Accessory Exercises: What’s Their Purpose?
As a coach, I believe that it is extremely important for a lifter to understand why a certain exercise has been included in their program. When a lifter understands the purpose of an exercise, they can execute the exercise in such a way that it achieves that purpose. Furthermore, psychologically they will also have much more buy in to their program when they understand how it is working to shuttle them towards their goals.
The objective of powerlifting is to lift the most weight possible in the powerlifts: the squat, bench press and deadlift. A powerlifting program is therefore written with the primary goal of improving the performance in the powerlifts.
Importantly, when I say “the powerlifts” I mean the powerlifts in their competition forms. This will typically mean a low bar squat, a wider grip bench press and a conventional or sumo deadlift.
Accessory exercises are included in a powerlifting program then to foster the outcome of lifting the maximum load possible in each of the powerlifts. To get better at powerlifting, some may think that all you need to do is squat, bench and deadlift, repeat forever. However this is not the case. While performing the SBD is valuable for improving at them and they are certainly an important part of your program, when performed exclusively they will inhibit your powerlifting performance. That is because they are not the best tools for developing technique, building muscle, nor reducing injury risk. And so, we include other exercises in our program.
Accessory exercises included in a powerlifting program can be loosely divided in to three categories:
Accessories that improve technique of the powerlifts
Accessories that promote hypertrophy
Accessories that reduce injury risk
I’ll discuss these below including how and why exercises achieve these outcomes and examples of accessory exercises that fall within each of these categories.
Accessories that improve technique of the powerlifts.
We have a saying at The Strength Fortress: “you have to move slow to learn fast”. The slower you move the more you can feel out your position throughout the lift, so that you can feel when you shift out of your optimal position and are better able to correct that.
Conversely, performing the powerlifts at speed can be great for maximising the total load moved in that specific set, however when the movement is over in a split second there is no opportunity to feel out where and how technical breakdowns occur.
For this reason we often include the powerlifts performed extremely slowly and/or with pauses as accessory exercises in your program. Paused and and tempo variants are often prescribed with very sub-maximal loads because after all, they are there for the purpose of technique development; not necessarily for strength development.
Some examples of accessory exercises that might be included in your program for the purpose of improving your technique in one of the powerlifts include:
1 count pause squat
4 count eccentric squat
3 count pause bench press
3 count eccentric bench press
3 count to the knee deadlift
Accessories that promote hypertrophy.
The powerlifts are rarely the best exercises to put muscle on our frame. This is for a couple of reasons:
They recruit a huge number of muscles, rather than developing specific muscles in isolation
We spend a lot of time optimising our execution in the powerlifts to make them more efficient; thereby having them far from maximising muscle tension, which is the biggest driver of hypertrophy
But most importantly, they are super ultra fatiguing. We perform the competition powerlifts at very high absolute loads. They are taxing and really wear us out. For this reason, we cannot perform a large number of repeat efforts, we can’t train them with high frequency, and really, there are just better exercises out there that can build our muscles without being totally systemically fatiguing.
The exercises that best promote hypertrophy are those that:
Maximise our range of motion so that it is as long as possible
Place a muscle under maximal tension
Are able to target a specific muscle that we want to develop.
Some examples that we might include in your powerlifting program for the purpose of hypertrophy include the following. I have included some commentary on why a specific exercise may be useful where I think the additional explanation is beneficial.
Pendulum squats — effective primarily because the skill component of barbell squatting is removed so you can push close or even to failure safely. The positioning of the pendulum also has us such that we can squat really freaking deep, thereby loading our quads more than your competition style squat.
High bar squats, heels elevated — same as above re positioning. High bar and heels elevated puts us in a more favourable position to really load our quads, by having us more upright and squatting deeper. Being a “weaker, less efficient” squat variant, we will also use lighter absolute loads, which contributes to less fatigue accumulated in the exercise.
Lunges
Split squats
Leg extension and leg curls — squatting and lunging is taxing. Extremely exhausting actually. Isolation exercises (movement at only one joint, in this case the knee) can be much less fatiguing than compound exercises that occur at multiple joints, like squatting and lunging.
Dumbbell bench press — using dumbbells for bench pressing allows you to access a deeper range of motion, because you aren’t stopped at the depth where the bar hits the chest. You can get even lower. Furthermore in dumbbell exercises, your stronger side isn’t able to support your weaker side, which is positive for muscle balance.
Cable pec flys
Romanian deadlifts — the higher hip position in Romanian deadlifts compared to conventional deadlifts loads our hamstrings more, making these a great hamstring developer. This is a “weaker, less efficient” exercise, which again means we can use lighter absolute loads and the exercise is less fatiguing than a conventional deadlift. The need to control the eccentric somewhat by not dumping the bar to the floor at the bottom of each rep also contributes to increasing the amount of tension applied to your hamstrings across the set — which is a major driver of muscle growth.
Glute ham raise
Round back extensions
Hip thrusts
Lat pull downs
Overhead press
There’s alot….
Accessories that reduce injury risk.
Some exercises in your program don’t really support execution of the powerlifts very directly at all. The squat, bench press and deadlift are very specific skills. They don’t necessarily foster overall athleticism and quality movement. No matter the sport, specialising too much can breed muscular imbalances, weakness, poor mobility and so forth than can over time severely heighten your injury risk.
Therefore some exercises are in your program not to improve your technique, not even to make you stronger, but just to make sure you’re a well-balanced and a well-functioning human. There is no greater contributor to powerlifting success than your ability to train consistently for years on end. And there is no greater block to being able to train for years on end than getting injured. And so, some entirely unspecific exercises are in your prorgram to keep your moving well and to keep your body healthy.
Some examples of these include:
Rear delt flys
Lateral raises
Upside down kettlebell overhead press
Landmine press and reaching exercises
Unilateral hip thrusts
Lateral lunges
Unilateral exercises in general
Planks
Mobility drills
And many more examples that will be relevant for an individual lifter.
Accessory exercises are extremely valuable for powerlifting success. Understanding their role in your program is powerful. When you understand their role, you are better positioned to ensure that you are executing them in a way that they achieve their objective. If you don’t know why an accessory is in your program, ask your coach. Then perform them as best you can. You don’t want to rob yourself of gains because you’re slack with your accessories. Accessories matter… a lot.