6 Common Conjugate Training Mistakes

I think it’s worth noting that I’m pretty biased towards using a conjugate type of training for everyone. The ability to continuously improve multiple traits year round while avoiding boring training sessions is a big win for everyone. Over time, I have seen many mistakes either that I had made in my training or have seen others make. Some of these continue to happen and our goal is to help people avoid these mistakes. The conjugate system as a whole can seem complex as a whole, but here is a really simple way of looking at the program.

Conjugate is an organized training plan that consistently rotates load, intensity, and velocity. The goal is to gradually build work volume while keeping the same velocity on dynamic effort days. Any program will provide minimal results if the principles of the program aren’t followed. Training at Westside Barbell under Louie Simmons taught me how to observe these rules in training to maximize progress. Avoiding these mistakes will help you to add weight to the bar year after year. 

1. Too much variety. Variety is great as it helps to provide a different stimulus, prevents boredom, and changes the stress on our body. The problem is when you have so much variety you have a difficult time tracking anything to know if it’s working. Exploring into different exercises can be helpful, but until you become an advanced lifter (above Elite total) they’re not needed. Work on building density in your training which takes time and intent. 
2. Too heavy too often. Just because you’re “Conjugate” doesn’t mean everything should be heavy. The heavy should be heavy, the fast should be fast and accessories should build your muscle and supporting ligaments. When everything is heavy, it takes a toll on your body and affects your ability to recover. I could usually tell if I was recovered or not by the way I would unrack a squat bar. If I was overtrained, muscles didn’t feel locked making the bar move more and sometimes added shaking at the top. 
3. Speed work too slow. The point of the dynamic effort training is to teach your body to produce force as quickly as possible. If the weight is too heavy, you’re in this middle of the road training area that is really useless. Too heavy to be fast or too light to strain isn’t a good training stimulus for absolute strength. 
4. Being greedy. One of the things Lou would constantly harp on us was to hit a 5lb PR and move on to the next exercise. I saw countless people get greedy and either get buried by the extra attempt or get injured. By hitting a real small PR, it shows us that all training is heading in the right direction, allows for us to recover from the session, and leaves room for the next time we come back to that exercise. At some point getting a 5lb PR will seem like an impossible mountain to climb. 
5. Using the wrong exercises. We all have exercises that we do well at. If we only stick to those exercises, then we’re not addressing the areas that we might need to develop. It does no good to be strong at the wrong thing. Track your exercises and see how they build the main lifts. Then work backwards and figure out which accessory exercises help you build the training exercises that build the main lifts. 
6. Too many exercises. I would much rather see someone fully exhaust 3-5 exercises than half ass 15 exercises. In the world of training, more isn’t better. Be efficient with what you’re doing and hammer those until you can’t do them anymore. An example of max effort lower workout could look like this 

Deadlift with weight on 2.5 inch mats - up to a max

Goodmorning 4 sets of 8 reps

1 Arm Dumbbell Rows 4 sets of 15 reps

Reverse Hyper 4 sets of 25 reps

Standing Ab Crunch 4 sets of 15 reps

Doing that workout while pushing the intent on each exercise would leave most people in the dust. On paper it might not look like a lot, but that is a lot of training volume on great exercises. 

Avoid these pitfalls and over time, you’ll eventually see easier progress than you had imagined. The toughest part about this is you’re responsible to taking control of your ego and your standards. Your ego will want you to do more. More weight, more exercises etc. Your standards are what your training will always fall back on. Do you give yourself a pass on the exercises that are difficult for you? Or do you perform one to two sets of those before and after each session? Your ability to control these two things will go a long way to your progress and longevity in strength. 

Nick Showman

Showtime Strength & Performance

www.showtimestrength.com