Workout of the Week 97

Welcome to Workout of the Week, number 97: a two-day modified Westside Barbell beginner workout.

The training goal of this workout is to build and maximize strength, especially in the big lifts: the squat, the bench, and the deadlift.

Training variables: We discussed that in the introduction series. It’s 60% to 90% of the one-rep max. The rep ranges: 3 to 12. The exertion is moderate to hard. The training effort is a maximum effort and a repeated effort.

If we look at the exercises, we looked at that in the intro series. Westside Barbell is famous for having a large variety of exercises, plus a strong classification system going from main exercise to variation of the main exercise, primary accessory, secondary accessory, and tertiary accessory. The exercise order goes from main exercise to variation of the main exercise, to primary accessory, secondary accessory, tertiary accessory, and GPP.

More training variables: Two days a week is the training frequency. It’s a station training, including some complexes.

How does it look? Here we are, and we’ll jump right into it.

Here we are inside our Workout of the Week number 97, the two-day modified Westside Barbell workout. You can read an overview, you can see the table of contents, and you can see here how it is structured. So it’s two workouts. The first one is an ME lower and the other one is an ME upper. By now you know ME stands for maximum effort. So the first day is maximum effort lower body, and the second day is maximum effort upper body. Let’s have a look at how that looks.

ME lower. Here we are. We have the front squat, the deadlift, the single-leg leg press, and the good mornings. For the front squat, we have five sets of three at 85% of the one-rep max. For the deadlift, we have three sets of three at 85% of the one-rep max, which equates in both cases to an RPE of 7.

Then we have the single-leg leg press in a complex with a good morning, where we do 70% for six repetitions in the single-leg leg press, or is it eight repetitions? My eyes are too bad. Okay: three sets of eight at 70% for the single-leg leg press, and then three sets of six at 75% of the one-rep max for the good mornings.

And here you can see what I meant in the intro series. The good morning would probably be classified as a primary accessory and the single-leg leg press as a secondary accessory. I’ve switched it around in this example, but anyway. Then we have the hanging leg raises: three sets of 12.

If we go to Workout Number Two, the ME upper, maximum effort upper body, we see the bench press: five sets of three at 85%. Then we have a complex of the dumbbell incline press and the barbell bent-over row, where we do three sets of six at 75% and three sets of eight at 70% of the one-rep max. You can see here why it’s a complex, the same as the good morning and the leg press: they are antagonistic complexes. In this case, the first exercise is an upper body horizontal push, and the second exercise is an upper body horizontal pull.

And then the last complex is triceps pushdowns and the weighted crunches. Triceps pushdown: three sets of 12 at 60% of the one-rep max, and the weighted crunches with 12 repetitions.

You can read a glossary explaining the terms. You can read a little bit about myself. You can read what other people have to say about me, my former athletes, my mentees, and former colleagues. And last but certainly not least, once you download this, you can subscribe to the membership, where you get the full four-week periodized program.

So let’s move back and finish it. What are the next steps?

You download that PDF. You join the membership and access the full four-week periodized program, along with another 96 four-week periodized programs. You like and subscribe. You can grab all previous workouts here. You can watch the previous workout, and if you haven’t already, it’s your last chance to subscribe for this week.

I’ll see you next week with the next Workout of the Week: a three-day modified intermediate Westside Barbell workout.