Adapting the Conjugate System for Strongman Training: Max Effort Method Explained
Introduction: How to Adapt the Conjugate System for Strongman Training
The Conjugate System, developed and popularized by the legendary Louie Simmons at Westside Barbell, is one of the most powerful and versatile strength training approaches in existence. Originally designed for powerlifting, this system’s use of rotating exercises, heavy lifting, and dynamic work has produced some of the strongest powerlifters in history. But what if you could adapt this proven system to make it work for strongman training—a sport that demands strength in a wider variety of movements, often with multiple complex phases?
This blog post will take you deep into how the Max Effort Method, a core component of the Conjugate System, can be adapted for strongman events like the Log Clean and Press, the Atlas Stone Load, and the Yoke Walk. We'll discuss the importance of breaking down strongman lifts into their multiple phases, developing an Exercise Tree for your target movements, and how to potentiate each phase to ensure you’re improving all aspects of your performance. Whether you're a beginner or intermediate strongman athlete, this guide will show you how to maximize the Conjugate System for your sport and take your training to new heights.
Breaking Down the Conjugate System
The Conjugate System is based on the idea of conjugating (rotating) exercises so that athletes can continue to grow without hitting a plateau or developing overuse injuries. This is done through a combination of four main training components:
Max Effort (ME) Method: Lifting maximal weights—usually 100%+ of a lifter's one-rep max (1RM). The idea here is to develop absolute strength by taxing the nervous system and learning how to strain against heavy loads.
Dynamic Effort (DE) Method: Performing lifts with submaximal weight but at high speed. This method helps develop explosiveness and teaches athletes how to generate force quickly—a critical component in any athletic endeavor.
Repeated Effort (RE) Method: Using repetition work to target specific muscle groups and develop muscles. This not only helps with muscle size but also targets weaker areas that may be limiting performance.
Special Exercises: A vast range of accessory and supplemental lifts designed to address individual weak points, reduce injury risk, and increase movement efficiency. Louie Simmons even invented a number of different pieces of strength training equipment still manufactured today.
How the Conjugate System Works for Powerlifting
The Conjugate System was designed with powerlifting’s big three movements in mind: the squat, bench press, and deadlift. Each week, athletes rotate through variations of these lifts to focus on different aspects of strength and technique. The system’s emphasis on rotating maximal effort movements keeps training fresh and forces lifters to adapt, ultimately avoiding plateaus and continuing progression.
For example:
Over the course of a 6-week span on their max effort training days, athletes might use three different good morning variations, two squat variations, and a deadlift variation in no particular order.
For dynamic effort, they could use bands or chains to create resistance that accommodates the strength curve, improving both speed and strength through the weakest parts of the lift.
The Conjugate System’s core strength lies in its ability to build and maintain multiple athletic qualities simultaneously. Powerlifters don’t just get stronger—they get faster, more explosive, and better able to withstand the stress of heavy training.
The Max Effort Method
The Max Effort (ME) Method is the backbone of the Conjugate System and a key contributor to developing absolute strength. It’s all about lifting the heaviest weight possible—usually close to 100% or more of your one-rep max (1RM)—in a wide variety of lifts and variations. This approach trains the central nervous system to recruit as many motor units as possible, resulting in increased overall strength.
The Specifics of the Max Effort Method
The goal of the Max Effort Method is to push the body to adapt by consistently putting it under maximal loads. Each week, the lifter selects an upper body and lower body variation of one of the three big lifts and performs it to a true one-rep max. This emphasis on working up to the absolute heaviest weight forces both the body and the mind to adapt to the challenges of extreme load.
Key specifics of the Max Effort Method include:
One Upper and One Lower Body Movement per Week: Typically, lifters will perform a max effort upper body movement (such as a variation of the bench press) and a max effort lower body movement (like a deadlift or squat variation) each week. For powerlifting, it’s almost always a variation of the bench, squat, and deadlift.
Different Variation Each Week: Each week, a new variation of the primary lift is chosen to target different weak points and prevent overuse injuries. For example, a lifter might alternate between box squats, pin squats, and front squats to continuously challenge the body in different ways.
Chosen the Morning of the Workout: When the athletes would meet before the workout, Louie Simmons would inform them what the exercise would be for the day. I have to believe that Louie was deciding what the variation would be based on what he thought would be best for the crew, but some will say that the variation was chosen at random.
Intra- and Intermuscular Coordination
The Max Effort Method works by stressing the body in a very specific way, creating a very specific adaptation. Calling upon all motor units to come together and work at the highest capacity the body can manage creates:
Intramuscular Coordination: This refers to the ability of a single muscle to contract more efficiently by increasing motor unit recruitment. When you lift at or near your max, your body is forced to fire more motor units and produce greater force. Over time, this improves the efficiency of the targeted muscle itself.
Intermuscular Coordination: This involves improving the ability of different muscles to work together. For compound lifts like the squat or deadlift, multiple muscles need to work in harmony. Training with maximal weights helps synchronize the movement patterns of the involved muscles, making the lifter more efficient and powerful.
Learning to Strain
One of the most valuable lessons of the Max Effort Method is learning how to strain under heavy loads. When you attempt a 1RM, it’s often not about how easily you can lift the weight but how effectively you can push through those moments when the lift stalls or gets tough. Louie Simmons always emphasized the importance of "learning to strain"—that is, developing the mental and physical fortitude to fight against the weight, even when the lift seems impossible.
I personally refine the definition of strain to mean moving maximal weights at very low speeds with minimal technical decay. The idea is to continue to work through reps as the speed slows without allowing your brain to panic and create faults in the technique. In this way, straining is a skill that goes deeper than just developing the subconscious recruitment of motor units. You’re teaching discipline to create very specific technical adaptations.
Extrapolating Past SBD
The squat and the bench are both lifts with a single dynamic phase. There is one eccentric and one concentric. Down and up. That’s it.
The deadlift is even less complicated, with arguably just a single concentric component.
In my opinion, that made exercise selection for max effort day much more simple. Exercises would either be builders or testers that developed specific muscle groups, always chasing a strain. Now don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t dilute the genius of the method or make the training system less valuable.
What I do think it means is that if we’re going to apply the concepts to competition exercises with multiple phases, the approach is going to have to be more nuanced. We’re going to have to target specific portions of the exercises when we create the strain, so that the intra- and intermuscular coordination that we develop is building on the weakest part of the exercise. If we’re going to utilize conjugate training for strongman, we have to acknowledge that a large number of the exercises have multiple steps to complete them and adjust our exercise selection strategy accordingly.
Thinking About the Max Effort Method Differently
The Max Effort Method is exceptionally effective for building absolute strength, but traditional powerlifting and strongman are two very different beasts. There’s a lot of crossover in that absolute strength in the deadlift is frequently a necessity for success in strongman competitions, but the fact that press events usually start at the ground is a massive deviation from the world of powerlifting.
When you see a log press in a competition, there aren’t going to be any racks you can use to get it to your shoulders. If you have to press an axle overhead, you’ll have to figure out how to get it from below your knees to your shoulders all on your own. The bench press isolates the press, whereas any strongman overhead press is going to incorporate other techniques you’ll need to master before the press even begins.
Strongman Events Are Multi-Phased
Most strongman events involve multiple phases or transitions that each require specific strength qualities. Let’s take a few examples:
Loading Implements: Whether it's stones, sandbags, or kegs, a loading event requires both a pick and a load. Each of these parts demands different strengths—hinge strength to get the implement off the floor, torso strength to hold the implement in space, and squat strength to extend the implement through the load.
Carries and Lifts: Carries like the farmer’s walk or yoke start with a heavy deadlift, then move to an extended carry over a certain distance. You may have the strength to carry the implement, but if you don’t have the strength to deadlift the implement, you’ll never get the chance.
Pressing Movements: In most press events, the object you’re pressing will start on the floor. You’re going to have to clean it, then get it to the front rack before you can create force with your legs and drive it up overhead. Weaknesses can manifest in every step and limit the amount of weight that ends up over your head.
Targeting Weak Points in Multi-Phased Movements
The biggest challenge in applying the Max Effort Method to strongman is understanding that you need to stress specific phases of the lift, rather than just focusing on the overall movement. Each phase of a strongman event can be the point of failure, and if you don’t address the weak points individually, you’re leaving progress on the table.
This means that on Max Effort days, you’re not just targeting the lift itself. Instead, you need to look at where things tend to break down and work to improve that particular piece.
As I write this post, the Odin’s Boys program is currently working through a quarter that will culminate in testing of the Log Clean and Press. For that lift in particular, you have to consider the following steps:
Deadlift Off the Floor: The main mistake here is an athlete skipping the step. A lot of times, athletes get in the habit of rowing the log up into the lap and waste a lot of energy in their upper body.
Lap Position: Athletes can have their hips too high, making it hard to initiate the clean.
The Clean: There are a number of issues that can manifest in the clean, but the most common is letting the log slip down the torso as the clean is initiated.
The Front Rack: The log should be sitting on the torso directly over the athlete’s center of gravity. If it isn’t, there will be problems in the dip/drive. Problems here could be mobility, strength, or just be the consequences of a poor clean.
The Dip/Drive: This is another portion of the overall technique that can see a lot of things go wrong. In my opinion, the most common issue is that the hips travel forward and create horizontal movement in the log, ultimately skewing the pressing path.
The Press: Typically, this is the only part of the lift that athletes consider when they prescribe max effort work. Problems can arise when the athlete tries to drive the head through too soon or fails to rotate the shoulder at an appropriate time.
No matter how you try, you can’t break down the powerlifting movements into that many phases that are so distinct and separate from the others. That’s why it is so much easier to conceptualize the Max Effort Method for the bench press, and why it can seem so difficult to come up with effective variations to use in the log press.
The Importance of No Technical Decay
When we talk about learning to strain, in powerlifting it means pushing through when the lift gets tough, without breaking down the form. In strongman, that still applies, but you’re often dealing with more complex movements that have a higher potential for technical decay. It’s not just about getting the weight up—it's about moving through different positions while maintaining control.
That’s why I refine my definition of "strain" for strongman to mean moving maximal weights at very low speeds with minimal technical decay. You want to stress each part of the movement and teach yourself to push through fatigue without letting your form fall apart. This involves targeting any phase where a weakness is identified and training specifically to create a complete, confident lift under pressure.
Summarizing the Idea…
Powerlifting allows for a simpler application of the Max Effort Method—because the lifts are simpler. Strongman demands a more nuanced approach due to the compound nature of events, the number of phases in each lift, and the different types of strength required.
To really make a difference and increase the lifter's 1RM in these compound lifts, we have to:
Identify the Weak Phases: Break down the target lift into its individual components.
Select Specific Variations: Choose exercises that attack the weak phases to build targeted strength.
Potentiate Over Time: Build these variations in an order that prepares the body to potentiate (prime) the next phase of development.
By breaking down each strongman lift into its different parts, you ensure that you’re not only getting stronger but also developing strength that is specific to the demands of your event—maximizing performance without unnecessary technical breakdowns.
Exercise Trees: Building a Strongman Training Plan from the Ground Up
The idea of an Exercise Tree helps you think through the relationship between different movements in your training program. This structured approach ensures that every exercise you include is working toward improving your target lift, with each layer of exercises reinforcing the one above it. For strongman athletes, developing these exercise trees is particularly valuable because of the multi-phased nature of the competition events.
An exercise tree is essentially a hierarchical system that breaks down your target event into different levels, ensuring each exercise is chosen based on its ability to create specific adaptations. It is a tool that should help you conceptualize how you train for your competition event, and then organize your work within your program. We can break this tree into three levels:
The Top Level: Your Target Exercise
The Second Layer: Your Supplemental Exercises
The Third Layer: Your Accessory Exercises
The Top Level: Your Target Exercise
The top of the exercise tree is your target exercise—the lift that you’re ultimately working to improve. In powerlifting, these are straightforward: the squat, bench, or deadlift. For strongman, the target exercise will always be the specific competition lift, as described in the event details. This could be something like:
Log Clean and Press for Max Reps
Atlas Stone Load to a Platform
Max Distance Yoke Walk
These are the movements that must be dominated on competition day, and everything in the training program revolves around getting better at these target lifts.
The Second Layer: Your Supplemental Exercises
The second layer of your exercise tree is where things start to get more creative. These are compound exercises that have a high transfer to your target exercise. They are often used as the main movement on Max Effort or Dynamic Effort days and serve a specific purpose: to improve a weak link in the target exercise or help reinforce the entire movement.
If the competition exercise has multiple phases, then the supplemental exercises that you list should incorporate all of the phases in some capacity, especially as you get closer to the competition. Using a push press performed out of the rack as a supplemental lift in the last 6 weeks is not a good idea if you’re going to have to clean the implement in the contest.
These supplemental exercises can be builders—exercises designed to attack a specific problem or weakness in the exercise. The bulk of your supplemental exercises should be builders, so you’re spending most of your time getting better. I'd recommend that at least 2 out of every 3 Max Effort exercises be builders that make you better.
These supplemental exercises can also be testers—exercises designed to be used on a routine basis to let you know if you’re headed in the right direction. In my programs, these are the more vanilla variations of exercises that aren’t really honing in on any specific issue. Continuing with the log clean and press example, testers might be a Log Clean and Strict Press, or a Log Clean and Strict Press if you compete with a jerk technique.
The Third Layer: Your Accessory Exercises
The third layer of the exercise tree consists of accessory exercises. These are typically isolation or smaller compound movements that have a high transfer to your supplemental exercises. The idea here is to build specific muscles or address weaknesses that could indirectly affect your performance in the target lift.
Each accessory exercise should tie to one of your supplemental exercises and have a high transfer. Thinking about accessories in this way might be helpful in identifying holes in your training. It can be difficult to see how accessories will help to improve the competition event when you don’t have the supplemental exercise to bridge the gap.
The goal of these accessory exercises is to round out your strength and prevent any gaps from holding back your progress. They fill in the missing pieces that make your supplemental exercises more effective, which in turn improves your target lift.
How to Design Your Exercise Tree
Start with Your Competition Exercise at the Top of the Tree:
From there, you have to do some technical analysis and self-reflection to determine what is limiting your performance in that exercise. Look at the exercise in phases and really work hard to think through why you might be struggling. From there, you should try to come up with 3-5 exercises that will stress that issue. These will become your supplemental exercises.
Analyze Each Supplemental Exercise:
Repeat the process on each of those supplemental exercises—analyze them and figure out why you might be struggling with them. Then come up with exercises that will stress that issue to create an adaptation that strengthens the supplemental movement.
Build Multiple Exercise Trees:
You can build multiple exercise trees for the same exercise, breaking them up to focus on different portions of the exercise. I’ll show you what I mean below.
Potentiation and Exercise Scheduling
Once you have your supplemental exercises, you need to schedule them in order such that you potentiate each exercise. You want each exercise to benefit from the one before it and to make the one after it even better—right up until the final competition exercise performed at the contest. That means keeping things general early on, getting more and more specific each week.
At the end of the program, I want to be able to work on straining through heavy presses. That means that the lift can’t be limited by any of the other elements. That means working on the other pieces early, setting the stage for heavy work in the last few weeks.
Download an Example
I built a few exercise trees for you to download that address different issues in the Log Clean and Press. In addition, I put them in order in a way that will build up to the final testing. You can use these exercises in order, or use the blank Exercise Tree to build your own.
Click the button below to snag it for yourself.
Max Effort Work and Odin’s Boys
Odin’s Boys is ATR’s subscription Strongman Program, published weekly to the subscribers through TrainHeroic. We use a conjugate template with both a max effort upper and a max effort lower day. I use these principles to schedule the max effort work for that program.
Each year is 52 weeks, so I break Odin’s Boys up into four 13-week quarters. There are 12 weeks of max effort exercises that build week over week to a final testing exercise in week 13. The upper exercise is always going to be some variation of the log clean and press, or the axle clean and press. The lower exercise is always going to be some version of the deadlift.
If you want to see the Max Effort Method in action, feel free to check it out. The button below will take you to the info page of the website. Just signing up for a one-week free trial will get you three of my E-Books as well. Nothing to lose! 12 weeks of max effort variations to build to the final week, all built on the principles above.
Conclusion: Building Strongman Success with the Conjugate System
The Conjugate System was revolutionary in the world of powerlifting, but with some important adaptations, it becomes just as powerful for strongman training. By using the Max Effort Method to target specific phases of your lifts, and developing a structured Exercise Tree that addresses your weak points, you can turn complex, multi-phase strongman events into strengths. Learning to strain effectively, reducing technical decay, and carefully layering your exercises to potentiate over time are all crucial steps in maximizing performance on competition day.
Remember, building absolute strength is just one part of the journey. True strongman success comes from understanding the complexity of each movement, identifying weaknesses, and attacking them systematically. If you want to see how these principles work in a complete program, check out Odin's Boys, our structured strongman training plan that follows these methods quarter by quarter. You can even grab some of our free resources, like the Log Clean and Press Exercise Tree, to start building your own winning strategy. Let’s get stronger, smarter, and ready for anything that competition day throws your way.