WSBB Blog: 5 Forgotten Exercises

Tags: Forgotten, Basics, Cambered Bar

Time to Read: 4min 

When writing programming, many lifters follow what is popular on social media and change their exercise selection constantly, or they stick to the same exercises they’ve been doing for years. Limiting your exercise selection, and the frequency you change workouts will have a direct negative impact on your training effectiveness. This blog will cover five exercises that aren’t forgotten about totally, but are often overlooked and left out of common powerlifting programs.

Clean and Press

The clean and press is one of the most effective exercises for developing explosive pulling power off of the floor, and great upper torso pressing power simultaneously. The clean and press can be done both Olympic or strongman style, depending on your technique and skill level. This exercise can be done as a main exercise on max effort upper, or as an accessory exercise on any upper or lower day.

This makes the clean and press an extremely diverse exercise that can fit pretty much anywhere in your conjugate programming.

Pull-Ups

One of the most well known and simple exercises, however pull-ups are often forgotten about and left out of training programs. When it comes to developing back and arm size and strength, few exercises work as well as pull-ups. You can do them weighted with either plate weight, or by attaching bands to a power belt.

Pull-ups are an extremely effective accessory exercise when done for high amounts of repetition. Advanced lifters can generally do four to six sets of twelve to fifteen reps, while beginner lifters should do as many reps as possible for as many sets as they can get. This exercise is relatively easy to recover from, so you should be doing them frequently.

Suspended Camber Goodmornings

This is an exercise that is often intentionally forgotten about or avoided. They can be extremely taxing depending on the setup, however suspended camber goodmornings have an excellent carryover to the squat and deadlift. The bar should be set at a height that puts you in a position that is close or slightly below where you would be if you were setting up to deadlift a barbell in a conventional stance.

Have a slight bend in the knee to allow the glute/hamstring muscles to absorb the weight and relieve stress off of the lumbar spine. These can be done as both a max effort exercise, and an accessory exercise. For max effort exercises, we recommend beginner lifters stay within the three to five rep range, while advanced lifters can work up to single rep max sets.

Beltless Low Box Squat

This exercise is a great exercise to gut check your squat. The box should be set up at an uncomfortable height, well below your typical box squat height. At Westside, we will typically squat to the base box with no mats, or to the base box with a two inch mat. You can use any bar for this, and generally these will be done for either singles, doubles, or triples.

We typically do these for a max effort lower variation, however if you struggle with squat depth and flexibility you can utilize this exercise with light weight in your accessory work.

Low Pin Zercher Squats

This is another gut check workout, low pin zercher squats are one of the best ways to simultaneously train lower body and torso strength. You can set the bar at varying heights, we recommend training at or below your competition squat depth. At Westside, we generally do zercher squats on max effort lower day, working up to a max effort single.

These can be done both with a belt and without, and are a great way to develop brute strength for the squat and deadlift.

These workouts are forgotten and left out because they’re physically taxing and can make you feel like shit. However, the road less traveled is often difficult but the fastest, and you want to program based on your need to achieve your goal not your need to be comfortable. These exercises are time tested and proven to work, throw a few of them into your training and see for yourself.

And for all you older lifters stuck in your ways doing the same shit you were doing in 2003, remember, the old dog who can learn new tricks is the last to get put to sleep.