Programming Assistance Work

We know there are 101 ways to effectively program our main lifts – the Squat, Bench, Deadlift, and Overhead Press.  There is much confusion and much debate as to what works best, why, and how, and I believe much of the confusion exists precisely because so many different things actually do work in practice.

The same is true with assistance work.  People go about things differently and yet many different approaches work.  Some guys rigidly try to plot our every rep and every set for the next 6 months on an Excel spreadsheet that’s more complex than mapping the human genome.

Some guys completely wing it.  They go to the gym with very little plan for their assistance work and go completely by feel.  Exercise selection, sets, reps, weight, tempo, rest periods, etc are all done by feel.  Nothing is recorded or tracked.

Really neither end of the spectrum is ideal.  I believe at least a loose plan for your assistance exercises is best.  And this may actually mean planning to be random.  But either way, you need to be tracking your exercise selection and recording weights, sets, reps, etc so that progress can be measured over time, and as importantly, we want to be able to track how our main competition lifts respond to increases in strength in our assistance work.

Over time you are going to want to identify those assistance lifts that have carryover to your main lifts and those that don’t.  For instance if you go from a 315×5 Stiff Leg Deadlift to a 365×5 Stiff Leg Deadlift, you need to pay attention to how this affects your Deadlift performance.  Are your reps getting easier/faster at heavier loads?  Are you able to train heavier?  Do more reps?  Whatever, but if you are making 10-20% increases on a supplemental barbell exercise there should be some positive transference to the main exercise.  If you’ve spent a substantial amount of time on an exercise, gotten a lot stronger on that exercise, continued to train your main lifts, and notice zero carryover – then maybe that exercise doesn’t need to be in your tool kit.

Below are a few ideas to help you better program and progress your assistance work.

#1 Keep Main Lifts Fairly Constant,  Alter Sets / Reps / Load

I like variety in programming, however, this is one of those factors that varies quite a bit on an individual level.  Some guys need a lot of frequency on a given lift in order to maintain their technique and confidence.  Some don’t.  But I think for most trainees you need to be doing your main competition lifts (Squat, Bench/Press, Dead) at least once per week, along with some very close variations of those lifts another 1-2 days per week.  Some may do better to ditch the variations and do light / medium days of the competitive movements.  The reason we need to keep the main lifts in the program is (1) to maintain the technique / skill / preparedness (2) measure the effectiveness of our assistance menu.

In other words, if you spend a lot of time on variations and assistance work and get really strong on a diverse selection of exercises, but drastically decrease your frequency and volume on the competitive lifts, you may not get the carryover you are looking for when you pick back up on the main lifts.  But maybe you would have, had you gotten strong on some new exercises AND stayed in practice on the main lifts.

So long story short – keep the main lifts in your program at least once per week.  Program them how you see fit, but make sure you stay in practice and train these lifts with adequate volume and intensity to at least maintain the status quo while you build your strength on some new exercises.

#2 Account for the Novice Effect with New Exercises

When you first hit a new exercise there is going to be a little bit of a learning curve with the new technique on the new exercise.  But usually, once the trainee gets comfortable with the technique, the first 2-3 sessions with this new exercise result in some really big jumps in performance.

Just a few weeks ago I had a client doing Incline Presses for the first time ever.  We used 185 lbs for sets of 8 reps.  By our third Incline Press session he was doing 225 for sets of 8 reps.  This is a 40 lb increase in 3 weeks and predictably, didn’t do much to move his Flat Bench Press.

That’s because those first 40 lbs of progress were learned and not earned!!!!!!

Now over the next several weeks I predict we will progress much slower from 225 lbs to say 255 lbs.  Jumps will be small, progress slow, and reps will be hard.  So that next 20-30 lbs of progress will be much more earned strength and muscle mass and I predict it will have carryover to the Flat Bench Press.

So moral of the story is that you can’t expect that initial huge leap in performance on a new exercise to immediately affect your primary exercises.  You have to spend some time with the exercise and get into those hard sets and reps and really earn a 10-20% increase in performance before you can expect much carryover.

#3  Rotate Supplemental Exercises Every 2-4 Weeks

Supplemental movements are those exercises that are very close to the parent movements both in performance and in load.  So things like Front Squats, Close Grip Bench, Stiff Leg Deadlifts, etc.

Once an athlete is trained and practiced on a given exercise (i.e. he’s mastered the technique and gotten his initial novice gains) I like to hit the movement hard for short periods of time, take it up to 1-2 limit performances, and then rotate it out with another supplemental exercise.  2-4 weeks is an average estimate, and often I will rotate the supplemental movement out every week or keep the movement in there a bit longer, but 2-4 weeks is a good ballpark.

So one good way to handle these movements coming in and out of your program is to treat the movement similar to how you would select your attempts at a meet.  When you rotate a movement back into your program after a few weeks, use week 1 to “re-familiarize” yourself with the exercise.  This is like your “opener” at the meet. This can serve as sort of a deload of sorts as well, as the previous weeks leading into this week would have been limit attempts on a different supplemental movement (you’ll see this in the example below).

So if you have a previous Stiff Leg Deadlift PR of 365×5, then maybe week 1 of this current rotation comes back in with an easy-ish 345×5 (about 5% decrease).  In week 2 – we’re aiming for a small PR of 5-10 lbs, so maybe 370-375 x 5.  This is kinda how I treat my second attempt at the meet – usually aiming for a small PR.

Depending on how that goes, come back in Week 3 and go for broke (like your 3rd attempt) and hit another PR of anywhere from 5-20 lbs based on the ease or difficulty of week 2.  If you like the numerical RPE scale, this is a good place to use it.  I use a subjective scale of easy / medium / hard.  If week 2 is easy, go up 20, if it was medium go up 10, if it was hard go up 5.  If it was LIMIT or you have missed reps, then record your new PRs and move onto the next movement.  If after the 3rd week you still have a little gas left in the tank on that exercise – go up another 5-20 lbs and hit more PRs.  Usually after week 4, I’d move onto a new exercise.

I really like to avoid having missed reps or regression.  I almost NEVER do resets on assistance work unless the trainee has a prolonged layoff from a given exercise.  Instead, if we have a miss, regression, or a plateau on a supplemental exercise – we just rotate out to a new exercise and come back to this movement in a few weeks.

It works better.

Here is an example using two different assistance movements:

• Week 1:  Stiff Leg Deadlift 345 x 5
• Week 2:  Stiff Leg Deadlift 370 x 5 (5 lbs over previous PR – medium)
• Week 3:  Stiff Leg Deadlift 380 x 5 (hard)
• Week 4:  Stiff Leg Deadlift 385 x 5 (Limit!!)
• Week 5:  Goodmorning 205 x 5 (10% under previous PR – deload from week 4 limit sets)
• Week 6:  Goodmornings 230 x 5 (5 lbs over previous PR, easy)
• Week 7:  Goodmornings 245 x 5 (hard)
• Week 8:  Goodmornings 250 x 5 (limit!)
• Week 9:  Stiff Leg Deadlift 365 x 5 (5% under previous PR, deload)
• Week 10:  Stiff Leg Deadlift 390 x 5 (5 lb PR, hard)
• Week 11:  Stiff Leg Deadlift 395 x 5 (limit)
• Week 12:  Goodmorning 225 x 5 (~10% below previous PR, deload)
• Week 13:  Goodmorning 255 x 5 (5 lb PR)
• etc, etc.

This type of planning is not limited to just two exercises rotated in and out.  I’ve done this with clients with as many as 4 different movements, hitting each movement for 2-4 weeks at a time.  Sometimes one of the exercises in the rotation hits a plateau.  There are two things to do in this scenario…..(1) change how you train that exercise.  In other words, change the set/rep scheme, add/subtract volume, etc.  or (2) drop the exercise from your rotation and come back to it after a longer break.

Oddly enough, sometimes training something less yields more progress than training it more.  Not always, but sometimes this is true with assistance and supplemental movements.

#4  Rotate Accessory Exercises Every 1-2 weeks

The accessory movements are those exercises that are generally non-barbell, lighter load, and/or isolation type movements.  Things like glute ham raises, leg curls, tricep extensions,, lat pulldowns, etc.

I tend to rotate these movements out with even more frequency than the supplemental exercise menu – usually every week.  So pretty much every time we do these exercises we are looking for PRs of some kind.  It’s difficult to progress in load every time you do these movements, but there is usually some metric of performance you can increase.  Maybe that is adding reps to your sets, adding sets,  reducing rest between sets, etc.  But prolonged weekly progress on a Cable Tricep Pressdown is difficult, so we’re going to hit it hard every time we do these movements, try and set a PR of some sort and then come back to it in a few weeks and hit another PR.  On most of these exercises we’re going to be chasing some metabolic fatigue in the target muscle group so use the “pump” as an indication of how and when you need to change things up.  If the exercise gives you a massive pump on week 1 and fades in week 3, time to switch things up.  I think the pump is maximized when exercises are switched weekly.

#5  Mirror the Competition / Primary Lift’s Sets and Reps and Intensity

This is a little bit different way of doing things and doesn’t precisely square with some of the advice I’ve already given.  Like I said in the intro…..lots of approaches can work, these are all different tools in the tool kit, just some things to think about, not prescriptions for life.

So here’s what I mean.  Let’s say you are doing my 3 week mini-cycles of 8s, 5s, and 2s on the main exercises.  For instance, in Week 1 you will Bench Press for sets of 8,  in Week 2 you will Bench Press for sets of 5,  and in Week 3 you will Bench Press for sets of 2.

When you do your supplemental lifts, I like to keep with the “theme” of the day in terms of rep range and intensity, and I select exercises that work best in that rep range.

So in Week 1, we Bench Press for sets of 8, and then perform Incline DB Presses for sets of 8-10.

In Week 2,  we Bench Press for sets of 5, and then perform Weighted Dips for sets of 6-8

In Week 3, we Bench Press for sets of 2, and then perform Incline BB Presses for sets of 4-6.

Then the accessory lifts pretty much always stay in the 8-15 range depending on the exercise.

You certainly don’t have to do this, but it’s something that has worked well in the programming I run for my clients.

If you want a more detailed example of how this works in an actual training program I would check out my

KSC Method for Power-Building Program.