英文原答
1. What problem in your own training, or in the lifters you coached, first led you to develop the Wenning Warmup? For someone trying it for the first time, how would you choose a starting amount of work and judge whether it is helping the main lift or becoming too much?
2. Looking back on your time at Westside, what lessons still influence how you coach athletes today? As you developed your own coaching practice, were there any approaches you gradually adapted? If so, could you share a specific example and what led you to make that change?
3. You wrote that heavy-band squat training helped you initially, but later the improvements in training were not showing up in meets. What first made you realize that you needed to reconsider the approach? How did you adjust it, and what did you look at to judge whether the changes were helping?
I think they
all come back to something I’ve learned over more than 25 years of training
and coaching. You have to understand why something works, not just copy
what somebody else is doing.
1. What led you to develop the Wenning Warmup, and how do you determine the
right amount of work?
The biggest problem I kept seeing was people trying to develop maximal
strength without having the muscular endurance, work capacity, or
structural preparation to support it. I experienced plenty of that myself.
You can be incredibly strong in one movement and still have weaknesses that
eventually limit your progress or get you hurt.
The Wenning Warmup came from understanding that we needed a better way to
accumulate quality training volume without interfering with the primary
work. A lot of that thinking came from studying Soviet and Eastern Bloc
training principles and applying what I learned through years of competing
and coaching.
The system uses three exercises for four sets of 25 repetitions, typically
targeting muscle groups that support the main movement. That’s 300
repetitions before the primary training even starts. But the key is that
the resistance is light enough to build local muscular endurance and
prepare the tissues without creating excessive fatigue.
For somebody starting out, I don’t care how much weight they’re using. I
care about their ability to complete the repetitions with good technique,
controlled movement, and consistent performance across all four sets.
If your squat, bench, or deadlift performance starts declining because of
the warmup, you’ve defeated the purpose. Reduce the resistance or total
volume until you can tolerate the work. Then build from there.
Over time, the warmup becomes a form of general physical preparation.
You’re developing muscular endurance, improving your ability to tolerate
training volume, and addressing weaknesses before they become bigger
problems.
The warmup should make the rest of your training better, not become another
workout that you have to recover from.
2. What lessons from Westside still influence your coaching, and what have
you changed?
Westside taught me more about developing maximal strength than almost
anywhere else I could have trained. Louie Simmons was decades ahead of most
people when it came to understanding strength development, identifying
weaknesses, and using different training methods together.
The biggest lesson I took away was that you cannot continue doing the same
thing indefinitely and expect to keep progressing.
The rotation of exercises, maximal effort method, dynamic effort method,
and repetition method all have a purpose. But the real value is
understanding when and why to use them.
One of the biggest changes I made over time was placing much more emphasis
on general physical preparation and muscular endurance, especially when
working with athletes outside of powerlifting.
A football player, baseball player, or tactical athlete doesn’t need to
train exactly like a competitive powerlifter. Their sport already places
demands on their bodies, and the weight room needs to improve their
performance without taking away from their ability to practice and compete.
That’s where the Wenning Warmup became such an important part of my
coaching.
I also learned that connective tissues, muscular endurance, and technical
proficiency don’t necessarily develop at the same rate as maximal strength.
Just because somebody can lift more weight doesn’t automatically mean
they’re better prepared for the demands of their sport.
Another major change was how I approached dynamic effort training and
accommodating resistance. At Westside, we commonly used 50–60% of a
one-repetition maximum on the bar for speed work, sometimes with band
tension exceeding 50% of the bar weight. Over time, I reduced the straight
weight to approximately 30–40% and limited band tension to no more than 35%
of the weight on the bar.
Those adjustments came from seeing that heavier accommodating resistance
wasn’t always producing the transfer I wanted in raw lifting. I wanted
athletes developing explosive strength while maintaining proper mechanics
and actual bar speed, rather than simply getting better at moving heavy
bands.
I’ve taken the principles I learned at Westside and adapted them through
biomechanics, exercise science, and practical experience working with
professional athletes, military personnel, and people who simply want to
remain strong and healthy as they age.
The principles haven’t changed nearly as much as the way I apply them.
3. Why did you reconsider heavy-band squat training, and how did you
evaluate the changes?
This was one of the biggest lessons I learned about the difference between
getting stronger in training and actually improving performance on the
platform.
When I first started using heavy bands at Westside, the results were
impressive. My training numbers were improving, and I was getting stronger
against the resistance. But eventually I started noticing that those
improvements weren’t carrying over to competition the way they should have.
At Westside, we sometimes used band tension that exceeded 50% of the weight
on the bar. That’s a tremendous amount of accommodating resistance, and
while it can be effective for developing certain strength qualities,
especially in equipped lifting, I found that it didn’t always transfer as
well to raw lifting.
The problem is that heavy bands dramatically change the resistance curve.
You’re training against a much greater load at the top of the movement
while reducing resistance at the bottom, where raw lifters often need to
develop more strength.
I eventually changed my approach so that band tension hardly ever exceeded
35% of the weight on the bar. That still provides enough accommodating
resistance to encourage acceleration and develop force, but without
allowing the bands to dominate the movement.
Another major adjustment was reducing the straight weight used during
dynamic effort training. At Westside, we commonly used 50–60% of a
one-repetition maximum on the bar for speed work. I eventually reduced that
to approximately 30–40% for better transfer to raw strength.
My reasoning was simple. Dynamic effort training is supposed to develop the
ability to produce force rapidly. If the load is so heavy that bar speed
suffers, you’re no longer getting the same training effect. I wanted
athletes moving the bar explosively while maintaining proper mechanics, not
grinding through repetitions that were supposed to be fast.
That doesn’t mean heavier dynamic work has no place. It means the loading
needs to match the athlete, the equipment being used, and the adaptation
you’re trying to create.
I also became much more selective about exercise rotation and the amount of
accommodating resistance used throughout a training cycle. Bands and chains
are tools, not the foundation of the entire program.
The biggest thing I looked at was whether the strength developed in
training actually transferred to straight-weight performance. Were the
competition lifts improving? Was technique becoming more consistent? Was
the athlete producing force more effectively without relying on the altered
resistance curve?
If those things weren’t improving, then something needed to change.
That’s one of the most important lessons I took from my years at Westside.
Louie taught me to constantly look for ways to develop strength, but
experience taught me that you also have to evaluate how well that strength
transfers to the actual task.
The goal isn’t to become the strongest person against bands. The goal is to
become stronger when the bands come off.
At the end of the day, good coaching isn’t about being married to one
exercise, one method, or one philosophy. It’s about understanding the
principles well enough to make adjustments when the athlete needs them.
