Extra Workout: 24 minutes

Banded Pullthroughs: 3 minutes, each set 1 minute timed
- I think I was at 30 reps in a minute.. Nice and easy.

Sled Pulls: 70 lbs x 6 trips (200 yards a pull)
- Only kept time on 1 minute rest periods.

Standing Abs Pulldowns: 3 x 20

5) Pertains to different bars that most people don't have. Safety squat bar, buffalo, cambered, ect. Also another very big one is accomodating resistance (chains, bands). Westside uses one or both just about every workout, and even for most supplementals.

Gluteham raises are probably the best thing you could put in. You could do them every lower body workout if you wanted. One heavy day, one light. Banded, weighted, ect. Pullthroughs are another decent accessory exercise. For deadlifts, I'd do high ones (vs low), and with a rounded back (vs arched). Just my personal experience. You could certainly alternate those as well.

For speed deads, I'd go no higher than 60% for 5-6 singles. The rest between sets is the most important aspect. 30-45 seconds timed. So if your 1 RM is 350, you'd use 210 only. You don't need to wave load it either like the squat. Even if you think it's too light, you're building speed, not muscle mass. That was my biggest mistake. I used to work with too heavy a weight for speed work. Although I was still pretty fast, I should've been lightening fast LOL.

so...rounded back pullthroughs...and rounded back good mornings? that just sounds.....painful :)

Arched back GM's build static strength in the erectors which helps keep the back arched for squatting. Bentover (rounded) GM's build the erectors, hammies, and glutes because it's extending your back in addition to the hammies. I'll probably do an arched GM next time because that's what I need to work on. The 405 started rounding my back a bit coming up the other day, so I stopped there even though I think I could've done more.

I have to wait another week (next week) before I can rotate my work around so I can get in the OCSC for my maximal effort squats Tuesday. So that sucks. The good news is tomorrow I'm going to hopefully put some time under the football bar for my max effort. My triceps want some serious work.. They whispered it in my ear. :D

Sounds good, thanks for the info. The guy that runs my gym mentioned some of that stuff. He has been working with me recently which is nice. He terrified me last week when he did front squats A2G 1X3 @ 550lbs & wanted me to spot him on a platform. Very strong dude and very knowledgeable. He wanted me to do speed deads 8X3 @ 60% with a short rest time like you mentioned on my DE day. I will look into the bars and chains and bands...my gym has about 10 different sizes of bands, 4 or 5 different sizes of chains, and all of the bars. I need to just buy that damn book you've been talking about. :) Thanks for the help..I'll make GHRs a permanent part of the workout and I'm going to start using the bands/chains. I'll let you know how it goes :biggthumpup:

Hell yeah, soak up that knowledge!! The 8 x 3 sounds very similiar to Waterbury's concepts. Should be 2 minutes rest lol.. Good mass builder right there. I used to do things like that during a strength meso, but I've found form shit's the bed doing triples, especially in the latter sets. Does he personally train a lot of people in the gym? I ask because that seems like a lot for you to jump into IMHO. I've done those for speed box squats (8x3 w/ 2 min) and gone pretty heavy too, but I just cannot imagine deadlifting that.

Honestly, I don't think he trains very many people any more. I haven't seen him training anyone recently. He has pretty much gotten away from powerlifting and more into strongman. I think that in the past he has trained a LOT of people. Because of the program that I just stopped doing, my muscular endurance has been good although I didn't do deadlifts. At 60%, I don't think it will be much of a problem. Your 60% is a good bit heavier than my 60%. :) It will be interesting to see in any case. I had him look at my new routine and I talk to him about my workouts every day, so I think he has an idea of where I'm at. It is mildly overwhelming, but I think a lot of that feeling comes from that fact that I'm doing a lot of new stuff. I guess the best thing to do is to play it by ear for now.

Every weekend is essentially a ME/RE day. Stuff like Farmer's walks are just about always taken to max load for distance. Not sure if this counts as an ME/RE... it is a max pick up, then RE walk. Make sense? Most strongman works out like this. In fact, because of that I can usually get out reps with a weight very close to the maximum amount I can do. Like my true 1RM may less than 10% higher than something I can get for 5-6 reps.

Oly stuff is almost all speed work. Not necessarily fast right off the ground, but from the knees up it is as fast as you can pull. Because good form is a must, the weights I use are typically sub maximal efforts (seeing as how a max effort overhead push press might be around 240-250 but I can only cleanly jerk around 200 right now). So even at the top end, my jerks are only like 80% of a normal push press. And far more reps are done at even lower weights than that. The point is to specifically develop speed and explosiveness through the lift. So twice a week I'm getting a pretty good DE day that has good carry over to my cleans and presses... maybe my pulls a bit.

I think I've decided to stop pulling during the week. At least for a while. I'll concentrate on bringing up my front squats, and box squats, and hope that all the Oly stuff and grip work will fill in the gaps on my deadlift. I'll test my max DL in a couple months to see what happens. I'm not against playing guinea pig for my own experiments. If I waste a couple weeks, so be it. I'm confident I won't backslide or detrain. May not make any great progress, but that is fine.

ME BENCH

Football Bar Press: The bar has three different neutral grips (close, mid, wide) Extremely tough to balance. Used the closegrip for warmups, then wanted a max triple with the middle, and a single with the wide. Example

Close - 185 x 8, 225 x 5, 240 x 3
Middle - 250 x 3, 275 x 3
Wide - 315 x 1

- Super tough because it keeps shifting in your hand making it very difficult.

Incline Dumbbell: 80 x 19, 16
- All hammer grip for more triceps.

Incline DB Extensions: 35 x 10, 10, 10
- Triceps fryed.

Closegrip Pulldowns: 150 x 10, 10, 10, 10

Lateral Raises ss w/ 20 rep monster mini pressdowns