No matter the sport, maintaining a strong posterior chain is essential. Strong glutes, hamstrings, and back muscles improve sports performance and lower injury rates. There is no doubt about it; an athlete with an adequately developed posterior chain will run faster, jump higher, and experience a reduced risk of back or knee injury throughout their career.
Over the years, Westside Barbell has produced some of the strongest bench pressers in the sport of powerlifting. We have had lifters press over 600lbs raw (George Halbert doing so at 235lbs bwt), along with some of the strongest geared bench pressers in the world, hitting 900-1000lbs+ in competition.
It's safe to say that Lou and Westside Barbell figured out the secret to building a strong bench press many years ago. One big part of the heavy bench press equation is arm strength.
To ensure that all we have previously discussed is understood, I will use this article as an opportunity to walk you through what would be considered an optimal max effort upper training day for a powerlifter. For the sake of this article, we will say this individual is a powerlifter who struggles with tricep weakness and has issues locking out heavy presses.
The use of specialty bars for sport-specific training is nothing new. Many years ago, Louie demonstrated to the strength and conditioning world the effectiveness of specialty bars when used to train powerlifters and other athletes.
Today, gyms worldwide are buying specialty bars, accommodating resistance, and specialty machines to give their clients the best training tools. Once again, Louie was right. Formerly, folks criticized Lou and Westside over the use of specialty bars, and now the entire powerlifting world embraces them.
Safe execution of max-effort training comes down to two factors; properly planned training and properly educated players. You want your programming to expose athletes to different levels of volume and intensity while teaching correct execution of the various exercises. As long as these bases are covered, max effort training is no more dangerous than any other training method.
Do not fear max-effort training; fear having weak players who get embarrassed on the playing field.
Before I continue, please understand the following;
Louie Simmons is one of a kind, and no one can fill that void. No One.
Our job is to keep his legacy going, to keep his club’s history alive and accurate while keeping Louie's teachings and methods moving forward.
Therefore, I'm here to shed some light to our community on Louie's wishes for the future. For ease of delivery, I will split them into 3 Sections;
If an athlete needs to address their absolute strength, speed, endurance, or durability, a Conjugate program can be designed to improve sports performance.
There is a need for high levels of all of the attributes mentioned above in grappling-based sports. Over the past three years, I have had the opportunity to write programming for one of the premier Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competitors in the world today, Dante Leon. Dante is a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt and has used Conjugate-based strength training to take his abilities to the next level.
Do you understand the role training frequency, intensity, and volume plays in the success of a strength training program? If not, this article will help guide you.
