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Just got done reading the article your Dave Tate inspired calculator is based on. Do you by chance know how westside wraps there bands? I always double my bands and know for a fact that if I used a doubled blue and pink band I would get floored with just the bar!

It's quite straightforward: double on the bench and don't on the squat. To ensure that there is tension at the bottom of a squat, you would usually need to wrap the bands around a 2x4 plus the base of the rack unless you have band pegs or are using dumbells. There's some good pictures for various band set-ups (http://asp.elitefts.com/qa/default.asp?tid=101&__N=Band%20Exercises) at EliteFTS.

As a sidenote: The calculator Mike is referring to can be found here (http://tsampa.org/training/scripts/tate_3_week_squat/).

Ok, thank you. Now this is the DE day of the program, you also do ME day, except when in the circa-max phase, correct? When did wsb start doing this? Thanks again Kris

Hey Mike, sorry for the slow reply. Only got in an hour of sleep the other day wrapping up the Rankings Calculator (http://virtualmeet.net/rankings/calculator/), and spent today focusing on rest and recuperation.


Correct. The band tension is humongous, so it's pretty much max effort in itself. Not that I have tried it myself being nowhere close to that level yet. But I will be most interested in seeing what it does to your numbers! Do you plan to circa-max before the IPA meet?

(Those who don't know what a circa-max phase is, try The Circa-Maximal Squat Phase (http://www.elitefts.com/documents/circa-max.htm) by Jim Wendler.)


Quite recently in relative terms, but don't have a year for you off hand.

Regarding Westside history, the best online look into "old-school Westside" is the two-part series The Evolution of Westside Barbell Training (Part I (http://www.dragondoor.com/articler/mode3/404/), Part II (http://www.dragondoor.com/articler/mode3/406/)) by Mark "Rif" Reifkind (http://rifsblog.blogspot.com/). Another good article to read in order to appreciate the ever-continuing evolution of Westside thought is Dave Tate's Westside over the Years: 1992–2005 (http://www.elitefts.com/documents/westside-years.htm) where he presents a list of 100 changes. There's plenty of lessons to be learned there, too many people fail to realize that the long-time lifters at Westside built their foundation with methods that did not involve, say, bands and light DE work. Things have really changed a lot even during the short time I have been involved in the sport. For example, much of Metal Militia (http://www.metalmilitia.net) thought have been incorporated into the bench press training; now the straight up and down bench press style with feet out that used to be the hallmark of Westside lifters has largely been replaced with the Militia style of flaring out towards the head with feet tucked in (some pictures and further details can be found on my blog (http://tsampa.org/training/blog/archives/2006/06/#post_458)). Not to mention, plenty of shirt work and boards have been incorporated as a result.

That's my 0.02 cents, I'm also far from an expert when it comes to Westside. Anyone else, feel free to chime in.

Kris, I will be doing a circa max phase starting Friday. I will be doubling the bands however  so this means a doubled small and Monster mini or a doubled green. My PR for the doubled greens is 345x2 I think. So we shall see, espically since the 345x2 was not done off a box.