Balancing Practice and Variation

In powerlifting, practicing the main lifts is essential for a lifter to lift as much weight as his body will allow.  However, because of accommodation, or diminishing returns, an athlete must vary his training regimen.  For optimal training, a balance must be found between these two considerations.  This balance needs to be adjusted based on the experience level of the lifter.

Greasing the Groove

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? …Practice!

Would you train all year to get bigger and stronger for football, but then never actually put on pads and play until the first game of the season?  No, that would be foolish.  Yet, I see athletes attempt to do this very thing in powerlifting.  They train for months using every special variation of every exercise with every specialty bar and bands and chains, and then the meet comes, and they suck at squatting, benching, and deadlifting (I know because I've been quite guilty of this in the past).  The mistake is failure to practice specificity, or what I like to call greasing the groove.
What is specificity?  Specificity is basically a measure of how close a movement used in training is to the movement being trained for.  For example, glute hams can be used to build the squat, but they're nowhere near an actual squat, so they have low specificity.  Box squats are highly specific because they're only a slight variation from the squat (Zatsiorsky, 1995).

Greasing the groove takes specificity to its extreme.  It involves the most specific possible training movement: the actual movement.  I'll continue to use the squat as an example.  Training the squat, not a variation, but the actual squat, with high frequency will lead to neural adaptation.  In other words, you'll simply get better at it, so your body will be able to perform the movement smoother and with more efficiency.  It's quite possible to squat more weight without actually getting stronger, but just by getting better at squatting (De Luca, 2010).

What am I getting at?  My point here is that, in order to lift the heaviest weights your body can handle, you have to practice and be good at the main lifts.  A freaky strong dude who totally sucks at squatting can easily get beat by a moderately strong dude who's awesome at squatting because of skill and neural efficiency.  It's often said that it takes 10,000 hours to master an activity, so you better get started.  Practice, and grease the groove!

Of course, like anything, greasing the groove will have diminishing returns.  A lifter can't just continuously get better at squatting and never get any stronger, so variation must be used to build strength.

Variation in Training

What happens when an athlete trains the same way for too long?  He stops improving.  This is due to accommodation, or diminishing returns.  To prevent accommodation and continue to make gains, an athlete must vary his training regimen.

Accommodation can be prevented by changing the training stimulus.  As a general rule, a change needs to happen every three to four weeks, and it can be done either qualitatively or quantitatively.  A qualitative change is usually a change in exercise selection while keeping the volume and intensity the same, and a quantitative change is a change in volume and intensity while keeping the movement the same (Zatsiorsky, 1995).

Qualitative changes, or variation in exercise selection, and quantitative changes, variation in load, in a training regimen will prevent an athlete from experiencing accommodation, or diminishing returns from unvaried training.  These changes can also prevent CNS and adrenal fatigue, and allow an athlete to continue to progress.  Intermediate programs use quantitative variation to delay diminished returns while allowing the athlete to practice the main lifts, and most more advanced programs utilize both types of variation.

But, how does a powerlifter practice the main lifts while varying his training?

Balancing Practice and Variation

An optimal training program involves both practice and variation.  This may be confusing since they appear to be mutually exclusive.  Well, the good news is that it's perfectly possible to strike a balance between practice and variation and even to grease the groove through variation.

Practice should take precedence for beginning lifters who have the most to gain by getting better at the main lifts.  Programs like Starting Strength and Stronglifts that use only the main lifts are great for beginners for this very reason.  However, every athlete will eventually stall on these programs because of accommodation, or diminishing returns.

Intermediate programs like Madcow and 5/3/1 vary quantitatively throughout every week, or microcycle.  This is a good way to grease the groove while keeping accommodation at bay for a while.  All lifters do eventually stall on these programs, and must move on to more varied programs which involve both types of change.

The conjugate method of periodization is an example of a system that uses a lot of variation.  The max effort movement is changed every week, and assistance exercises are rotated.  The dynamic portion of the program changes quantitatively by varying bar weight and band tension.  Block periodization utilizes quantitative changes in load, generally moving from lighter weights with higher volume to heavier weights with lower volume.  Qualitative changes are usually also be built in.

Here are some ways to incorporate more practice into a highly varied program:

• Use variations of the main lifts - Qualitative changes do not have to be drastic to prevent accommodation.  A lifter can change one thing about the main lift, and it'll be enough.  Examples include adding accommodating resistance, pausing, changing foot, hand, or bar position, using a specialty bar, abbreviating or elongating the range of motion, and using gear.  These things are close enough to competition lifts to be used as practice, and different enough to prevent accommodation.
•  Practice the lifts during warmups - This one is pretty self explanatory.  Simply incorporate light, somewhat high rep sets of the main lifts into your warmup routine.  Be conscious of your technique.
• Use short periods of quantitative change only - A lifter can train the main lift for some time if he makes periodic quantitative changes.  Generally, this can not be done year round, but it works for the offseason, and is highly recommended for use during a peaking phase because of the extra practice.  Start with low intensity, high volume.  Then, move onto moderate intensity and volume.  Finally, high intensity, low volume.
• Include main lifts as secondary movements - By performing the main lifts and their variations after the primary movement for the day, the stimulus is changed because some muscles are already fatigued.  This should be paired with a quantitative change, since a secondary movement is generally less intense than the primary, and simply changing the order of exercises may not be enough.

Practicing the competition lifts, or greasing the groove, will make a lifter better at the movements allowing him to lift more weight.    This is especially important for beginners.  However, the training stimulus must be varied to prevent accommodation, which becomes more important as an athlete becomes more advanced.  Powerlifters can consistently practice the competition lifts while varying their training enough to prevent accommodation by using variations of the main lifts, practicing during warmups, using periods of quantitative change only, and using the main lifts as secondary movements.

References

De Luca, C. J. (2010). Relationship between firing rate and recruitment threshold of motoneurons in voluntary isometric contractions. Journal of Neurophysiology
Zatsiorsky, V. (1995). The science and practice of strength training. (2 ed.).