A return to the Westside system: Max Effort Bench

A lot of people don't know that my original style of training in powerlifting was the Westside Barbell system other wise known as the Conjugate System. For those that don't know Westside Barbell is home to some of the worlds strongest lifters. They compete in gear, but can handle my maxes like candy raw.

The system uses a couple different schemes to make a complete all around lifter.

Max Effort: Training at or above 90 percent your one rep max

Dynamic Effort: Lifting a submax weight at the fastest speed possible

Repetition Effort: Lifting a submax weight close or to failure.


Max effort exercises are variations of the classic lifts (squat, bench, deadlift) and are rotated on a weekly basis to prevent stagnation. Now that we have all that out the way, lets get to what I did for Max Effort Bench.

Incline press:

Bar/20
135/12
185/5
225/3
275/3
295/3

Overhead press: 140/5,5,5

Triceps Dips:
90/15
180/15
200/12
250/12,10

DB Rows:
80/10
110/10,10,10

DB Shrugs: done with a 3 second hold at the top

85/15,15,15

Some arm stuff

The shrugs absolutely sucked. There was no other way to describe it.

In retrospect, I should have put in 2-3 more sets on the incline press and stayed at 295-300. I did not want to miss any lifts, but the max effort work also teaches you how to "strain" or produce time under tension under a max or near max load. Will push it farther next week and have a bit more food in my system.

The person I'm working with has given me free reign (for the most part) on controlling the supplemental work. Since putting on muscle is almost always apart of any training plan I throw myself into, expect some repetition work.

Other than that, not much to it. The way this is constructed is that this first cycle is 3 weeks long, deload, 2 weeks, deload, 2 weeks, deload, and meet day since I'm only on about an eight week prep time.

Monday is max effort lower and I'll be working the triples hard. Time to get rolling