How to Diversify Your Training, Part 1
In one of my earlier articles, I explained that most powerlifters should avoid training the competition movements too frequently. Instead, lifters should aim to diversify their training by including supplemental exercises, aerobic work, and plyometrics. This diversity will help to prevent or resolve muscular imbalances, mobility restrictions, and other faults that can hamper execution of the competition lifts. In this article, I’ll dive into some of the specifics of diverse training.
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This Article Is For Intermediates
I want to start off, as I often do, with a disclaimer. This article is written for intermediate lifters. (I think Dave Tate has written the explanation of what constitutes intermediate, and I highly recommend reading his Lessons from The Dead Zone series on T-Nation.) Beginners will benefit quite a bit from high-frequency training, and elite lifters already know what they need to do to improve.
Why You Need to Diversify
You’ve probably heard of the Pareto principle. It’s a statistical concept that says 80% of your progress comes from 20% of the work that you do. It’s often used in economic contexts, but it’s true in training, too. Obviously, the “good” 20% comes from performing the competition lifts.
Most people assume that, if progress comes largely from performing the competition lifts, they should focus on performing the competition lifts. That is not true! Here’s a better way of understanding the Pareto principle in the context of powerlifting:
Your competition lifts should make up about 20% of the work you do in the gym.
The other 80% of the work you do in the gym helps you to stay healthy, recover properly, and stay in shape so that you can train the competition lifts properly and productively.
When you recognize the importance of that other 80%, you start to understand that there’s no percentage plan, rep scheme, or training split that will make or break your progress. Instead, you’ll focus on structuring everything else so that when your heavy squat day rolls around, you’re feeling your best.
There’s no right or wrong way to create that structure, but the best way to start is by determining specific goals for each day you train. Few lifters do this! Most lifters follow the warmup-heavy lift-accessory exercise paradigm with little thought towards what the day should accomplish as a whole.
To better understand what I mean by this, here’s a few examples.
Four Types of Training Days
Aerobic Endurance
Yes, you have to do aerobic work, even if you’re a powerlifter — and not just because it’s healthy. Aerobic work builds your foundation: without it, you won’t be able to recover from any significant amount of volume in the rest of your training. I don’t just mean that you’ll be too out of breath to train a set of high-rep squats (although that will likely be the case). This article does a great job of explaining why that's the case. Give it a thorough read!
Muscular Endurance
For practical purposes, muscular endurance training is synonymous with hypertrophy training. I use the former term because, while most lifters are already familiar with the benefit of hypertrophy training, many nevertheless ignore it completely. The term “endurance” is more accurate than “hypertrophy” anyway, because you’ll always want to include some higher-rep work in your plan, even if you’re not eating to build muscle.
This style of training can consist of traditional bodybuilding work, traditional powerlifting accessory work, or some combination, as long as all of the following requirements are met:
You’re training in a rep range that’s high enough to include a significant number of contractions in a hypoxic state. In simple terms, that means that by the end of the set, you’re out of breath and your muscles are burning.
You’re using movements that have a high stimulus-to-fatigue ratio.
You perform those movements with the intent to establish a better mind-muscle connection, not to move as much weight as possible.
This type of training allows you to build the physical resilience necessary to maintain good technique on 1RM lifts.
Strength
This one is pretty self-explanatory. The important thing is to remember that strength-specific training is part of a well-designed powerlifting program and not the whole thing!
Athletic Performance
Athletic performance days are probably the most overlooked of the four listed here. In my opinion, that’s probably because the benefits of athletic performance training aren’t directly obvious for powerlifters. After all, you aren’t sprinting, jumping, or throwing anything during a meet.
However, this is the training that will help the most to improve mobility, help to rehab and prevent injury, and prepare you for heavy training in the future — whether that future is the next day, the next year, or the next ten years.
What About Conjugate Training?
I want to highlight a subtle but important difference between this approach and a conjugate approach. In the conjugate system, lifters train for multiple goals at the same time, year-round. I don’t recommend doing that. It can work, but it’s pretty difficult to pull off. I’m advocating for an approach that focuses on just one goal. Multiple different training methods and movements can and should be used to achieve that goal, but you’re not training to improve (for example) aerobic endurance for its own sake.
Obviously, you can’t throw together a bunch of training days at random and expect to reach any sort of worthwhile goal. You need to have a coherent plan that allows each day to build on the previous day, each month to build on the previous month, and so on. My next article in this series will explain how to do exactly that.