I've been watching a load of old videos from PhD bro scientist, Dr. Rich Piana; elite class moustacher Dave Tate and his highly regarded contemporary and (un)arguably the greatest powerlifting coach of all time: Louie Simmons. One odd thing they have in common is their usage of extra workouts outside their main lifting days. You all know that I often tell people to do calisthenics on their off days, and apparently there is some merit to the madness. Now they all call them different things (Dave and Rich says Feeder, Louie calls them Extra or Recovery workouts), but generally they prescribe the same thing as well: get blood flowing. We know that blood brings nutrients, we also know that lifting creates muscular damage, so bringing restorative nutrients to damaged muscles should allow faster recovery in theory. And that's what's being done. Louie prescribes a minimum of 2 of these per week, not counting the 4-6 GPP sessions with the sled (Westside guys train a shit ton, it's not just your regular 4 day upper lower).
Inshallah Ock. We gone get some DAMN WORK CAPACITY BROTHA
Dave Tate say to use them by feel, generally spacing them out by meals (ie: 2-3 meals between sessions). And Rich says to do them 8-12 hours apart, so if you lift in the morning, do your feeder at night and vice versa. All three agree that feeders should be no more than 10-20 minutes, get a pump and get out. High reps and few sets seem to be the way to go, and I mean high reps (20-100 per set). If you think a 100 rep set of 20lbs dumbbell curls is easy, go give it a shot and tell me how well you pick up a fork afterwards because you'll have a wicked pump. Dumbbells, calisthenics, bands, cables, and kettlebells seems to be the most used implements; barbells are left to the main lifting days. So for example the feeder workout I did today (last night I did a heavy lower body workout) is this:
- Ghetto Reverse Hyper: 50 reps
- V bar Pulldown: 2×30
- Hanging Leg Raise: 2×20
It's not much because it doesnt have to be. I'm not going balls out, just getting a pump in the garage and moving on. Now if you're doing Upper Lower, I would do back and/or core each feeder. For something like a Full body LP (Greyskull/SS/SL), do the small shit you dont hit on your big days, something like:
- Lateral Raise: 2×50
- Barbell Curl: 100 reps
- Hanging Leg Raise: 50 reps
Seems cool.
Isn't.
Bro split, hit the muscle group you hit last time you trained. So say you are doing something like PPL (Yeah I consider Push Pull Legs a bro split, fight me) and you did your pull day last night, ate dinner and a quick breakfast the next morning do something like: - Inverted Row: 50 reps - Face Pull: 2×30 - Band Curl: 2×20 I already hear dudes crying about overtraining. I have this to say: this isnt something you do every single day and if an extra 2 to 4 sets on a muscle group cause you to overtrain you are either brand new or you are not fit and you need to fix that.
NOOO ONE MORE SET AND ILL DIE NOOOO
All this is variable but to me I feel like sticking to 2-3 movements for 1-2 sets of higher reps or 50-100 total reps (small easy stuff or calisthenics).