![]() Similarly, 40 of 40 deadlift sessions focused on the straight bar deadlift from the floor. Of those 40 bench sessions, 40 of them began with the flat barbell bench press. Of those 40 squat sessions, 37 of them were begun with the barbell back squat, 3 of them utilized the back squat with chains. During these meet training cycles I have had 40 Squat, 40 Bench, 40 Deadlift and 40 Assistance Upper Body sessions. This time encompasses the training cycles for 3 raw full power meets, as well as some inconsequential sessions for a few weeks at a time between meets. Let’s take a look at my last year of training since I began training for my 1st powerlifting in July 2010. Once you adapt this mindset of training for the long haul, it will become much easier to begin thinking of the benefits you can derive from the most basic of exercises. I have been training hard and consistently for 11 years, and even though my results are very elite, I haven’t even been alive for as long as some of my fellow sponsored lifters have been training. Think of training as a marathon, not a sprint, and measure your goals in months/years/decades, not days and weeks. When looking at the long term development of the lifter, which must be done if one is looking to achieve the highest results possible. In this scenario, once you begin to bench press you have effectively limited the ability of the pushup and its variations to improve your upper body strength anymore. This simple, yet often overlooked, concept can be summed up with the idea that if doing pushups can improve your upper body pressing power, you don’t need to bench press. ![]() It is essential that the lifter exhausts a particular means to improve their strength, before moving onto the next, more demanding, means. While I don’t agree that the internet is a detriment to the development of lifters, because it offers so much great information that if used correctly will be of a great benefit, I do agree that many people are using systems and exercises that are beyond what their current abilities demand to improve. There are many who argue that the internet has been a great detriment to the development of young lifters because it has exposed them to too much information, instead of forcing them to train, succeed, fail, trial, error, and think critically about why something worked or didn’t, and how they can improve their training during the next cycle. In the first part of this series I will address the need for simplicity in selecting your exercises that will make up the foundation of your training for the squat, bench and deadlift. ![]() Lifters like these, and even much more experienced/stronger lifters, would greatly benefit from reducing the pool of exercises that they are drawing from. I often get questions through email, Facebook or through that are something to the effect of, “Can I substitute closegrip reverse band presses with chains for military press?,” or “Do you think Close stance low foam box safety squat bar squats are a good accessory movement for my deadlift?” My first response to questions like these are always the same thing, “How strong are you?” Nine times out of 10, these questions are coming from athletes with less than 2 years of training under their belt, or with miles of room for improvement in their lifts.
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