It’s common sense that to build strength a person needs to, one way or another, use heavier and heavier weights. Compound exercises such as squats, dead lifts and bench presses are hugely popular in bodybuilding and strength training as a way of building strength and muscle mass because of the huge amount of weight which it allows a person to handle by comparison to lighter assistance exercises. As such, people tend to get blinkered believing these are the only exercises to focus on. I’ve even seen on many bodybuilding and strength training forums people recommend to others they just stick to big, basic compound exercises for this reason. People need to know this is a big mistake, and I’ll explain why.

In strength training in particular, it’s all about getting stronger – not about muscle size for the sake of it. You are, as they say, only as strong as your weakest link. That means, you could in effect have everything required to have a very impressive bench – but one lagging muscle group prevents you from ever doing so. If you simply bench press in order to get a bigger bench, this won’t cut it. You need to try to analyze which part of a lift you are struggling with, do research, find out what body parts are the likely culprits for holding you back, select a big array of assistance exercises to rotate on a weekly or fortnightly basis and hit that lagging body part hard.

Ultimately, strength is the sum of many parts. If you neglect the parts, you will never come close to realizing your ultimate potential.

One of the biggest proponents of assistance exercises – and lots of them – is Louie Simmons of Westside Barbell. Louie realized long ago that the best leaps in strength come from working on weak muscles in a targeted way, and knows that when a person fails to make a lift, it’s because a certain muscle group wasn’t strong enough. It’s all about identifying which muscle group failed you and making it stronger by direct assistance work.