosphere like this. Anybody who knows me close, knows that my blood boils when a phone comes out in the gym to text or check social media. There is just no way you can focus on a training session when phones come out for communication. Not that phones dictate a training atmosphere, but in my sessions at Westside, I didn’t see one distraction with the guys training. When they are training together under the bar, nothing else in the world matters. Which is how it should be if you truly care. Louie was watching every rep if he wasn’t coaching someone or helping someone out. Not sitting in the office and ignoring his guys training. No distractions. It was all incredibly focused effort. Their training methods account for a huge part of their success, but the atmosphere is equally as responsible.

Like I said before, people uproot their lives to train at Westside under Louie Simmons. In a week, I don’t expect that I did much more than graze the surface of what they are all about. I’ve always heard ‘you don’t train Westside until you are AT Westside’. After my week there, I can’t come close to understanding in depth how they train, but I can totally understand this statement. So much of what I thought I understood about the Conjugate method, I really didn’t. Even though I would like to think I received some special treatment and got the fast track to know Louie and his methods, I know there is a ton more to understand. I spent countless hours with Louie over the week. Picking me up and dropping me off, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and spending tons of time talking. I still can’t compare my understanding or experience of Westside and Louie to guys who have trained here for years. I didn’t know what to expect when I sent an email a few months ago, but I left Ohio with the feeling that Louie is a strength training genius and the men who train at Westside are the most dedicated, hardest working group of powerlifters I have ever been around. I knew that I would take some heat from the other side of the fence for my visit, but those things don’t bother me anymore. In strength sports, there is never a perfect solution to improvement; what works for one lifter may not work for another. But keeping an open mind may unlock things that will put huge numbers on your total. From someone who competes on the opposite end of the spectrum as Westside, I will be implementing a ton of their methods and what I have learned. Louie has impacted my outlook on strength training in ways I don’t know how to begin to describe and I look forward to the impact on my total over the next few years.

The post 5 Things I Learned at Westside appeared first on Blaine Sumner.

Strength training has an odd way of repeating itself throughout time and each time a new ‘style’ of training comes around, it’s often mistaken for a new, groundbreaking technique. In reality, there has been nothing ‘sparkling new’ about training methods in quite some time, and there will likely never be. There are only so many ways to use volume, reps, frequency, speed, and intensity in training that over the years, every different combination has been tried. 30 years ago, it seemed that ultra-high frequency was setting the European weightlifters apart from the rest of the world. They were performing competition movements up to 7 times per week. A few years later most of the American strongmen and powerlifters that my generation looks up to like Ed Coan and Kaz, used a linear periodization utilizing progressively lower reps and higher weight performing major movements once per week. When I first began paying attention to the powerlifting world in the 2000’s, Westside, or the Conjugate Method seemed to be the most popular method. Max effort was prioritized and speed and band work became popular. Now I look at where I have seen the trend moving in the past few years, particularly with the growing popularity of raw lifting, more and more lifters seem to be utilizing a higher frequency protocol. More raw lifters are modelling their training after Olympic programs rather than the conjugate method that produced so many strong equipped lifters.

The purpose of this article is not to blindly state the best frequency to use as a lifter, just to guide someone to understand the pros and cons of varying frequency and how to experiment and implement changes into your training.

QUESTION THE STATUS QUO
When I began programming and training on my own, I followed the traditional Western Periodization of performing the lifts once per week, and over a cycle reducing the reps and increasing the weight, while putting a lot of emphasis on non-compound assistance work. I began to question ‘why does everyone only have one day a week for squat, bench and deadlift?’ I figured it was out of convenience. The American week is based around the Monday through Friday workweek and this probably allowed lifters and crews to have a set schedule. Squats, Bench Presses, and Deadlifts were at the same time and day every week. Then I thought that if gaining strength was the primary goal, maybe 1/week wasn’t ideal, it was just convenient.

The science of gaining strength and size is simple on the surface. 1. Break the muscles down in the gym. 2. Recover from nutrition and rest. 3. Muscles heal and grow to be stronger from the induced stress. 4. Repeat. Over weeks, months, and years this repetitive process develops the body. Well if you were to focus on the bench press and only performing it once per week, this entire cycle covered a week. What if you now benched twice a week and could still recover from session to session; would you make the same gains in 6 months that you otherwise would have in a year? What if you bench pressed 4 times per week, would you now make the same gains in 3 months that you would have in a year? Unfortunately it doesn’t quite work like this, but adjusting your frequency correctly can lead to quicker improvement.

PROS AND CONS
Training with a higher frequency than you are right now may or may not be right for you. However, over my training life I have come to believe that training at the maximum possible frequency is best. ‘Maximum possible’ does NOT mean to go 7/week. It simply means, training with the highest frequency that your body will allow. This means you still need to recover from session to session and not overtrain. For some lifters this may mean 2 sessions/month of a certain lift. For others it could be 30 sessions/month. It takes time to fine tune what is best for you and your body.

PROS:

• More practice: Perfecting technique and efficient movement patterns are a huge part of moving maximum weight. Simply said – the more frequently you perform a lift, the better your technique will become.
• Competition-like: Having a dedicated day for only one lift is not applicable when it comes to meet day where you have to perform three lifts. If you train doing more than one of the main competition movements per day, it resembles a meet more and you are more likely to hit in the meet what you believe you are capable of your gym performance.
• Feeling healthier: I don’t have any scientific data to prove this, but when I began training competition lifts multiple times per week, my body actually began to feel healthier in terms of joints and nagging injuries. I have spoken to numerous lifters who echo this feeling.
• Allows for higher volume: Increasing frequency is one easy way to also increase your total training volume.
• More flexible training: If you miss a workout, it’s easier to make it up the next day. When you are used to having fewer rest days in between sessions, your recovery becomes better. Always training on lower rest prepares you when you may need to train multiple days in a row.
• Better supercompensation: Again, I have no scientific data to back this up, but when I began training with a higher frequency and would taper going into a meet, I felt that my supercompensation at the meet was drastically higher. This is likely due to constantly training at a higher threshold so when you back off and recover before the meet, you REALLY recover.
• More specific ‘assistance’: Say you are going to do 3 deadlift sessions/week. This means you can perform 3 very specific variations as ‘assistance’ as opposed to doing rows or other back work. One of the most common questions I see are ‘how do I experiment with switching to sumo deadlift’. These frequent and specific training sessions can allow you to put an emphasis on both. One day can be a high priority sumo deadlift, and conventional on another day. So instead of performing heavy conventional deadlifts, then going right into sumo deadlifts in a fatigued state, you can perform them fresh on different days and practice new technique without being pre-exhausted.
• Still use your old methods: If you utilize any combination of max effort, speed work, or repetition work, you can manipulate these around to increase your frequency. Instead of alternating weeks of each method, you can try to perform each in the same week as it’s own session.

CONS:

• Overtraining: By increasing the frequency of training sessions, there is also a higher risk of overtraining. It will take careful monitoring to make sure you stay under the overtraining threshold.
• Lower training weight: By performing the lifts multiple times per week, you won’t have as much recovery time between sessions as with lower frequency. And this holds true for a whole training cycle. It can be an ego check but you simply won’t handle the heavy, PR weights every week. The eye needs to be on the prize though and realize that PRs can come in meets.
• Higher injury risk: Even though this is contradictory to what was listed above, injuries can happen when you perform compound movements. So naturally, the more often you perform a compound movement the more likely an injury can occur. It is the same as driving a car many miles – the longer you drive, the higher the chance of an accident. This can be mitigated by choosing proper training weights and not sacrificing form.
• Inconvenience: If you train with a crew of lifters, it can dampen the atmosphere and make it hard for everyone to train together. If everyone hits heavy squats on Monday night, it may not fit your program for that day and take away from some of the team atmosphere.
• Equipment: Performing the competition lifts with a high frequency means you will spend a significant amount more time in the power rack as opposed to being on machines or dumbells. This can pose a problem at some gyms.
• Time: Generally, spending more time performing heavy compound movements will add to the total time you spend in the gym for a training session.

HOW TO IMPLEMENT
Even though the theme of this article is to suggest higher frequency training is better all else being equal, does not mean you should jump right into a high frequency program and start squatting 7 times per week. Increasing the frequency should be a gradual process to avoid injury and accommodate the body to the stress. Think about setting your frequency like you set your windshield wiper speed. If the wipes are too frequent, it gets in the way and the wipers are working too hard. If the frequency is too little, not enough work is being done to keep the windshield clean. It takes some fine tuning going back and forth to find just the right frequency. Furthermore, the same frequency for one lift does not mean it is the best for another lift. Some lifters may find that they can squat and bench more frequently, but not deadlift. Currently in my training I have found that bench pressing 4 heavy sessions per week is right for me, but less frequency in the squat and deadlift.

Start slowly by adding one extra session per week, and allow it to stabilize for a few weeks. Keep kicking it up until you feel that you reach a point you cannot recover anymore. I found it took a good 4-5 weeks for my body to adapt and that during the first few weeks, everything felt painful, slow, and weak. But once I hit my stride after week 5 I could really feel it. If you feel you can’t recover after increasing the frequency, back down. You may find that you can tolerate significantly more sessions per week, or you may find that your current program is just right.

The biggest teaching point is understanding the weight will be less and that you cannot let it mess with your head. If you are used to hitting one big set of 5 reps on bench press every week, you won’t be able to hit that same weight every time if you start bench pressing multiple times per week. Train in a sub-maximal mindset, and you will compete in a supra-maximal body. Practice the lifts and aim for perfect technique. Also, give yourself plenty of time in between meets to experiment around with your frequency.

One more remark about the use of higher frequency training relates to the training experience of the athlete. The more advanced a lifter is, the more specific and frequent their training needs to be. The newer a lifter is, the more they can get away with. A brand new lifter will certainly get stronger in the squat by squatting once a month and performing leg extensions, leg curls, and jumps as accessory work. However, an experienced lifter will require more frequency and specific movements to continue to improve.

CONCLUSION
The only absolute in strength training is that there are no absolutes. Not everybody will benefit from training at a higher frequency, but it is worth it to experiment for yourself. There are world class lifters who train competition lifts 1-2 times per month, and others that train 31 times per month. There are infinite ways for somebody to get stronger, but you need to find the right way for you. I encourage lifters to find the highest frequency they can train with while still being able to recover while staying healthy and motivated to move big weight.

The post Fine Tune Your Frequency appeared first on Blaine Sumner.

I would categorize “training the weak links” as purely a physical goal. Usually these exercises and rep schemes are ones that an athlete will agonize over. They aren’t fun to do, and if the lifter isn’t focused on them, they will just go through the motions; and how effective can this really be?

In my opinion the most important variable in getting stronger is not the perfect training program or genetics, but motivation and the unwavering desire to get better; making the challenge more mental than physical. And in order to meet this criteria, the lifter must be focused and excited on the training task at hand. There are plenty of strong lifters who dread training sessions and have to drag themselves to the gym, but the strongest lifers will be the ones with the highest degree of motivation and desire to get stronger.

So how does this fit into training weak links and only being as strong as your strongest link? To put it in rough mathematical terms, we will say that the effectiveness of an exercise in making you stronger is A X B = C. A is how well the exercise translates to the competition movement, B is the focus and energy that the athlete puts into the exercise, and C is how much stronger the athlete gets. If a lifter has to do an exercise that may carryover well to their goal (high A), but puts very little focus into it (low B), then the athlete may not get much stronger. However, if the athlete picks an exercise that won’t translate as much to the end goal (moderate A), but are extremely motivated to perform the movement well (very high B), then the end result is simply a stronger athlete.

It is a popular, safe, and wise sounding term to say we are only as strong as our weakest link, which is still very often the case. But unless an exercise is selected with sound judgment and performed with high focus, the results will not be optimal. An example of this may be a lifter selecting a squat variation for his training. He knows he is weak in the bottom of the lift so pause squats may provide the most technical carryover to his competition squat. Maybe the lifter is feeling aggressive today and the lower weight used in pause squats may not be motivating; but the thought of doing reverse band squats that overload the top part of the movement and allow him to handle 110% of his competition max may dramatically bring up his focus and energy. This is a perfect case to implement the exercise that will draw more motivation rather than technical sense.

I can look back on my training when I took my raw bench press from 474 to 529 in 1 year after taking 3 years to make that same jump before, and a big part is due to adjusting my training so I was able to get more fired up for a bench press session. In a raw bench press my weak point is about 1/3 of the way up; so I used to always select exercises that would focus on bringing up that point. Pin presses, pauses off the chest, and long pauses seemed like the obvious choice to strengthen my weak point. Doing leverage challenging exercises at your weakest point will force you to use significantly less weight. I reached a point in my bench press training where I felt like attacking it from this approach was not giving me satisfactory results. I evaluated my training and realized that I have always been able to get my squats to move up, but not my bench, so why was this difference present? I decided it was because on my squat day I was always able to get an adrenaline rush because the exercise and weight would get my juices flowing. I attempted to recreate this with the bench by now selecting exercises that would force me to use more weight. Lifts like reverse band bench press, high board press, towel press, and “soft” equipment bench press. Every bench movement was now an overload on weight as opposed to just focusing on strengthening my weak point. I was able to get much more psyched up before a heavy set of bench presses and my bench moved more than it had in years. While I don’t think this method is always the best, and goes against conventional wisdom, I can attribute much bench progress to focusing on what got me psyched up instead of the most logically sound exercise. Because sometimes you just gotta want it.

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