Still Convinced

Still Convinced
By Dan Bailey, PhD, NBCT, NESTA

Gentlemen, the Good Lord has blessed me with being able to keep learning and being in contact with so many people who have the same passion about Strength & Conditioning as I do. But over the years I am amazed at the number of programs that are still using other formats for their workouts. I have spoken at clinics before on the conjugate method and when I do; I speak from 7 years of proven results that are unlike any results from various formats that I have used over the last 20 years. I am not the expert, I love to learn and listen to other people that understand the conjugate method and gain different perspectives on how to maybe approach a certain aspect of the system.
I did not just read and learn the conjugate by trial and error; I went straight to one of the best sources for this system, a protégé of the great Louie Simmons, Jim Wendler, of Elite Fitness Systems. Jim spent countless hours with me by phone and email discussing the format, and then there was my good friend Scott Hines who I spent many hours talking about training high school student-athletes with the conjugate method. I know everyone has their preferences and this format is considered radical to some extreme by some of the “old school” coaches I have spoken with. In my personal opinion, it is a fail safe system to raise the strength and conditioning level of ANY student-athlete. Like most of you who utilize the system, I have tweaked it to fit into my own personal style of teaching and the other considerations that we all have to deal with as strength coaches (equipment, room size, number of students, class time, etc.).
I basically wrote just to say again how much I believe in the system and what it can do for the average highs school student-athlete. I did not get into any specifics, like most of you, I use the basic four days (we refer to max effort as Best Effort), that way the basketball coach does not think we are maxing out every Monday. Mondays and Wednesdays are best effort for lower and upper, we include some aspect of the clean of plyometric on 3 of the 4 lift days. Thursday and Fridays are either dynamic or hypertrophy work for lower and upper body work. We use Tuesday as an active rest and work core, speed and agility, or change of direction work. (As well as clean the weight room, our kids take lots of pride in the weight room).
I listed below the results of a 3A program of 29 varsity football players who were in 1 of 4 classes and compiled their spring max results as a team. None of these are Division I or II players. Maybe 1 or 2 could play Division III, or even II with a little help, but this is the result of 29 average high school football players on the conjugate system for 2 years:

2008 – SPRING FOOTBALL MAX SUMMARY

Ø 16 OUT OF 29 PLAYERS SQUATTED OVER 350 (55%)
Ø 9 OUT OF 29 PLAYERS SQUATTED OVER 405 (31%)
Ø 3 OUT OF 29 PLAYERS SQUATTED OVER 450 (11%)
Ø 17 OUT OF 29 PLAYERS CLEANED 225 OR OVER (59%)
Ø 6 OUT OF 29 PLAYERS CLEANED 250 OR OVER (21%)
Ø 2 PLAYERS CLEANED 315
Ø 12 OUT OF 29 PLAYERS BENCHED 225 OR OVER (41%)
Ø THE AVERAGE SQUAT FOR ALL OF THE 29 PLAYERS WAS 358 LB
Ø THE AVERAGE BENCH FOR ALL OF THE 29 PLAYERS WAS 215 LB
Ø THE AVERAGE CLEAN FOR ALL OF THE 29 PLAYERS WAS 225 LB
Ø THE AVERAGE GAIN ON SQUAT FOR ALL OF THE 29 PLAYERS WAS 38 LB
Ø THE AVERAGE GAIN ON CLEANS FOR ALL OF THE 29 PLAYERS WAS 27 LB
Ø THE AVERAGE GAIN ON BENCH FOR ALL OF THE 29 PLAYERS WAS 17 LB