Training For Strength Only

[Tom Treutlein]

Let's say one is at the size they wish to be. They want nothing more. No tweaking, no nothing. What would they do for strength? I see Westside, but I notice a lot of the work is also to help induce hypertrophy, almost like a jack-of-all-trades routine.

Could one simply squat/deadlift/bench in triples and preform other lifts with fairly low reps to improve overall strength?

 

[casualbb]

...I think the hypertrophy work in westside, even if you're not eating to gain, is useful to maintain muscle size. I wouldn't drop it

 

[coolcolj]

strength is nothing without speed, and when combined you have power

you can get stronger by working on power too

some nice quotes

quote:
Nevertheless, envision strength as a rectangle(it's really the area under the force-time curve). Force being the height of your box, or mag as we call it, and the width of your rectangle is the duration you can strain(measured in time of course). You gains in strength came from raising your mag abilitiesor the height of your strength boxeven though the width of your box, your duration abilities, went down. So if you started with a 10 x 10 box(100 units of strength) you went to, say, a 20 x 6 box (120 units). I hope that helps you understand your strength gainsand why the rep was performed so fast this go around.

But, of course, our strategies for strength development raise your width and height concurrentlyleaving you with a 15 x 15 box (225 units)- or something of that nature.

Kelly Bagget

A lot of it is just training the force curve and knowing when to introduce certain programming. There are plenty of guys like you who are fast with 70% weights using up a lot of their time training what they're already good at. If the distance between f-max (amount of force you can create in your performance movement) and absolute strength is small, or one is able to demonstrate peak power at a relatively high % of their 1rm strength, then an increase in absolute strength will also tend to simultaneously bring up the other qualities. The relationship between f-max and absolute strength is very important for any athlete - powerful and fast athletes will always have a small ratio between the 2.....if you're an athlete you never want to cause a permanent increase in the relationship between them.

For a powerlifter it's not such a big deal because there is no specific need to be fast there is only a need to be strong. However, it's useful to determine training focus because sometimes speed or power can increase strength. When you get to the point where you push your absolute numbers up high enough so that the % of your 1rm that you can be explosive with declines to around the ~50% range then you will have swapped out an increase in absolute strength for a decrease in speed. At this point methods like speed and reactive bench become golden because they enable you to drive up the speed and absolute level of force production. If you analyze the force curve of a reactive bench and compared it to the force curve of a heavy bench you'd probably see that the peak level of force would be higher and sharper in the reactive bench....like a checkmark...down very quickly then up very high followed by a sharp dropoff......in the heavy bench the height of the force curve would be lower but spread over a longer duration. So a reactive bench and other associated lifts can help lifters push up their strength if their force curve is low but spread out, due to an increase int he ceiling of force production, and vice versa. This is one reason why explosive athletes like gymnasts and sprinters can go in the gym and even without any training soon be throwing up some heavy weights. They're able to produce a high and sharp level of force.

Step #1 is just knowing where to direct your focus. Step #2 is choosing how you're gonna attack that focus. If you're a lifter who lifts with a very sharp force curve then the training method directly opposite to that is a heavy isometric and other heavy/slow/long training methods. You could go in the gym and perform regular singles, triples, etc. but your force curve will still largely be the same during those movements so "curing" the weakness of your force curve will occur slower then training with other more direct methods.

I hope some of that makes some sense.

 

[Tom Treutlein]

As always, a good reply CCJ.


Bastard...

 

[Carmen]

tom, pm me if you want a link to routine's for strength only. i have a good one for you.

 

[Tom Treutlein]

Oh, so I have to PM you?

Tease.

 

[Carmen]

Oh, so I have to PM you?

Tease.

ok, don't.
i will send it to you. maybe.

 

[wnt2bBeast]

im not aware that WSB was used to induce hypertrophy..you will gain size from their routine but the purpose of the assitance is just that to assist the lifts..if one should gain size from it so be it but it is not the goal..

 

[Illuminati]

im not aware that WSB was used to induce hypertrophy..you will gain size from their routine but the purpose of the assitance is just that to assist the lifts..if one should gain size from it so be it but it is not the goal..

you will get some (minimul compared to a BBing workout) on the DE days. you are still doing a fairly high volume, yet the set/rep schemes are different when compared to a BB routine. where a BBing workout would 3 sets of 10, WSB uses 10 sets of 3. then accessory work.

 

[Tom Treutlein]

Uhm, you wouldn't just get size from the DE days. The ME and DE days use the same accessory lifts and sets and rep schemes (generally, they vary but follow the same idea) - they use the repetition method. This is what will induce hypertrophy - and a good deal of it. The muscles will get hit twice a week, and you'll be doing something like 3-5x6-15. They vary the set/rep schemes a lot since not one range works for everyone (according to them).