Supplementary exercises are movements that closely resemble the competition squat, bench press and deadlift, but with small changes that aim to target technical and/or muscular weak points. Examples include pause squats, close grip bench press, deficit deadlifts, etc. All these movements are 1-2 degrees separated from the main lifts, but are ultimately close relatives.
We put a lot of stock in these exercises because they’re powerful teaching tools. Whether we’re coaching lifters in person or online, a well-chosen supplementary exercise is going to be a more effective teacher than we could ever be by simply giving verbal feedback.
I like to use a few rules when choosing supplementary exercises for an individual lifter. By following these rules, we have the best chance of choosing a movement that has direct carryover to the lifter’s main lifts so we’re not spinning our wheels.
Improves Technique of Competition Lift
First and foremost, we want to choose supplementary lifts that improve the lifter’s competition squat, bench and deadlift technique. This is pretty simple, because identifying technical breakdown is not difficult. Nobody’s perfect. We all have some degree of technical breakdown when we use maximal loads (see our recent content about Tinkering with Technique and Absolute vs. Technical Maxes), and we use supplementary lifts to improve those weaknesses.
If we choose the right supplementary lift, it should be very challenging for the lifter. They should have to put a high degree of mental and physical effort to prevent technical breakdown and slipping into bad habits. If a supplementary lift is easy-breezy, it’s the wrong exercise.
Some recent examples from our group:
Tim: Squat to pins to maintain vertical bar path. Tim uses a very narrow stance and a lot of forward knee travel when he squats. He has less forgiveness for bar path errors than someone who uses a lower bar position and leans forward more. Squat to pins engrains the feeling of a vertical bar path and keeping the bar over the midfoot.
Randy: Floor press to prevent early elbow flare. If Randy doesn’t really focus on keeping vertical forearms as he lowers the bar, he’s gonna have a tough time even with lighter weights.
Hilary: Deficit deadlifts to build speed off the floor. Hilary has a very fast deadlift setup so she has to develop tension almost instantly. The extra range of motion forces her to self-organize quickly and punch the gas, or she’ll get stuffed as the bar hits midshin.
Tangible Increase in Competition Lift 1RM
I’ve talked about the usefulness of tracking estimated 1-rep maxes, and I think it’s important to objectively measure whether a supplementary lift is having an impact on the competition lifts. If you’re not tracking E1RMs and only assess a supplementary lift’s effectiveness when you attempt a true 1RM (only a few times a year for most of us), you could potentially be wasting weeks and months of training using exercises that don’t work well for you.
Further reading: Using Estimated 1RMs to Set Process Goals
If we’ve chosen the right supplementary lift, I expect to see a weekly increase in strength in the supplementary lift AND a jump in competition lift E1RM within 2-3 weeks as the lifter learns the necessary technical improvements. It probably won’t happen immediately because it often takes a couple exposures to the supplementary lift for main lift improvements to occur. But if the supplementary lift is going up and the main lift E1RM stagnates for 3 weeks or so, swap out the supplementary lift. It’s probably the wrong choice for you.
And remember, specificity =/= carryover. Just because a supplementary lift is very specific to the main lift (i.e., pause deadlift), you might not see carryover to your main lifts. You might have to add an additional wrinkle to make it less specific (i.e., change the squat stance, change the bench press range of motion, change the bar you’re deadlifting with, etc.) to get the competition E1RM to go up. Be objective in your measurements.
Increases Muscle Mass of the Working Muscle Groups
Mass moves mass. Adding more cross-sectional area to the muscle groups that move that bar gives us more force production potential. Sometimes, when you’ve exhausted your technique improvements, you’ve just gotta get bigger.
Some items on the hypertrophy checklist:
- Should be able to hit 0-3 RIR in an 8-20 rep range
- Should have a pronounced eccentric component (i.e., RDLs are a better choice than deadlifts or hip thrusts)
- Target muscle group should fail before anything else (i.e., Hatfield squats vs. back squats)
- Should create more muscular soreness than joint soreness (i.e., if your elbows are more tender than your triceps, pick a different exercise)
An example here would be Cassi and stiff-leg deadlifts. Cassi has always been one of our top deadlifters, but early back rounding off the floor limited her ability to navigate maximal weights at lockout. That, plus her history of knee pain, suggested that we needed to add mass to her hamstrings so she could maintain her hip position at the start of the deadlift.
Once we started doing stiff-leg deadlifts, she immediately reported notable DOMS in her hamstrings and NOT her lower back. And even better, her top deadlift singles immediately shot into the 360-370 range, approaching all-time PR territory.
Choose Wisely
When you see a supplementary lift in your program, it’s not just chosen at random. There’s been careful thought put into how that lift will transfer to what you need to work on to improve your competition lift. And if it’s really hard and you hate it, just know that you probably really need it.