Powerlifting Accessories: How Important Are They (Really)?
We’ve all wondered, right? At the midpoint of a hard session, when you’ve just finished half a dozen hard sets of squats and followed that up with volume work for bench, the thought has probably at least crossed your mind, whichever route you ended up going that day: how much to things like hamstring curls, ab wheel rollouts, and tricep pushdowns matter in the big picture?
I think it’s a completely fair question, and one worth examining. The first and arguably the most important thing is to get our definitions straight. Every strength coach tends to speak their own language, so for the purposes of this article, let’s nail down exactly what we mean by an “accessory” lift, before we decide how important it is.
Defining Accessory Lifts
Much of how we classify exercises today is based upon the work of Dr. Anatoliy Bonarchuk, who divided training into the Competition Exercises (CE), Special Developmental Exercises (SDE), Special Preparatory Exercises (SPE), and General Exercises (GE).
In powerlifting, as you can probably guess, our CE’s are the squat, bench press, and deadlift, specifically performed as they would be on the platform (same equipment, stance, bar position, etc). When people refer broadly to “accessories”, they are typically referencing both SPE’s and SDE’s, so let’s further differentiate the two even further.
Special Developmental Exercises (AKA “Accessory Exercises”)
These are things like low pin squats, paused deadlifts, narrow grip bench presses, and safety bar squats. They are actually quite similar to the competition movement in most facets. Verkhoshansky wrote in Supertraining about Dynamic Correspondence, or more broadly, the transferability of an exercise to an athlete’s performance in competition. He detailed Dynamic Correspondence as being comprised of several factors, including the amplitude and direction of movement, the accentuated region of force development, the dynamics of effort, the rate and time of force production, and the regimen of muscular work.
By definition, competition exercises (CE’s) have the most transferability to the platform because the exercise is the same. Accessory exercises such as those listed above tend to tick all or most of the boxes needed to be transferable, and so we can expect them to carry over to our performance on the platform directly, and often substantially.
The reasons for incorporating accessories (SDE’s) are many-fold, but often they can improve a specific function of our ability to execute the competition exercise better than simply doing that lift itself can. For example, we might use pause squats to teach maintaining tension in the hole, or use narrow grip bench press to strengthen the triceps relative to the pecs if it is a lagging muscle group. These exercises can function to improve technique, improve specific weak points, or build the muscles needed to perform the competition exercise.
Special Preparatory Exercises (AKA “Supplemental Lifts”)
These exercises tend to use the same muscle groups as the competition exercises, but are often fundamentally different movement patterns. Examples in this category could include walking lunges, skullcrushers, and prone hamstrings curls. By definition, we would not expect these to contribute as much to our performance on the platform because they do not tick as many of the boxes of correspondence as the SDE’s (they are fundamentally less transferable).
It’s worth noting that Verkoshansky himself differentiates between direct and indirect carryover of exercises. Increasing your squat 5RM by 50 pounds will almost certainly improve your performance on the platform (direct carryover), as will improving your safety bar squat. However, increasing your hamstring curl by 50 pounds will likely not boost your 1RM to the same degree. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing—bigger muscles are indeed capable of producing more force, and the leg curl absolutely is an effective way of growing the hamstrings, which in turn are important in building a big deadlift. It’s just that the transfer is indirect.
So Do They Matter?
There is little debate over the fact that the competition exercises should be included in the training program. In my programs, they are never absent for any appreciable amount of time, and often occur multiple times per week in different rep ranges. Some people are able to successfully construct programs using ONLY the competition exercises, although these have fallen out of fashion in recent years, and it isn’t very hard to see why.
Accessories (SDE’s) provide sufficient variety to improve weak points, stimulate similar adaptations as the competition lifts, and build considerable strength and muscle. Skipping these, by all accounts, is a mistake. I probably make more extensive use of SDE’s than many other coaches do, simply because I find athletes tend to enjoy the variety more over the long term, without compromising any strength gains.
Supplemental exercises (SPE’s) are I think where most people tend to start skipping things anyway. And in fairness, there a plenty of highly successful coaches and programs who include little to no SPE’s of any kind. As stated earlier, these are the exercises that have the least direct carryover the the platform, and are therefore the lowest priority in training apart from General Exercises, such as cardio, which aren’t being discussed in this article (and be honest, you aren’t doing them anyway).
However, I don’t think that makes them not worth doing. One of the biggest things that separates the greatest lifters from the average ones is their amount of muscle mass. True, doing your prescribed supplemental lifts for the sake of building muscle may not get you a squat PR in six weeks—hypertrophy is a process that takes a long time—but doing your accessories regularly over that period will almost certainly result in you having more muscle mass a year from now. And THAT is what makes them worth doing. Delayed gratification can be a tough pill to swallow, and yes, most of your time and energy should be spent on the higher-tier exercises, but skipping the supplemental lifts is, in my opinion, a very shortsighted way of doing things.
Except calves. You can skip those.
