Flip-Flop routines

quadancer

New Member
Ascribing to the simplistic camps of Faleev, Korte and others, the main lifts are used only.
Ascribing to westside and others, the main lifts are not done, using assistance training only.

What if you did a flip flop of the two methods?
And at what frequency? I mean, alternate workouts, weeks, or months?

I could see a routine with every alternate workout being the big 3.
The other alternate would be two assistance exersizes for each, plus some conditioning work.

Example: Bench one day, and two days later, Incline and declines or dips.
Squats the first day, then SLDL's and leg extensions.
Deads the first day, then upright or Pendlay rows and good mornings.
Second workout would finish with something like chins, pressdowns or skulls, and lunges. The second workout would obviously have to be higher repwork.
 
That sounds reasonable to me. You could feasibly use a daily split as you have outlined or even an alternating weekly setup. I wouldnt suggest a monthly alternating split for strength training though. I would think that you would want to maintain a high skill level in the core lifts throughout and a month of training away from that would be detrimental for a strength athlete.

In an alternating weekly setup I would still perform a few sets of low rep sets in the core lifts to maintain the competency in those lifts during the week of assistance work. So a third of the session would still be dedicated to lifting big weight in the competition lifts while the remaining two thirds would be focused on assistance movements and conditioning work. The next week would go back to business as usual concentrating on lifting big weight in the competition lifts.

When I power lifted long ago I worked up using just the core lifts you would use in competition with only a few other assistance movements such as rows, shrugs, power cleans and military press in a full body routine three days per week. I made good progress on this for a while.

Eventually I needed to use less frequency as the intensity got too high to recover from and I reached near my maximum potential strength and could no longer gain through improved skill. I swapped to a four day push / pull split with two heavy days and two "light" days at this point. This reduced the frequency and gave me more time to recover as well.

The heavy days stayed focused on improving the core lifts at very low reps with a high density of sets. I would work with super maximal weights on these days after completing my core lifts for sets using power partials, rack pulls and negatives all with weights greater than my competition weights. We didnt have chains and other such implements back then.

The light days were intended to hypertrophy the individual muscles used to support the core lifts. On these days I used higher rep sets and speed work using mostly isolation exercises with speed work on the core exercises.

This approached worked well for me at the time and allowed me to move on up to lifting higher weights as I grew a little more size.

I believe as my partners did back then that once you do reach your peak potential strength at your current size then you must work towards increasing your size to see any significant strength increases. So once you have made all of the neurological strength gains possible you have to increase the muscles cross sectional size to realize further strength gains.

Many think that the Weider principles are bull but there are some good foundations there to be listened to. One is specificity. For example, if you want to be able to lift big weight in the bench press then you had better be bench pressing often and using heavy weights.

I think this is true of the isolation lifts you chose as well. A good example being the triceps muscle. So if my goal is to improve my bench press then I will want to chose tricep isolation exercises that more closely match to to what my triceps are doing during the bench press. I would pick the close grip bench press, french press or skull crushers over kick-backs or supinated cable extensions.
 
Sounds viable with an upper lower split. You could do:

Upper 1: Bench + Military Assistance

Lower 1: Deadlift + Squat Assistance

Upper 2: Military Press + Bench Assistance

Lower 2: Squat + Deadlift Assistance
 
I think so, but HST sort of ruined me for splits, and I do like training fullbody for strength as in the Korte. I always feel like I've left nothing out, nothing is lacking.
 
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