Powerlifting Efficiently

[Iron 3]

Hey Animals. I'm posting this thread so there will be a place for people (including myself) to ask for advice and get help in regards to chosing the BEST powerlifting assistance exercises (since some moves are good for bodybuilding but not very good for building strength, power, speed, or explosiveness). No one wants to waste their time doing something that will have a suboptimal effect.

Of course there will be some debate and people will have favorite moves that they feel works best for them. I stick with mostly compound movements (it's my understanding that most compound movements are better overall for powerlifting than most other single jointed moves). But sometimes assistance work will require a greater degree of isolation type exercises because of the nature of the muscle and how it moves.

This thread will hopefully help shed some light on more "powerlifting acceptable" exercises.
Hopefully pros will contribute to this thread and offer their expert advice as well.

[Matt Dickerson]

Hey Animals. I'm posting this thread so there will be a place for people (including myself) to ask for advice and get help in regards to chosing the BEST powerlifting assistance exercises (since some moves are good for bodybuilding but not very good for building strength, power, speed, or explosiveness). No one wants to waste their time doing something that will have a suboptimal effect.

Of course there will be some debate and people will have favorite moves that they feel works best for them. I stick with mostly compound movements (it's my understanding that most compound movements are better overall for powerlifting than most other single jointed moves). But sometimes assistance work will require a greater degree of isolation type exercises because of the nature of the muscle and how it moves.

This thread will hopefully help shed some light on more "powerlifting acceptable" exercises.
Hopefully pros will contribute to this thread and offer their expert advice as well.

It takes time to figure out which assistance moves benefit you the most. DB extensions are great for improving some peoples bench and just beat the shit out of other people. Once you figure out what works by experimenting you will usually hit a string of PR's for awhile and then the assistance movements will no longer seem to work for you that well and you have to go through another bout of experimentation until you find the new movement that works. Keeping a detailed log book will help you track what works for you.

What is important in Powerlifting or any sport where there are certain key movements that need to be strengthened is that you train optimally for increasing the strength of the movement. In powerlifting, the order of assistance work is most important. The order you train for is further broken down by what type of powerlifter you are. If you are a geared lifter the training will differ from a powerlifter that doesn't use gear. If you compete using a bench shirt, training the Triceps are most important, the Lats are secondary and the rear delts and upper back are third. Pecs, Front delts, and Biceps are icing on the cake. Your training should reflect this. You should put most of your emphasis on improving the triceps in your training and then train your lats as equally as hard. After you have covered those then you can work on the rear delts and upper back, then finish up with some prehab work for biceps, pecs and front and side delts.

With the squat and deadlifts the training should be focused again on what type of lifter and meets you will be doing. Are you going to compete in a federation that uses a monolift and allows double ply gear where you take a wide stance and just break parallel? Or maybe you are you going to compete raw or in a single ply federation where you have to walk out your squats and sink them 2 inches below parallel. Again the emphasis of your assistance work will change slightly based on what you will be doing. With a narrow and below parallel box squat either raw or in single ply gear it is important to have strong quads as well as hamstrings, lower back, glutes and a strong core. With a wide stance squat where you use double ply gear and a monolift you don't really need to train the quads at all and should focus mainly on lower back, hamstrings, glutes and core strength.

First determine the end result that you want by setting quantifiable goals with deadlines and then you can go about the means of achieving those goals with an optimal routine.

[tek52086]

if your talking about only picking a couple more movements to add to workouts, this is my 2 cents on the best:

id include something in terms of a high end lockout via board presses or rack lockouts for the bench press to stimulate the CNS into handling more weight.

for the squat and deadlift, i'd include some sort of posterior chain movement such as the reverse hyper and glute-ham raise and above all, i'd bulletproof my core with weighted abs exercises.

[Iron 3]

Well I'm going to ask a question on my own post.

Front squats, lunges, and triceps pressdowns. I heard that they are bodybuilding moves and are not the best moves for powerlifting purposes.

Thoughts anyone?

[tek52086]

you mentioned all good accessory movements, but remember, they are accessories to your main movements.

front squats were prescribed by york barbells original powerlifting chart. as matt dickerson has said, it all depends on what style you are training for.

Front squats will help if you are a conventional stance squatter/puller, and will not have much benefit if you are sumo. they have an emphasis on your quads which only helps your conventional setup (as mentioned above)

Lunges are good for building up your hip flexor muscles. however, if you are training for just the bench, squat, and deadlift, too much stimulation on your hips will overtrain you. different variations of the lunge are prescribed by joe defranco's westside for skinny bastards simply because it is an athletic template that focuses on powerlifting movements. if you are training for competing in powerlifting, i'd stay away from lunges on a regular basis.

triceps pressdowns (with the rope) are a mainstay in the metal militia template and are done to stimulate blood flow, not necessarily to build strength. they are an accessory movement to fill in the 'gaps' that board work, close grips and lockouts dont cover. I do them once a week a few sets of 15-25 reps as a 'finisher' after my main movements.


anybody feel free to interject.