"Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general."
- Rippetoe
That said, you could make a convincing argument that strength is one of the highest priorities for development. A solid strength foundation enables development in the other domains, and strongly factors in an athlete's ability to generate power and speed. Many programs and athletes, including some of our own, supplement or cycle their traditional GPP training with additional strength training.
Keep in mind that for most (especially new) athletes, this kind of specialized training is not needed. You will make tremendous gains performing our base programming consistently and with intensity. However, as your fitness objectives evolve you may choose to add this form of bias into your training. If you are going to do it, you may as well do it intelligently.
Our own Jake Atkins has been reading up on some of the "gold standard" strength programs out there, and sharing executive overviews of the methodologies with our programmers. Posting them here to help spread some knowledge...you can locate this and future articles using the "Strength" tag. Any questions, experiences, or insights to share? Post to comments!
I'm starting this discussion because strength by and large will make you a better CrossFitter. There is a lot of information out there from sources with different degrees of legitimacy. I am no expert, but I am interested in getting stronger - a lot stronger. So my intent is to provide some reviews of solid strength programs outside of normal CrossFit work. Basically, I'll read a book and give you the nuggets free o' charge. Hopefully this will pique your interest and perhaps lead you down the path of getting stronger. Other reviews to look forward to the next few weeks include:
- 5/3/1 by Jim Wendler
- Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe
- The Bulgarian System
Chalk Up,
Jake Atkins
I. Westside Barbell's Book of Methods.
"It’s important to understand the Westside system is, first and foremost, designed to develop strength. It was not created for optimal fat loss or to improve general health. Plain and simple: Westside trains for strength. If this doesn't fall in line with your goals/area(s) of interest this may not be the optimal training system for you." ~ Jordan Syatt, from Syatt Fitness
They use Prilepin's Chart for their set/rep and volume
scheme. If you don't know what that is and would like to know, just pipe up.
They use a 3 week cycle that Louie Simmons
calls a pendulum because it goes up for 3 weeks, then resets percentage wise.
They have a maximum effort day for upper body and lower body, so it would be Squats/Deadlifts,
then Bench Press (they're powerlifters that's all that matters to them). They
get a 1 to 3 rep max, for a major barbell exercise that is related to those
three big lifts, such as sumo deadlifts or barbell good-mornings. The list of different versions is massive and
is completely up to you as to which ones you do, the only necessary part is the
exercise has to be related to the ones you are striving to improve upon. They do the maximum effort days twice a week,
one day a week for the deadlift and squat together, and a separate day for the bench
press.
They also have a dynamic day. If you are following me this
implies correctly that they only do main workouts 4 times a week, with upper
and lower body each having 2 days trained a piece. So another way to put it is
they are squatting twice a week. Dynamic day is all about force production.
They use sub-maximal weights from 55-65% but they do the repetitions fast -
greased lightning fast - to build great force production, power, and General
Physical Preparedness (GPP). The sets will have a time limit between them from
30 seconds to a minute, and will generally be 10 to 12 sets of 2 reps.
The rest of their work-outs, both on ME and
Dynamic days are specialty movements such as triceps extensions, Glute Ham
Raises, the reverse hyper (an invention of Louie Simmons), Ab work, good mornings,
and a host of other things that they go to repetition failure for 2 or 3 sets
on after the main workout. The specialty work is the stuff they claim accounts
for the significant portion of the gains they make throughout the year, as they
are designed to specifically improve the main lifts.
They use a conjugate system for rotating exercises through the waves. This means they use many
different versions of the classical lifts, but rarely the lifts themselves in
the waves. They use this in order to combat what Louie calls accommodation, which is simply saying
diminishing returns from training the same lifts over and over. Louie says
after 3 weeks of training the same big exercise at 90% accommodation will set
in and gains will no longer be made. To
be clear, the rotating exercises on max effort day, and rotating the exercises
in three week waves on dynamic day is the conjugate system. It’s not a separate thing but the “thing”
itself.
Louie is also big on Box Squats, bands, and chains. Bands
and Chains give what Louie calls accommodating resistance. They will get
tougher or easier as they stretch or hit the floor. This allows for amazing
acceleration (the concept is the bands and chains are equivalent to putting a
weight at the end of a baseball bat, when you take the weight off the bat seems
lighter, they strive for that feeling all the time). Box Squats are just harder than actual squats,
they force hip strength and rapid acceleration through sticking points in the
squat. But a quick note on box squats, they are highly tailored low bar back
squats, and the strength you will gain from doing them will significantly help
the low bar back squat by building the hamstrings, hips, and glutes. Some Olympic lift purists believe that
somehow that strength doesn’t transfer, but I’ll leave that up to you to
decide. The good thing with box squats,
there is no doubt as to how far down you went.
Add or take away depth and you have a new exercise for the ME day. Add
bands or chains to make up the percentages from maximum during maximum effort
days, or roughly 30% of the weight on dynamic days and your squats are going to
shoot through the roof according to Louie.
That's their method, and if world records
and 1000 pound squatters are an indicator of successfulness, they are top of
the line.
So what does all this mean for a
CrossFitter? This is simply another way
to get stronger. Do you need to do box
squats and use bands and chains? That’s
up to you, but remember, Louie devised that stuff specifically to improve the
three lifts for powerlifting. He’s a
competitor and his gym is all about competing and winning powerlifting meets –
period. That being said, with some
modifications it can be used to improve the Olympic lifts, as The Outlaw Way (a
CrossFit affiliate) is doing, and it can be used to just to get stronger and
faster for general strength. Louie
trains other athletes besides powerlifters.
He has distance runners, cyclists, long jumpers, football players, and
swimmers. It’s all about knowing what
sport you are competing in and using the conjugate method to tailor exercises
that are specific to that sport.
- Jake Atkins