January 7th 2017
Let me start this by saying, I did not… did not ‘train’ at Westside. Louie Simmons and the crew there were gracious enough with their time to allow a lowly independent strength coach come train for one cold January morning session. I cannot thank them enough for the opportunity and knowledge freely given to me. These athletes and coaches are the best in the country and I wanted to know how they got that way. So what did I take away from my 1 cold morning at Westside Barbell?
It all starts with how hard these athletes train. They don’t sit around and BS between sets or complain about their family or financial problems, they lift weights. From start to finish there is no fluff. I’m no stranger to hard work but these guys (and girls) pushed my physical limits from my first working set to my last. With this type of intensity I can see how Westside Barbell has produced so many great strength athletes over the years.
These athletes were not only the hardest working crew I’ve ever seen, but they were also the most encouraging. There was no shortage of cues or encouragement mid lift to make me feel like part of the group. People I had just met were shouting my name encouraging me every set. This showed me that even in an individual performing sport like Powerlifting, this crew was a team and in the heat of battle (training) together. Now I have to point out that this reflection is only of the crew I trained with which consisted of lightweight men and women. The super heavyweights, or behemoths as I call them (in a friendly way), trained together on the other side of the gym. They seemed nice but I was afraid one of them would eat me as an intra-workout snack (they were big enough to do it) if I interrupted their training.
The coaches focused on the details, the right ones. Any coach can point out the most minute and insignificant flaw or calculate every exact weight with exact percentages of accommodating resistance for each lifter. These coaches focused on quality of movement. We were having a dynamic lower body session and instead of running calculations for each lifter, the coaches looked to see if the bar speed matched the outlines of the Westside dynamic method and adjusted for each lifter on the fly. They didn’t slow down the training session changing out bands or finger clicking the calculator on their phones. They let the athlete’s movement dictate the weight, not the other way around. These are the types of details that matter and have relevance in performance.
The accessory work was just as hard as the working sets of the main lift. After doing 125 reverse hypers with weights ranging from 50-270lbs, I was asked how close I was to being finished. I told the coach I didn’t know I just filed in and started doing sets of 10-15. She asked me if I had failed yet. I told her no, which was the wrong answer. I was then instructed to perform 5 sets to failure… after 125 reps. I blacked out somewhere after the first set and went on autopilot. When I came to I was gasping for air and waddling around like a penguin. We went on to train quality reps of banded cambered bar squat good mornings and finished with some Pitshark deadlift lockout holds. Every set just as intense as the last until I was told we were done. The overall idea being that accessory work makes you stronger at the main lift. So they attacked these with the same intensity as they did for their main lifts.
Overall the 4 hour drive in the middle of a snowstorm was well worth the price of admission. My one cold morning at Westside was a good reminder to keep training intensity high, keep the cues and encouragement abundant, focus on the right details, and push the limits with accessory lifts. The rest will take care of itself. I can’t thank Louie Simmons and the crew at Westside enough for the training opportunity and hope to one day be able to return the favor.
Louisville Strongman 