Rotating Main Movements in a Conjugate Program
I firmly believe that Louie Simmons accidentally created the most thorough training template for physical preparation for sport when he created the Conjugate Method, also known as the Russian Conjugate Sequencing System. While the Conjugate Method was created for powerlifters, its ability to bend to the needs of the trainee means it can be a great tool for athletes and their coaches.
The Conjugate Method is a combination of a few methods:
The Dynamic Effort Method - Speed Focus
The Maximal Effort Method - Strength Focus
The Repeated Effort Method - Hypertrophy Focus
These three methods are used in conjunction with each other to give the lifter a hypertrophy/work capacity, strength, and speed/power stimulus each week. You can think of the Conjugate Method as an undulating periodization approach, but IMO it’s significantly more than that.
Today, our focus is going to be on one part of the Conjugate Method: rotating movements. First we’ll talk about the main lifts.
The Main Lifts
The Conjugate Method is based on the big three power lifts:
The Bench Press
The Squat
The Deadlift
Without getting too far into the weeds of the Conjugate method in general, your goal within a Conjugate program is to increase the totals of your main three lifts. If you’re an athlete, those goals change slightly. However, the overall goal is always to move the needle with your strength and other qualities.
You’re going to utilize these three movements within the repeated effort, the dynamic effort, and the maximal effort methods. The loads, the volumes, and the bar speeds change, but the movement stays the same.
This program was designed with powerlifters in mind, so it makes sense that we’re looking at movements that powerlifters need to excel at. After all, the gym isn’t just GPP for powerlifters, it’s their sport practice as well. There’s no real need to dip your toes in the Olympic lift pool, as that’s a skill that you’ll never need.
Now, within this method, you’re going to be manipulating the variables such as load, inter and intraset volumes, bar speed, etc. This variability leads to continuous progress. Until it doesn’t. There are only so many ways that you can manipulate a movement until it ultimately wears its use out. Your body adapts so well to the movement, that the movement becomes less beneficial to you as an athlete. If this wasn’t the case, everyone would eventually be a 1000-pound squatter with a simple progressive overload. How can we combat that?
Special Exercises
I remember listening to Louie talk when I first got into the field of strength and conditioning, and he always talked about “spacial exercises.” In every interview he did I would hear this verbiage. I searched everywhere for what these exercises were, and I couldn’t figure it out to save my life. What the hell is a spacial exercise?? It wasn’t until I read Westside Barbell's Book of Methods that I figured out he was saying “special” and not “spacial” exercises. His accent threw me off.
These special exercises are honestly the lifeblood of any Westside-influenced template. Conjugate actually means “to give different forms of”, and “coupled, connected, or related”. The method is named after the change/rotation of these exercises. So what are these exercises?
Special exercises are variations of the main movements. When you break down the squat, bench press, and deadlift, you realize they’re just lower-extremity push patterns, upper-extremity push patterns, and lower-extremity hinge patterns. While there are only so many versions of the squat/bench/deadlift, there are damn near an infinite number of variations of these movements.
In the last section, we spoke about a simple linear progressive overload eventually losing its ability to drive your totals up. When this inevitably happens, we rotate movements to take advantage of a new stimulus. The movement isn’t your main movement, but it provides the same pattern. For example, a hinge pattern. Now, you’re able to take advantage of essentially starting at ground zero with a new movement. You’ll be able to use this movement until it wears its use out just like you did the main movement. Here is an example below:
Let’s say you’re bench pressing and have gone from a 150-pound bench press to a 210-pound bench press with a basic progressive overload like a 5x5. In recent weeks though, you’ve realized that this progression is no longer working and you almost feel like you’re getting weaker. This is because your body has done exactly what it was supposed to do, which is to adapt to the movement. Now, you can change the volume in hopes of handling a heavier weight, which can work for a while, or you can introduce a new movement/special exercise. At my gym, we’ll rotate through movements. An example is we have a few bench press variations that we work through: fat bar bench press, floor press, board press, incline bench press, and close grip bench press. These movements aren’t the bench press, but they’re the same pattern: push. We rotate through these movements throughout the year to allow us to keep from adapting and stagnating. These kids could go six months without hitting a regular bench press and still increase their bench press total over that time period.
The above is only an example to drive the point home. We’re going to go over different ways to do this later on.
Purpose of Rotating Movements
There are a few reasons for this. If you look at what the Conjugate Method really is, you’ll see that it’s designed to be a variation of the Bulgarian Method. Explanations of this method are well outside of the scope of this article, but The Bulgarian Method involves working up to new maxes in multiple lifts, up to 7 days per week. Once you’ve been utilizing this method long enough, you would train once in the morning working up to a new max in your front squat, train again in the afternoon working up to a new max in your snatch, and train once more in the evening working up to a new max in your clean & jerk.
Now, working up to a new max every single day, multiple times per day, seems like an exercise in futility because who can do that? If you’ve ever seen those fractional plates (0.25, 0.5, 0.75, and 1lb plates), they have their roots in the Bulgarian Method. You won’t always be able to work up to a 5lb heavier PR, but you might be able to set a half-pound PR.
That being said, eventually, you won’t be setting even half-pound PRs anymore, and you might even start to backtrack and display less strength. You’ll miss not just PRs, but you’ll start missing submax percentages as well. The reason for this isn’t necessarily because you’re overtrained (you might be, but it’s unlikely), it’s because you’ve done what you were supposed to do: you’ve adapted. In fact, you’ve adapted so well that your brain doesn’t see the need to continue to adapt. When this happens, it’s time to move on to a new movement.
To combat this phenomenon, the Bulgarian Method introduced special exercises. This is actually where Louie got the basis for his special exercises. He understood that using the same modality in perpetuity was a fool’s errand. As long as the underpinnings of the movement remain the same, it will all work to drive up your total.
Rotating movements will allow for a few things:
It keeps you from over-adapting. To adapt to training is to never adapt to training. That’s how we continue to move the needle.
It allows for maximal effort, with varying loads. For example, you’re going to be stronger in a fat bar floor press than in a close-grip incline bench press. Working at 90%+ in both allows for the same effort, but significantly different loads. You can intensify or de-intensify the lift. This means we have a significantly lower need for deload weeks.
It keeps training interesting. Training can be incredibly monotonous when the movements don’t vary. Rotating movements can ensure training stays interesting.
It can be preventative. I harp on the fact that sport specialization is detrimental to athletes, and I’m even more keen on calling out “sport-specific” training as something that leads to injuries. Training in the gym is no different. You simply cannot perform the same movements in perpetuity with no variation and expect to not eventually get hurt.
Those are the reasons we want to rotate the movements within our programs. Below is a list of just a few ideas when it comes to movement variation and special exercises.
The Bench Press
Close Grip Bench Press
Incline Bench Press
Floor Press
Fat Bar Bench Press
Board/Pin Press
The Squat
Front Squat
Safety Bar Squat
Camber Bar Squat
Hex Bar Deadlift (this is a bottom-loaded squat pattern, and I will die on this hill)
The Deadlift
Good Morning
Box Squat and it’s specialty bar variations
Barbell RDL
Rack Pull
There are tons of movements you can utilize here. Your imagination is really the rate-limiting factor. The only real rule here is to ensure that you’re using movements that align with the patterns of the main movements which is most cases is an upper extremity push pattern, a squat pattern, and a hinge pattern. Outside of that pick movements you like doing, and really try to use movements that you’re not great at because chances are, you need the work.
How to Rotate Movements
If you’re running a true Conjugate Method, then there’s really only one way to rotate movements, and that’s to do so every single time that you come into the gym. On your max effort days, you would work up to a new 1RM on a movement, and the next time you come into the gym, you’ll work up to a 1RM on the next movement. If you were creative enough, you could probably go an entire year without actually bench pressing, squatting, or deadlifting and just do variations every time you walk into the gym.
Chances are, though, that as an athlete or someone looking to increase their strength/aesthetic appeal (remember the Conjugate Method was designed for the strongest people in the world to set world records), you won’t be up for working up to singles every time you come in. Most people aren’t built for this, and athletes absolutely shouldn’t be burning so much energy in the gym like this, so don’t feel bad if this is you.
For my athletes, I utilize either a Modified Max Effort Method or my Simple Strength Method. In either case, you’ll be working with the same movement for multiple weeks and using a progressive overload and rep RP approach. I approach these scenarios in a few different ways:
I use an “overload/underload” approach
I use movements that will benefit the athlete at certain times
Overload/Underload Method
If you’re familiar with what a progressive overload is, then you’ll know that the goal is to, over time, increase the weight on the bar as the weeks progress. This overload/underload scheme is designed to do the same. Let’s use the bench press as an example here. I have an athlete who would benefit from increased upper extremity strength and he has a moderate training age. I will pick four movements to work through:
Incline Close Grip Bench Press
Fat Bar Close Grip Bench Press
Floor Press
Board Press
Bench Press
The athlete is going to be weakest in his incline close grip bench press and more than likely strongest in his board press. We start off with an exercise that is below what he is capable of on his main movement (the bench press) with the incline close grip bench press and the fat bar close grip bench press, and progress to movements that he is stronger in than his main movement with the floor press and board press. The fifth movement is his bench press where he should excel because he’s just handled weights that are heavier than he’s capable of on his bench press. There won’t be the “oh shit” factor of holding on to weight that he’s never been exposed to. He’s worked on weak points and handled heavy weight for the last 8-20 weeks, and now he’s primed to crush his old bench press numbers. This is the overload/underload rotation method.
Deload/Reload Method
This method requires a lot more attention to detail as you’re making decisions on an almost weekly basis. The goal is to continue to progress with heavier weights for as long as possible before throwing in a “deload” movement. In this scenario, I would start with lighter movements, and progress to the heaviest possible and only change the plan when it appeared the athlete needed. Here is an example:
Close Grip Bench Press
Incline Dumbbell Bench Press
Swiss Bar Bench Press
Fat Bar Bench Press
Board Press
RFloor Press
—Athlete starts to backtrack due to overtraining/under recovering—
Incline Bench Press
—Back to normal rotation—
Reverse Band Board Press
In the above scenario that “deload” cycle could need to be thrown in anywhere. It could be after the third movement, or fourth movement, or it might actually never come. This “lighter” movement allows for a lighter load on the body, while still allowing the athlete to push maximally. We still get a maximal effort training effect while minimizing breaking down the body via load.
Both of these methods can be (and should be) used with all of your main movements throughout your training. However you decide to utilize this method is completely up to you and your training needs/desires.
Rotating Movements In a Westside-Influenced Template
To wrap this up, you want to rotate main movements the same way you would rotate your accessory work. Nothing works forever and rotating movements in a Conjugate Method template ensures that you’ll continue to move the needle over time, it will help you to stay injury-free, and it will keep your training interesting.
Leveraging your ability to rotate movements is a huge way to create a truly progressive overload in perpetuity. Sure, you might hit some plateaus here and there, but when you do just change the movement and continue to progress in that one. You can use the deload/reload method or the overload/underload method, or hell you can make up your own progressions. That’s the beautiful thing about the Conjugate Method, it’s the thinking man’s template and the rate-limiting factor of your programs success, is your imagination!
