Directed Variation

Note: This is written for beginners not so much for you super bad asses, so if it doesn’t apply let it fly. But hopefully everyone can find a little gem to takeaway.

Training, to be maximally successful, needs to be planned and analyzed. Going to the gym and doing what “feels right” is only going to get you so far, and let’s be honest… your feelings are usually fucking wrong. Sometimes what “feels” awful is just what is needed. On a similar note doing what your gym partner is doing might be well and good; in fact it might be a great workout… and still not really contribute much toward your overall goal. There are a lot of “great workouts” that don’t really yield much in the way of progress (unless your goal is just a workout).

Training with Purpose is training with a goal; you are training with a specific destination and endpoint in mind. For me that direction is a 600lbs squat and 500lbs bench press. Everything I do needs to be directed toward that goal. I am reaching a point where it is becoming increasingly important to plan my workouts, analyze the lifts, and try to graph my progress so I can see what is truly working and what is not. Thinking along these lines brings me to Directed Variation.

Directed Variation is variation for the sake of targeting specific muscles that are limiting factors in the successful execution of a lift. This is differentiated from what many Conjugate (Westside) trainers do and perform variations on ME lifts to avoid the Law of Accommodation (Meaning that decreasing adaption will occur to repeated stimulation /execution of the same lift to a point where you will ultimately regress).

While I am not denying the Law of Accommodation, I am saying that it can be carried too far. I have experienced, and continue to see several things happening:
1) Lack of technique and proficiency with a lift’s performance due to too much variation. You are competing in a bench press, not a press with chains, bands, off a board, or with 10 different specialy bars.
2) Marginally small Fitness increases. Sure you went from a 315lbs bench to a 325lbs… 10lbs PR. But why? Sure fitness increased, but was it as much as it could have? What was the driving force behind the change?
3) Oh… Variation… Let’s do a reverse band, with a sling shot, with a chain hanging from it… Wait what the FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!?

Directed Variation is a simple concept that I am starting to execute in my training methods. What I love is it gets rid of the “variation for the sake of variation.” Everything you do is for the purpose of increasing your fitness in a lift, so for example bench press.

I am a relatively slow bencher when it comes to moderate loads, but very fast with light loads. I failed my last max effort attempt (470lbs) at the top where his triceps were unable to fire enough to lock out the weight. I also has very weak Lats.

What can we program just starting off looking at the top scenario?
1) Let’s increase speed. Performing Speed Work at higher and higher intensity, training to be able to move a larger load at faster speeds will help with explosion after the pause.
2) Continue to train heavy bench above 75% 1RM to continue to make strength gains and not lose fitness levels
3) Work on force development with paused weight (pin presses). The more force development that can be generated (speed) the more likely the bar speed will help carry the lift through sticking points.
4) Increase tricep strength in the range of the failed bench. This would be 2boards, 3rdboards, which most directly mimics the area in which the lift failed.

What about the Lats? Well according to Directed Variation the lats will not be a primary training focus in this training. The Lat had nothing to do with the failed lift. Why expend extra energy? This does not mean I am not going to train lats, it does mean I am not going to take volume away from training what can fix my lift so that I can train something that wasn’t much of a contributing factor.

Notice we are “Training the Weaknesses” but the approach is directed to once the weaknesses manifest. We all have a lot of weaknesses and training various weaknesses just because they are “weaknesses” is going to have minimal carryover to increasing fitness. Train your dominant drivers, your muscle movers and worry about the weaknesses once they manifest. Don’t expect 10,000lbs of volume on a weakness that yields a 3% increase in your 1RM when you could have spend that same 10,000lbs of volume training your bread and butter which yields a 5% increase in your 1RM.

My goal here is to identify strengths and work those strengths until weaknesses become limiting factors to a point where extra volume needs to be spent correcting those weaknesses in a manner that will have the highest carryover to my lifts performance.

The goal is NOT to engage in variation and weaknesses training in the hope that we will have a carryover of a meaningful amount because we are more “well rounded.”
-Kyle Brown




Pink Dumbbells make me feel hugeeee