ITT: Share your unconventional or unpopular training idea's

[Domf3]

I bench press 4x per week

I would love to see your program. My bench exploded doing it 3x each week. Man... too many years of having a bodybuilder mentality. Bench on Monday, national chest day lol.

[Monty522]

I am a frequency whore. The more I do, the better I do.

I also always leave volume on the table to add more later when needed to progress.

[Justkasey135]

I spend way more time in the gym than people think I should. I do extremely high volume and work with high percentages of my max lifts every day of the week for that given body part and exercise.

I feel like strength for me is maximized by constantly practicing with heavy weight. Seems like when I back off the weight and add reps at lower weights, my 1rm declines a bit.

I'm speaking on a long term basis as well, such as doing a program that would only have me working at 80 percent for a few weeks.

So what I do is work up as close to my max as possible that day, then do my working sets at a comfortable weight for 2-5 reps for 3 or 4 sets around 90-95%.

So if my squat max is 285, I'll work up after warming up until I either hit 285x 1 rep, or feel my form slipping. If I hit my old max, and still feel good, I go for a new pr. After hitting my heavy set of 1 to assess how I feel that day, I lower the weight by a bit and work with that weight for 3-5 reps for about 3 or 4 sets and lower the weight a tad more and do 2 or 3 more sets.

Then I continue to taper the weight down, adding 4-6 reps to each set, until I hit a 15 rep range. Some exercises i do an extra set after 15 and do 25 to finish off.

If I'm really feeling crazy that day and want to maximize pump and hypertrophy, I try to hit a 50 rep set.

Now here's the real crazy part. I do that scheme with 2 or 3 exercises and eliminate the heavy sets and do higher reps for 1 or 2 other accessory lifts to end the day.

[Zarthon]

I would expect that to work. You're getting more practice on the bench press while fresh and doing the most important part of the workout (for bench press) up front. That tends to get positive results.

It's admittedly an obvious thing but I was wanting to improve on OHP for quite a long time while still improving on bench and was just being stubborn about the change. Of course, now that I've changed, I'm kicking myself for not having changed sooner but such is life.

[rdferguson]

Another unpopular opinion from me. I think that if a powerlifter is going to do cardio, low impact steady state is preferable over high intensity cardio. Examples would be riding a bike or zoning out on an elliptical while watching daytime TV. My reasoning is basically this:

1) While high intensity cardio is often championed as being more specific to strength sports than low intensity cardio, your actual strength training is even more specific. If you have it in you to be doing something more specific, why are you not moving heavy objects?

2) High intensity cardio has high recovery demands. So does high impact cardio. But if you can't recover from a leisurely bike ride, the solution is to stop getting run over by on-coming traffic.

3) The HIIT vs LISS memes are just plain wrong. Sprinters don't look that way because of sprinting, they look that way because of strength training. And marathon runners wouldn't recognise your low intensity cardio as training.

Basically, if you choose to do cardio, the priority I have in mind is to pick the method that's going to be easiest to recover from. And that method ain't HIIT.

[Lpenny]

You can make massive deadlift gains by only training heavy block pulls and it's easier to recover from than pulling from the floor every week.

[JamesA1990]

You can make massive deadlift gains by only training heavy block pulls and it's easier to recover from than pulling from the floor every week.

very interested in this

you pull multiple times per week of blocks? how high? what %?

i never do block pulls, they are considerably weaker than my off the floor dl atm (srs)

[Lpenny]

very interested in this

you pull multiple times per week of blocks? how high? what %?

i never do block pulls, they are considerably weaker than my off the floor dl atm (srs)

I got a 55 lb PR from the floor running magnysson/ortmayer on 18" deadlifts for a few months. 18" is too tall for most. Make sure the bar is a good bit below the knees and that it's still below the knees when the weight breaks from the the blocks. You wanna have to fight to get it past the knees.

[JamesA1990]

I got a 55 lb PR from the floor running magnysson/ortmayer on 18" deadlifts for a few months. 18" is too tall for most. Make sure the bar is a good bit below the knees and that it's still below the knees when the weight breaks from the the blocks. You wanna have to fight to get it past the knees.

fk it. im gonna do this

Will do rack pulls early in the week, sumo late in the week


(and i compete conventional)


here we go.jpg

[Lpenny]

fk it. im gonna do this

Will do rack pulls early in the week, sumo late in the week


(and i compete conventional)


here we go.jpg

I should add that my knees were my sticking point. I had good speed off the floor and was good at locking out. But I think it'll help no matter where you have trouble. But if your trouble is at the start of the lift, your results might not be as good.

[JamesA1990]

I should add that my knees were my sticking point. I had good speed off the floor and was good at locking out. But I think it'll help no matter where you have trouble. But if your trouble is at the start of the lift, your results might not be as good.

my lock out is my weak point, keep passing out when i cant quite get the final part of the lift complete.

Off the floor is fine. - 660 lbs off the floor but failed right at the top

edit: upper mid is probably my weak point, because thats where it slows down and comes to a stop just before lockout