How To Build Muscle For Olympic Weightlifting: The Complete Guide to Accessory Work
If you want to lift a ton of weight, you need to have some muscle on you.
This seems like an obvious thing to say, but in practice, olympic weightlifters love to hate building muscle. It’s not as sexy as working on your snatch or hitting a heavy squat, and while those are absolutely a necessary part of olympic lifting, you can’t ignore the fact that you are going to hit a hard brick wall if you don’t take the time to build a strong foundation.
That’s why accessory work is SO important for weightlifters.
But most weightlifters are doing it wrong.
P.S. you can get my free Accessories101: Guide for Weightlifters here!
Not All Accessory Work Is Created Equal
Believe it or not, you can’t just do accessory work and expect to get maximum results.
That would be like an amateur investor thinking they can drop 20 bucks into robinhood and get the same returns as someone who lives and breathes investing. How you do it matters more than simply going through the motions.
So here’s four tips for you to get the most out of your accessory work so you can…
Build more muscle
Stop wasting time in your training
Make progress on your lifts for longer
But it’s not going to be easy, so I want to make sure you know this - you’re going to have to work hard.
If you can do that, then you will make way more gains than everyone else you know. Strap in.
Accessory Work Tip #1: Full Range Of Motion
This shouldn’t even need to be said in 2024, but full ROM is king when it comes to building muscle for weightlifting.
The olympic lifts require some of the most extreme range of motion in any strength sport. That’s why so many people are obsessed with mobility. But once you have enough mobility to perform the olympic lifts correctly, you need to get STRONG through a full range of motion.
And the best way to do that is train every lift you do through a full range of motion.
By training every lift through a full range of motion, you are developing strength at the most extreme positions, which allows you to be confident in your olympic lifts, get away with some crazy saves if needed (though you should avoid this if possible), and in the time where you end up in some crazy situations with your lifts, you can be better prepared for it and reduce the risk of injury.
One of the simplest ways to make sure you are training through a full range of motion is to focus on feeling the stretch of the target muscle.
While it can help for max strength lifts to focus on moving the bar from point A to point B, when it comes to building muscle, I’ve found it much better to focus on feeling the stretch of the muscle you are working. If you do this you can make sure you have the proper technique for the movement AND you’ll load the muscle at its most lengthened position which will lead to more muscle growth.
Now, just training through a full range of motion isn’t enough. You’ll also want to make sure you add in one thing that will skyrocket how effective full ROM is, that’s where the next tip comes in.
Accessory Work Tip #2: Control The Eccentric
If full ROM training is the king, then controlling the eccentric is the queen who actually gets shit done.
The eccentric, or lowering portion of the lift is one of the easiest thing we can immediately focus on to lead to more muscle growth. While time under tension isn’t inherently the reason why you will build muscle, we do know that purposefully moving slow through the eccentric phase of any exercise will build more muscle than moving slow on the concentric (lifting phase).
We also know that moving slow on the concentric phase may also lead to a lower ability to move fast on the concentric, which is sort of the name of the game in olympic weightlifting.
So if you want to build more muscle with the accessory work you’re already doing, try adding in a 3-4 second tempo on the way down for each rep. Let me be clear here, this will feel like torture. Moving slow is not fun. It will not feel good, but it will give you some of the biggest gains you have ever had. If you can learn to love the suffering, you will build more muscle than you ever thought possible.
And as a side note, if you have a 4 second eccentric, don’t spend three of those seconds at the top half of the movement. That’s easy. Anyone can go slow there. Spread the tempo across the whole movement, but primarily focus on the last couple of inches of your range of motion and you will feel the difference immediately.
Now, you can train with a full range of motion and control the eccentric but feel like you didn’t really do anything at all afterwards unless you pay attention to tip #3.
Accessory Work Tip #3: Go Heavy!
Everyone loves to go heavy on the big lifts.
Snatching heavy? Fun.
Squatting heavy? Cool.
But when it comes to accessory work, suddenly everyone is grabbing the twenty pound dumbbells like they didn’t just squat 400 pounds. Give me a break!
If you aren’t using heavy enough weight for your accessory work, you are wasting your time.
Here’s how I make sure everyone on my program chooses the right weight for their accessory work. In each of my programs, I provide a target rep range for each set. For example, it may be Dumbbell Chest Fly for 3 sets of 6-10 reps.
However, I apply the condition that if they are able to achieve all ten reps, they MUST go heavy enough so that it is difficult to get more than 6 reps. Then for each set, they may be able to get something like 7 reps on set one, six reps on set two, and then catch a second wind and get 10 reps on set three. Here’s the kicker - they chose a weight that they initially thought they could barely do for the prescribed rep range, and then somehow managed to get a few extra reps in without letting their technique break down.
This happens all the time because just like we can get scared of a PR snatch attempt, we can get scared and underestimate ourselves for our accessory exercises too. You just have to spend enough time with the movement with heavy enough weights that you can teach yourself that it’s ok, and you can actually do a lot more than you thought!
But just going heavy on one workout isn’t enough, because I hate to break it to you…
You’re going to adapt. You’re going to get stronger. That’s where the final tip comes in.
Accessory Work Tip #4: Make Progress
One of the most famous squat programs in the world, The Texas Method, popularized the idea of adding weight to your lifts every week.
This idea was that if you did the same exercise, set, and rep scheme, and simply added a small amount of weight each week, you would adapt, get stronger, and become capable of lifting more weight, and then the cycle would repeat itself. This is called a linear progression.
This works pretty damn well for beginners, and applies to more than just squats.
However, we can take the idea of a linear progression and find more ways than increasing weight to make progress over time. This is important because certain exercise that target smaller muscles or muscle groups may be more resistant to weekly weight increases, so we have to get creative with ways to make progress while continuing to adapt.
There are several ways to make progress in a linear fashion, however the most important for building muscle are…
Increasing weight
Increasing reps
Increasing sets
Increasing control
For example, let’s say you’re following my OlyBuilding Program and you have three sets of 6-10 reps of a Dumbbell Pullover. You can do this workout for week one with a 40lb dumbbell, feel a little sore, but recover just fine, and on week two, you use a 45lb dumbbell. Maybe this week it’s pretty hard, and you’re very sore the next few days, so instead of choosing a 50lb dumbbell for all of your sets on week three, you just use it for one set, then drop back down to the 45lbs dumbbell for the remaining sets. This is still progress, even if it’s not as fast as we may want.
Let’s use the same example and say that you did the three sets of 6-10 reps with a 40lb dumbbell on week one, but you could barely squeeze out the sixth rep on each set, and on the last set your technique was pretty rough on the last rep. Instead of increasing the weight the following week, you could stick with the same weight and see if you can get one more rep on each set, or even just the first set! This will lead to progress, and potentially also have a greater impact on increasing your strength AND help you build more muscle.
Now let’s say you tried to get a few extra reps on that first set, but it just wasn’t happening. Another option you have is to simply add another set, because chances are if you can do three sets of six, you are probably likely to be capable of a fourth. This isn’t the case in all instances, but a large majority of the time, lifters who struggle to increase weight or reps have a high tolerance for training volume, and adding an extra set is the way to go! In fact, when one of my lifters competed for team USA in Colombia, I roomed with one of the best coaches in the country. He was churning out multiple team usa lifters all the time, and he mentioned that he used this exact method with many of his lifters who were in the same boat to the point where some athletes where doing up to ten sets of an accessory exercise with near maximal weight for the rep range, and it was working incredibly well!
Another situation you might find yourself in is struggling to maintain a slow eccentric on your accessory work. Maybe you went a bit too heavy, and by rep four out six, you couldn’t maintain the control that you need. So instead of increasing weight, reps, or sets, you could actually just try to maintain your control on the eccentric for the whole set. This is particularly great for stubborn muscles/muscle groups that have a hard time getting stronger, and one of my personal favorite methods. I have a tendency to stick with one accessory exercise for multiple weeks, often 8-16 weeks before switching things up, and I may stick with the same weight for four weeks at a time, and just aim to move the weights a little bit slower, a little bit more controlled, each week until I feel like I could go heavier or add more reps to the set.
Any of these methods can be used to help you build more muscle and get more out of your accessory work, but which exercises should you prioritize?
Below are my favorite exercises that meet all of the criteria above and are incredible for olympic weightlifters!
My Top Three Accessory Exercises
GHD Sit-Up
The GHD Sit-Up is such an underrated exercise.
Unfortunately it became so associated with crossfit that people overlooked its potential for building muscle, as long as you use the correct technique.
To perform this movement, lean back slowly, controlling the eccentric for 3-4 seconds until you cannot go any further. Then begin to come back up slowly, focusing on curling up one vertebrae at a time, starting from your lower stomach, all the way up your spine.
Benefits of the GHD Sit-Up:
It has the highest range of motion for your core of any exercise I have found
It’s easily loadable, just hold a dumbbell against your chest (start light)
It’s easy to progress! Most people can’t already do a lot of reps or weight from the get go, which means you can make lots of progress for a long time
Romanian Deadlift
I’m not making any waves with this exercise.
It’s widely regarded as one of the best exercises for building a strong posterior chain. However, I’ve found that most weightlifters are grabbing light dumbbells and just going through the motions, wasting their time. But not you, you wouldn’t do that, right?
To perform this movement, hold either a barbell or pair of dumbbells in front of you. With your feet under your hips, bend your knees slightly, and flatten your back. Begin by pushing your hips back and lowering the weight, focusing on feeling a stretch in your hamstrings. Go as far as you can without rounding at the lower back or losing the stretch on the hamstrings, then come back up by squeezing your butt and keeping your lower abs engaged.
Benefits of the RDL:
Big range of motion, and one that you can progress over time by standing on a box.
Easily loadable. Sure, you can use dumbbells, but a barbell is even better as you can load it much heavier, and use straps to help eliminate grip strength as a limiting factor.
It’s easy to progress. This is just as easy to progress as any other main strength exercise. Because it works such a large, strong, muscle group, you can progress the weight fairly easily, along with adding more reps, sets, or control.
Check out the demo video here!
Dumbbell Pullover
The Dumbbell Pullover might be my favorite back exercise.
A lot of people argue about whether its a chest exercise or a back exercise, and to them I would like to say…
WHO CARES?
In my opinion it's a back exercise, and a fantastic one at that. You can get a crazy stretch on the lats as you reach back, and it has some potential to help improve your weightlifting technique (keeping the bar close in the snatch and clean pull is a similar movement).
To perform, lay down on a bench, hold a dumbbell overhead, and slowly reach back as far as possible, feeling a massive stretch in the lats. Make sure not to go past your lat range of motion and compensate by arching your lower back more. Once you hit your end range of motion, bring the dumbbell back to it’s starting position by moving at the shoulder first, not the core.
Benefits of the Pullover:
HUGE range of motion. It’s one of the easiest movements to feel the stretch on, especially back movements.
Easily loadable, just use a dumbbell, or if your gym doesn’t have heavy enough dumbbells, you can use a curl bar with plates.
Easy to progress. Similar to the RDL, there’s a pretty large muscle group used in this exercise, so you can pretty easily increase the weight, volume, or control over time.
Check out the demo video here!
So now that you know all the secrets to building muscle, you have no excuse not to be shredded as hell.
And if you want to dive deeper into accessory work that actually works, then check out my free Accessories101: Guide for Weightlifters here!
But if you love bodybuilding and don’t want it to just be a few exercises at the end of your workout, but ALSO love the olympic lifts, then check out my 8-Week OlyBuilding Program here!
It’s the only program out there designed to EQUALLY train the olympic lifts while getting jacked out of your mind! You’ll not only set PR’s in your Snatch, Clean, and Jerk, but you’ll also build a ton of muscle! Get your copy below!