posted on September 20, 2019
It’s that time of year again for a handful of us at Union Fitness, including myself. That time being meet prep season and, specifically, the end of prep as we are (already!) 7 weeks out tomorrow. During the training phases of my first few powerlifting meets, I didn’t have a whole lot going on aside from school, giving me the ability to truly devote my time to training and recovery. That has not been the case this meet prep and it has truthfully been a challenge for me. However, I am confident that everyone reading this can relate to my current situation and not the few fortunate times I had in the past.
Training, in whatever way that means at the moment, has and always will be my way to stay sane and calm. Finding what I enjoy, allowing that to change as life continues to change, and remembering why I do it are a few things that have helped me.
With that said, I have been training conjugate style for about a year now. I have enjoyed it and felt the best training this way so I decided to continue training this style throughout the course of meet prep. Louie Simmons, the founder and owner of Westside Barbell, developed the conjugate system. Conjugate training incorporates three methods including the maximal effort method: “lifting a maximal load against a maximal resistance”, the dynamic effort method: “lifting a non-maximal load with the highest attainable speed”, and the repetition method: “lifting a non-maximal load repetitively”. My most recent training split has been as follows:
Day 1: Max effort lower (heavy squat/deadlift variation and assistance work)
Day 2: Max effort upper (heavy bench variation and assistance work)
Day 3: Dynamic effort lower (speed squats and pulls using lower percentages of bar weight progressively increasing in the 50-70% range).
Day 4: Dynamic effort upper (speed bench also with lower percentages also progressively increasing in the 50-70% range).
Dynamic effort work has been extremely challenging for me – I move sloooow. Because of it being the hardest, it is also my favorite. Feeling faster and more athletic is an exciting feeling and will continue to be a goal of mine moving forward.
My training split will remain the same leading into the meet with a few alterations to bars used, volume accumulated, and the use of accommodating resistance on dynamic days.
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