New inventions. They’re great little things, aren’t they? Where would our society be if it wasn’t for some creative thinkers who decided to develop ideas for things like penicillin, beer, rock and roll, cell phones, weightlifting shoes, pencil sharpeners and canned vegetables? Every one of those things has made life easier, usually for a lot of people. So here’s what I want you to do with me. Let’s think about a great invention that has really contributed something to how we live our lives. I’ve got it…how about Google? Google is a doohickey thingy on your computer that you can use to find out about anything, and I mean absolutely freaking anything, in the world. I could go to Google right now and type in something like “soil conditions in lower Russia,” and I would get enough information about it to write a ninety-page research paper…in 0.13 seconds. Now that’s what I call an invention, jack.

Next, I want you to think about another type of invention. This little sucker will be something that makes you scratch your head and wonder how on earth anybody in their right mind would ever decide to pay money for it. I’ve got a perfect one…let’s look at the Shake Weight. I just took a look at an instructional video for the Shake Weight (that I found on Google) and I thought I was watching White House security videos from the Bill Clinton era. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, get on your computer and check it out as soon as possible. The fact that somebody is making money on this contraption really tells you something about the world we live in. Reminds me of that old quote from W.C. Fields, “It’s morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money.”

All of this witty banter leads us to the topic of this month’s article. We’re going to take a look at the concept of invention as it applies to weightlifting training. More specifically, we’re going to examine different ways in which people try to come up with new training programs or routines that will supposedly revolutionize the lifting world. There’s no shortage of this type of stuff either. Lots and lots of people have claimed to have found (or created) the hidden keys to the strength kingdom. There’s always somebody running around out there in the iron world that holds the secret…that magical combination of sets, reps, and technique that will stack more kilos on your total and send your performance into the next galaxy. Now, I think it’s important to acknowledge that there have been a few people over the years that have done a pretty legitimate job of pulling this off. I know I’m making it sound like I think everybody with a new angle on training is a snake oil salesman, but I will be the first to admit that there actually are some coaches who have blended a little innovation with a lot of experience and come up with training ideas that really can make you stronger. So instead of throwing the baby out with the beef tallow, let’s check out an example of strength training innovation that generates a lot of discussion on the internet forums and other shrines of intellectual achievement. Then, of course, we’ll add some warnings so we can try to find a way to caution our treasured readers from falling for an “Improve Your Clean and Jerk with the Shake Weight” type of program. Boy, that last part is just begging for jokes, ain’t it?

Westside

One particular method that carries a lot of popularity in the lifting world is Louie Simmons’ Westside Barbell program. The more research you do on serious lifting these days, the more references you’ll hear about this discipline. Now, I’m going to assume that those of you who are reading this already know some of the basic principles of Westside. I might be making a mistake with that because this program is rooted in powerlifting, and many Performance Menu readers focus on Olympic lifting. I’ll be the first to admit that most true Olympic Weightlifting purists probably don’t know much (and don’t care) about Westside. However, one of the major trends in the iron game these days is to blend different types of training methods, often including powerlifting and Olympic lifting, to form a more versatile strength athlete. I think many of you who are reading this article probably fit that category, at least to some degree.

Louie Simmons is a powerlifting coach in Columbus, Ohio who runs a famous gym called Westside Barbell. Simmons has been in powerlifting for several decades, and he has developed a program that many people refer to as “the Westside method” or some other similar terminology. This Westside method is considered by many strength coaches and powerlifters to be a highly effective system for getting stronger. Westside’s powerlifting results certainly speak for themselves, as some of the strongest squatters, benchers and deadlifters in the world have their roots either in Louie’s gym or his training approach. And this is probably the point where many of you think I’m going to say something negative about Westside because you know I’m an Olympic lifter and there seems to be an eternal pissing war between powerlifting and Olympic lifting. That’s where you’re wrong. I’m going to speak respectfully here, because I think we can find something valuable in this examination.

Westside’s approach to training is very complex and I’m not going to devote much of this article to it, especially since I do not consider myself an expert in their field. But I’ve been reading Louie’s stuff for many years and I think I can probably look at one aspect of what they do and try to apply it to Olympic lifting. One of the fundamental elements of Westside training, according to what I’ve read, is the practice of using a variety of different exercises to improve performance in a competition lift. In other words, lifters will train to get stronger in the squat by doing an assortment of exercises other than just the squat itself. Westside lifters will use box squats on a regular basis, where the lifter literally squats to a sitting position on a box before standing up. These box squats will be performed at various box heights (which changes the depth of the squat), using different types of barbells, applying different levels of resistance through the use of high-tension rubber bands, switching foot position and squat stance, etc. To get stronger in the bench press, lifters will use exercises like floor presses, which are bench presses with the lifter lying on the floor, which only allows the elbows to bend until the upper arms touch the floor (making the lift a partial bench press). Benches will also be performed with a variety of different grip widths, etc. The overall idea is that the body will grow and develop through the use of different specialized lifts, instead of simply practicing the actual competition lift over and over.

The question here becomes, “Will this approach work with Olympic lifting?” To be more specific, “Can an athlete train to snatch more weight by using other lifts instead of the snatch?” This is a major can-of-worms question, and the answer ties in very closely with other topics I’ve covered in past Performance Menu articles. The full answer is more complicated than I can cover in a couple of paragraphs, but we can definitely get some useful ideas out here. First of all, let’s ask the question again. “Can an athlete become a better snatcher by using different training lifts than the snatch?” The basic answer to this is NO. Because of the amazing complexity of the Olympic lifts, an athlete cannot expect to improve performance without practicing the full lifts themselves. The snatch and the clean and jerk have to be developed through thousands of perfect reps, and that process will not take place if the athlete devotes significant training time to creative exercises like the ones mentioned above from the Westside method. Interestingly, many top Olympic lifting coaches over the last thirty years have built their training philosophy around the Bulgarian approach, which is a training method that consists almost solely of the snatch, clean and jerk, and squat. No assistance exercises, at least not any that are used to any important degree. At first glance, this seems to be almost a polar opposite of the Westside method.

However, there is more analysis that needs to go into this. It is clear from the success of the Russian and Chinese systems that auxiliary exercises are often used by elite weightlifters. The old Soviet weightlifting system (which Louie Simmons originally based his ideas on) involved a wide range of lifts and exercises that were worked into the training program along with the snatch and clean and jerk. Much of the thinking that goes into the idea of GPP (General Physical Preparedness) has its foundations in the preparation phases that Soviet coaches would use at different times throughout the competition year to increase the fitness and overall work capacity of their athletes. Different lifting exercises, such as kettlebells and bench presses, were implemented during this time, along with plyometric training and, sometimes, actual participation in other sports. But as the Bulgarian program rose to world domination in the 1980s, the stripped-down approach gained popularity. Many top coaches came to believe that training the snatch, clean and jerk, and squat was all that was necessary for serious Olympic lifters. I heard this sentiment from a lot of top weightlifting names during the prime years of my career. Now, here we are in 2011. China has emerged as the new weightlifting leviathan of the planet, and we are routinely seeing Chinese training videos on the internet where the athletes are using unorthodox lifts in training like pseudo-RDL snatch-grip pulls standing on a twenty-five kilo plate. Weird stuff like that, and they’re kicking the crap out of the rest of the world. It’s funny how the sport seems to go in cycles over the years.

So, can the Westside method have useful application to Olympic lifting? I guess we can say that creative auxiliary strength exercises can definitely be worked into a weightlifter’s training program, but I still believe athletes who want to improve in the Olympic lifts need to focus the vast majority of their training time on the snatch, clean and jerk, and squat. I’ve heard it said over the years that, “The Westside program can put 100 pounds on your squat. If our American Olympic lifters were all squatting 100 pounds more, they would be able to snatch more.” The simplicity of that idea sounds good on paper, but there’s much more to it than that. We’ve had American weightlifters that could squat more than Anatoli Pisarenko, but Pisarenko had a 584 lb. clean and jerk and the American record is 523. Squatting more weight just isn’t the solution to everything, as many people would have you think. The Russian legends of weightlifting have said that themselves.

The REAL point to all of this…

Sometimes, the furious quest for innovation simply results in spinning your wheels. I’m not going to attack the methods of any particular coaches because I don’t like the way that approach comes across. But I will say that if you, the athlete/coach, are in the early stages of your strength career and you want to find somebody to listen to, make sure you’re going with somebody who has some legitimate credibility. I’ll keep it in generalities. I’ve spoken with a lot of coaches in the last few years that basically seem to take the approach that trying as many new things as possible is the best way to train. They think you get better by a system of almost constant experimentation, that type of notion. Much of this approach might be based on the Westside method and there is some merit to it. But the problem I see is that we create a situation where the entire training philosophy is based on never settling on one method. A kind of training ADD sets in, and there is never any real focused consistency to anything. Before you know it, two years have passed and you’ve tried every new idea under the sun…but you’re still lifting the same weights. I believe that it’s important to settle on one method. Furthermore, I think it’s especially important when you’re in the early stages of your lifting career to find somebody else that already has a proven method and let them teach you. This isn’t the way a lot of our society likes to go because everybody with a little experience these days thinks that they’re qualified to develop their own methodology. We’re in the age of the five-minute expert. Bravo to the spirit of independence and creative thinking, but it often doesn’t translate into success.

To my way of thinking, the process of becoming a good coach is first being an athlete in a successful system, and then moving on and teaching others the system you’ve learned. Finally, after you’ve developed a mastery of the teaching element and learned some plain old “what works and what doesn’t” ideas, then it’s time to integrate some of your own ideas into the proven things that have already worked. After time and experience have accumulated, you start to find ways to adapt the system for individual athletes and your own personal circumstances. Then you’re ready to strike out on your own. Many of you who are reading this are coaches and you’re probably relatively new to the Olympic Weightlifting game. If you’ve been working the Olympic Lifts for less than five years as either an athlete or a coach, you’re still new. I don’t mean that to sound condescending, but if you talked to most of the seasoned veteran weightlifting athletes or coaches out there and asked them to compare themselves at the present to where they were at the five-year point, you’d see what I mean.

People want to be innovators, and that’s a great thing. America would never be where it is right now without the people who storm ahead and try to break through the walls of the old ways. But the people who are best equipped to break through those walls are the ones who have a solid foundation of time and experience before they pick up the hammer, and that experience was forged through a mastery of the bread-and-butter fundamentals. If you want to get creative and crazy with your training, go right ahead. My advice, however, would be to also never lose sight of the most basic elements of success. I was watching a documentary about the movie Jaws once, and horror director Clive Barker said something about it that I always remembered. “Some ideas are so obvious that they’re right in front of us all the time and we just don’t see them. How could we not have known that there was the best, exciting, suspenseful movie to be made about a f----ing huge white shark that ate you up?”