Guys, Louie is a great coach. What we need to remember is that he coaches powerlifting for gear. But as someone mentioned before, he also coaches crossfit, sprinters, throwers, NFL teams, etc. He is an expert on strength and getting the most out of your strength. I honestly only believe this hate for Louie is coming out of the whole “raw revolution/movement” thats been taking place, where guys hate on geared lifters. Come on, i lift raw and i dont hate geared lifting. Its just different forms of powerlifting. So so what if people think louie couldnt coach without a wide grip bench, or gear or whatever bullshit. The fact of the matter is that you can do that, and he found a way to maximize that potential.
[quote]
Executing form exactly how the lifters do in multi-ply gear when you are a raw lifter
I?ve been to Westside and had Louie yell at me for over tucking my elbows. He?s actually said that I needed to stop tucking so much and start flaring my elbows since I was raw. He?s also told me that I need more pec and lat work since these will contribute more as a wide raw lifter. I bet that wasn?t what you were expecting, huh? At Westside, I was told to start benching with no arch and with my feet up (like a bodybuilder) so that I could build upper body strength. This all happened last November, and at that time my bench was 90 percent leg drive and 10 percent upper body.
However, by March?after about four months of following Louie?s instructions, my bench was up 20 pounds. For the record, I compete at 105 pounds. So a 20-pound increase for a small female on the bench is huge. On the other hand, let?s compare that to when I followed what I thought was the concurrent system (without actually realizing I was so far away from what it really was): my bench stayed the same for two years. So yeah?it was not that the program didn?t work, it was that I didn?t know how to apply it.
Then there?s the squat?Everyone says that Louie wants people to squat ultra wide, but once again, these people haven?t talked to Louie. I was at the Women?s Pro Am this year, and I watched Louie pull aside my old training partner and tell her that, as a raw lifter, she was squatting too wide. Shocked? I?m not. Lou knows lifting, and he knows that squatting too wide with no gear and with weak abductors won?t work out for a big raw squat. He knows that quads play a huge role for raw lifters, and he will tell you that you have to have strong quads if raw is the path you choose to follow. Anyways, back to the story?She listened to him, pulled her stance in, and went from almost getting crushed on a second attempt to smoking a third.[/quote]
This is an excerpt from this article articles.elitefts.com/training-articles/in-defense-of-westside-for-raw-lifters/ by Jennifer Petrosino.
I think a lot of people attribute a lot of things to Westside that they heard about Westside from someone who had no idea what they were talking about, but Louis gets the credit for that some fools idiocy.
“quads are for bodybuilders”
“the benchpress is not a chest exercise”
Louie simmons
[quote]Paul33 wrote:
“quads are for bodybuilders”
“the benchpress is not a chest exercise”
Louie simmons
[/quote]
I assume that you put this here to make Louie somehow seem foolish? Thing is these statements are 100% true when used in a powerlifting context. The Bench press is a whole body movement. Yes the chest is worked but so are a myriad of other muscles. No self respecting powerlifter hits “quads”. We train the movement, aka the Squat in this instance.
[quote]Paul33 wrote:
“quads are for bodybuilders”
“the benchpress is not a chest exercise”
Louie simmons
[/quote]
How much do you squat?
How much do you bench?
Got videos?
[quote]Paul33 wrote:
“quads are for bodybuilders”
“the benchpress is not a chest exercise”
Louie simmons
[/quote]
His full, actual quote on the chest and the BP:
“Commonly known as a chest exercise, the bench is actually a full-body movement when performed correctly.”
And he’s correct. He trains guys benching in gear primarily, and often when writing that is his intended group. Amongst these individuals, it’s often the triceps, lats and upper back that are the limiting factor. Put a raw lifter in front of him who is missing because of a weak chest and he will quickly identify that, select ME and DE variations that help with that weakness, and also focus more accessory work on the chest.
Louie is a scientist, one obsessed with the sport of powerlifting. He has spent his life reading and speaking with any knowledgable source he can have access to. He develops theories pulling ideas from others before him and combining with some of his own ideas. He then tests it in his own massive lab. Much of what he has done is focused on geared powerlifters who are already elite or near elite lifters, so much of what he writes on training will be related to that.
A lot of people fail to realize that the Westside training Louie employs and teaches is not about any set system or specific exercises. He teaches all methods of training and tons of movement variations because there are a whole host of different limitations that may be holding back a lifter , and they require different training methods and exercises to address. Of course a geared lifter who totals in the mid-2000s is going to need to be trained differently than a raw lifter striving to reach 1500 some day. But put either one of them in front of Louie and he has the tools and knowledge needed to make that lifter better.
Hey, any of you guys heard of a dude named Burely Hawk?
[quote]Paul33 wrote:
“quads are for bodybuilders”
“the benchpress is not a chest exercise”
Louie simmons
[/quote]
[quote]StrengthDawg wrote:
[quote]Paul33 wrote:
“quads are for bodybuilders”
“the benchpress is not a chest exercise”
Louie simmons
[/quote]
I assume that you put this here to make Louie somehow seem foolish? Thing is these statements are 100% true when used in a powerlifting context. The Bench press is a whole body movement. Yes the chest is worked but so are a myriad of other muscles. No self respecting powerlifter hits “quads”. We train the movement, aka the Squat in this instance.
[/quote]
no i believe he does that more than adequately himself
“no self respecting powerlifter hits “quads”” except for you know, kirk karwoski, ed coan, etc. fucking hell jeremy hoornstra has an arm day.
[quote]rustypugh wrote:
Hey, any of you guys heard of a dude named Burely Hawk?[/quote]
Well… I gotta say, before his record setting meet Burley Hawk had only trained at Westside for like two months. He built that strength elsewhere. Now in time, if he stays there, Westside may prove very beneficial and help him set PR’s. But we don’t know that yet.
[quote]infinite_shore wrote:
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
But it would be incorrect to say the conjugate method is not used by athletes the world over. Just because they don’t term things the same and don’t use bands or chains or box squats (none of which are fundamental to Westside style training anyways, even though they are all often used) doesn’t mean they don’t use the conjugate method of periodization and organization.
Conjugate methodology is a manner of organization not a list of equipment or a 4 day template or a squat suit or a damn set of bands.[/quote]
I find it peculiar when people say that the “Westside” training approach is NOT really about bands/chains/box squats/frequent ME exercise rotations. I think that is bullshit backpedalling. Of course it is. Why? Because there is NOTHING LEFT after you take all these things from “Westside” that hasn’t been done by almost every serious lifter since the dawn of strength training. “Speed” training, picking assistance exercises to work on (muscular) weaknesses, going to 90%+/PRs every week, “conjugate” training, etc. all been done. “Westside”/Loui is ALL about bands/chains/box squats/training deadlift infrequently/frequent ME exercise rotations. If people believe that those things suck, say, for raw lifters, then it is fair to say that they think Westside/Loui sucks.[/quote]
I kinda agree with this. If I had a nickel for everytime I heard someone chime in with “it ain’t all about bands/chains/etc/etc/” then I would be a rich man. But if I had to give a nickel everytime someone followed that up with what Westside actually IS then my net worth would not change a dime. I am not a powerlifting fanboy and I really don’t keep up with all the different training modalities, but the people that tell me what Westside IS are far fewer than those that tell me what it ISNT.
[quote]VTBalla34 wrote:
[quote]infinite_shore wrote:
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
But it would be incorrect to say the conjugate method is not used by athletes the world over. Just because they don’t term things the same and don’t use bands or chains or box squats (none of which are fundamental to Westside style training anyways, even though they are all often used) doesn’t mean they don’t use the conjugate method of periodization and organization.
Conjugate methodology is a manner of organization not a list of equipment or a 4 day template or a squat suit or a damn set of bands.[/quote]
I find it peculiar when people say that the “Westside” training approach is NOT really about bands/chains/box squats/frequent ME exercise rotations. I think that is bullshit backpedalling. Of course it is. Why? Because there is NOTHING LEFT after you take all these things from “Westside” that hasn’t been done by almost every serious lifter since the dawn of strength training. “Speed” training, picking assistance exercises to work on (muscular) weaknesses, going to 90%+/PRs every week, “conjugate” training, etc. all been done. “Westside”/Loui is ALL about bands/chains/box squats/training deadlift infrequently/frequent ME exercise rotations. If people believe that those things suck, say, for raw lifters, then it is fair to say that they think Westside/Loui sucks.[/quote]
I kinda agree with this. If I had a nickel for everytime I heard someone chime in with “it ain’t all about bands/chains/etc/etc/” then I would be a rich man. But if I had to give a nickel everytime someone followed that up with what Westside actually IS then my net worth would not change a dime. I am not a powerlifting fanboy and I really don’t keep up with all the different training modalities, but the people that tell me what Westside IS are far fewer than those that tell me what it ISNT.[/quote]
The problem with saying ‘What Westside is’ is that Westside is constantly evolving and changing to meet the demands of the athlete and the sport. The only people who can tell what Westside ‘Is’ are those at Westside. Even the people who went to Westside in the past can only tell you what westside ‘was’.
[quote]Paul33 wrote:
[quote]StrengthDawg wrote:
[quote]Paul33 wrote:
“quads are for bodybuilders”
“the benchpress is not a chest exercise”
Louie simmons
[/quote]
I assume that you put this here to make Louie somehow seem foolish? Thing is these statements are 100% true when used in a powerlifting context. The Bench press is a whole body movement. Yes the chest is worked but so are a myriad of other muscles. No self respecting powerlifter hits “quads”. We train the movement, aka the Squat in this instance.
[/quote]
no i believe he does that more than adequately himself
“no self respecting powerlifter hits “quads”” except for you know, kirk karwoski, ed coan, etc. fucking hell jeremy hoornstra has an arm day.
[/quote]
Don’t get sand in your vagina man,I meant specifically trained “quads” like a bodybuilder would. Maybe they do. IDK but I have yet to see any traininglogs that says quads. It’s always squats. Semantics? maybe…
[quote]StrengthDawg wrote:
[quote]Paul33 wrote:
“quads are for bodybuilders”
“the benchpress is not a chest exercise”
Louie simmons
[/quote]
I assume that you put this here to make Louie somehow seem foolish? Thing is these statements are 100% true when used in a powerlifting context. The Bench press is a whole body movement. Yes the chest is worked but so are a myriad of other muscles. No self respecting powerlifter hits “quads”. We train the movement, aka the Squat in this instance.
[/quote]
I believe he was trying to link back to the quote from Pendlay that started this “debate”. These seem to support the idea that Louie’s main beliefs are less likely to hold true with other styles of lifting, as Pendlay said, than with his favoured style.
I hear people saying that only Westside lifters train “Westside-style”, but I have heard Louie say in an interview somewhere that anyone training with boxes and bands/accommodating resistance etc. plus speed work is proving that his method is the best…
Just so that everyone knows, I admire equipped lifting and am not against it at all (though raw is great too, in different ways).
By the way, surely the fact that Westside lifters say that they avoid free squats and only box squat for most of the year proves that box squatting is a key part of Westside?
[quote]jbpick86 wrote:
[quote]
Executing form exactly how the lifters do in multi-ply gear when you are a raw lifter
I?ve been to Westside and had Louie yell at me for over tucking my elbows. He?s actually said that I needed to stop tucking so much and start flaring my elbows since I was raw. He?s also told me that I need more pec and lat work since these will contribute more as a wide raw lifter. I bet that wasn?t what you were expecting, huh? At Westside, I was told to start benching with no arch and with my feet up (like a bodybuilder) so that I could build upper body strength. This all happened last November, and at that time my bench was 90 percent leg drive and 10 percent upper body.
However, by March?after about four months of following Louie?s instructions, my bench was up 20 pounds. For the record, I compete at 105 pounds. So a 20-pound increase for a small female on the bench is huge. On the other hand, let?s compare that to when I followed what I thought was the concurrent system (without actually realizing I was so far away from what it really was): my bench stayed the same for two years. So yeah?it was not that the program didn?t work, it was that I didn?t know how to apply it.
Then there?s the squat?Everyone says that Louie wants people to squat ultra wide, but once again, these people haven?t talked to Louie. I was at the Women?s Pro Am this year, and I watched Louie pull aside my old training partner and tell her that, as a raw lifter, she was squatting too wide. Shocked? I?m not. Lou knows lifting, and he knows that squatting too wide with no gear and with weak abductors won?t work out for a big raw squat. He knows that quads play a huge role for raw lifters, and he will tell you that you have to have strong quads if raw is the path you choose to follow. Anyways, back to the story?She listened to him, pulled her stance in, and went from almost getting crushed on a second attempt to smoking a third.[/quote]
This is an excerpt from this article articles.elitefts.com/training-articles/in-defense-of-westside-for-raw-lifters/ by Jennifer Petrosino.
I think a lot of people attribute a lot of things to Westside that they heard about Westside from someone who had no idea what they were talking about, but Louis gets the credit for that some fools idiocy.[/quote]
I feel like spamming this post over and over again so it sinks into people’s heads.
ESPECIALLY this last bit here:
[quote]I think a lot of people attribute a lot of things to Westside that they heard about Westside from someone who had no idea what they were talking about
I think a lot of people attribute a lot of things to Westside that they heard about Westside from someone who had no idea what they were talking about
I think a lot of people attribute a lot of things to Westside that they heard about Westside from someone who had no idea what they were talking about
I think a lot of people attribute a lot of things to Westside that they heard about Westside from someone who had no idea what they were talking about[/quote]
[quote]halcj wrote:
[quote]StrengthDawg wrote:
[quote]Paul33 wrote:
“quads are for bodybuilders”
“the benchpress is not a chest exercise”
Louie simmons
[/quote]
I assume that you put this here to make Louie somehow seem foolish? Thing is these statements are 100% true when used in a powerlifting context. The Bench press is a whole body movement. Yes the chest is worked but so are a myriad of other muscles. No self respecting powerlifter hits “quads”. We train the movement, aka the Squat in this instance.
[/quote]
I believe he was trying to link back to the quote from Pendlay that started this “debate”. These seem to support the idea that Louie’s main beliefs are less likely to hold true with other styles of lifting, as Pendlay said, than with his favoured style.
I hear people saying that only Westside lifters train “Westside-style”, but I have heard Louie say in an interview somewhere that anyone training with boxes and bands/accommodating resistance etc. plus speed work is proving that his method is the best…
Just so that everyone knows, I admire equipped lifting and am not against it at all (though raw is great too, in different ways).
By the way, surely the fact that Westside lifters say that they avoid free squats and only box squat for most of the year proves that box squatting is a key part of Westside?[/quote]
No doubt box squatting is very popular there and widely used for a variety of reasons. But I said “box squatting is not Westside”. Simmons uses and has written about using a variety of other squats, some athletes doing zero or almost zero box squatting (I believe the last MMA guy was one of those) but still “training Westside”. Point is, the system is not an exercise.
[quote]VTBalla34 wrote:
[quote]infinite_shore wrote:
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
But it would be incorrect to say the conjugate method is not used by athletes the world over. Just because they don’t term things the same and don’t use bands or chains or box squats (none of which are fundamental to Westside style training anyways, even though they are all often used) doesn’t mean they don’t use the conjugate method of periodization and organization.
Conjugate methodology is a manner of organization not a list of equipment or a 4 day template or a squat suit or a damn set of bands.[/quote]
I find it peculiar when people say that the “Westside” training approach is NOT really about bands/chains/box squats/frequent ME exercise rotations. I think that is bullshit backpedalling. Of course it is. Why? Because there is NOTHING LEFT after you take all these things from “Westside” that hasn’t been done by almost every serious lifter since the dawn of strength training. “Speed” training, picking assistance exercises to work on (muscular) weaknesses, going to 90%+/PRs every week, “conjugate” training, etc. all been done. “Westside”/Loui is ALL about bands/chains/box squats/training deadlift infrequently/frequent ME exercise rotations. If people believe that those things suck, say, for raw lifters, then it is fair to say that they think Westside/Loui sucks.[/quote]
I kinda agree with this. If I had a nickel for everytime I heard someone chime in with “it ain’t all about bands/chains/etc/etc/” then I would be a rich man. But if I had to give a nickel everytime someone followed that up with what Westside actually IS then my net worth would not change a dime. I am not a powerlifting fanboy and I really don’t keep up with all the different training modalities, but the people that tell me what Westside IS are far fewer than those that tell me what it ISNT.[/quote]
Probably true, but I do believe that I did tell people what Westside is in my quoted response above. Here: “Conjugate methodology is a manner of organization not a list of equipment or a 4 day template or a squat suit or a damn set of bands.” It is a means of organizing training programming and attacking weaknesses. That is what Westside is: it is conjugate programming applied to (and I suppose you could say adapted to) powerlifting. Louie has written many times about Westside being essentially the conjugate method of training organization and periodization adapted to powerlifting.
This whole debate gets so pointless. For those of you who don’t like “Westside,” conjugate whatever you want to call it then don’t do it. Every program works, just have a plan and stick to it.
[quote]Paul33 wrote:
“quads are for bodybuilders”
“the benchpress is not a chest exercise”
Louie simmons
[/quote]
Did you read my post or the article I linked or do you just enjoy being ignorant?? It literally says that Louis instructs any lifters under his tutelage that want to go raw to work on strengthening the quads more and narrow their stance. Also by quoting him saying that the bench is not a chest exercise as evidence of his ignorance just makes you look inexperienced. To a powerlifter, raw or not, the bench is not only a chest exercise. Legs, lats, shoulders, triceps are all involved in the a powerlifters bench. However, did you know that Louis has his raw lifters do repetition work with their feet elevated on the bench to purely strengthen the chest more. If you don’t know all of this I think you need to take a big step back and evaluate whether or not you should be discussing topics that you have no idea about.
I don’t even use the conjugate system, and could really care less about Louis, however, people bashing one persons work from a place of sheer ignorance of that persons work is supremely annoying to me.
[quote]jbpick86 wrote:
[quote]Paul33 wrote:
“quads are for bodybuilders”
“the benchpress is not a chest exercise”
Louie simmons
[/quote]
Did you read my post or the article I linked or do you just enjoy being ignorant?? It literally says that Louis instructs any lifters under his tutelage that want to go raw to work on strengthening the quads more and narrow their stance. Also by quoting him saying that the bench is not a chest exercise as evidence of his ignorance just makes you look inexperienced. To a powerlifter, raw or not, the bench is not only a chest exercise. Legs, lats, shoulders, triceps are all involved in the a powerlifters bench. However, did you know that Louis has his raw lifters do repetition work with their feet elevated on the bench to purely strengthen the chest more. If you don’t know all of this I think you need to take a big step back and evaluate whether or not you should be discussing topics that you have no idea about.
I don’t even use the conjugate system, and could really care less about Louis, however, people bashing one persons work from a place of sheer ignorance of that persons work is supremely annoying to me.[/quote]
Annoys me to, but this debate will happen time and time again. Misunderstood concepts. Going to go workout. Internetting is wasting my lifting time. Thought it would help talking to others looking to do the same and share ideas, but apparantly pissing in peoples ears is more popular.