“The body and soul are one, and must be trained together.”
Back in the good old days (or probably the bad old days, if you’re asking my joints), when I was powerlifting seriously, my preferred training methodology was the one promoted by Louis Simmons and the vaunted Westside Barbell Club of Columbus, Ohio. I wouldn’t ever say that I “trained Westside,” since that invokes the impossible arrogance of suggesting I had stood beside the gods of powerlifting like Dave Tate, Jim Wendler, Chuck Vogelpohl, Matt Wenning and Donnie Thompson. Besides, I’ve never been north of the Licking River in my life. Nevertheless the program’s combination of compensatory resistance, maximal effort and dynamic effort seemed like the best fit for my strength needs and body type.
Louie Simmons discusses the Westside approach to lifting.
The magic of the Westside method, which has taken many lifters to the elite level and beyond to the status of legends (and which packed over one hundred pounds onto my already pretty good squat, bench press and dead lift in under a year, back in 2010, taking me to nearly the elite level) lies in the mixture of different things a lifter can do. Two days per week are dedicated to the dynamic effort method of lifting, wherein a man tries to accelerate a submaximal load with maximal speed and intensity. This, for example, would include me trying to launch a bench press loaded with two hundred pounds towards the ceiling with the same force that I would use for my slightly better than four hundred pound personal best. There is a very real danger here, of course, of having the bar fly out of your hands if you’re not careful, and that situation wouldn’t end well for anyone but a bystanding car accident enthusiast. It still teaches you to drive each lift like a screaming madman, though, never losing that need for speed even if you’re crushed under nearly a quarter of a ton.
The maximal effort days… well, they’re just downright darned fun. Different exercises, taken on a rotating basis every three weeks or so, done for enormous, eyeball popping singles at ninety-five percent of one’s personal best. This is to keep the central nervous system from getting roasted under the demands of one exercise (which, at ninety-five percent of a deadlift north of six hundred pounds, is a very real possibility) and just to train different parts of a lift. A close grip bench press, for example, trains the triceps and bench pressing lockout strength very effectively, but doesn’t do much for strength off the chest—important if you are a raw lifter like I was, less so if you do your power lifting in a space suit like most of the World Powerlifting Organization guys. A standard grip incline press, by comparison, develops strength and thickness in the pectoral muscles and helps with developing said power, which is why it always had a place of major importance in my upper body training, more so than almost any other lift.
Louie Simmons teaches the deadlift.
I must say, before going any further, that I loved the Westside method and power lifting in general. I have a chest like a beer barrel, arms like a particularly famous dinosaur and legs which have been mistaken for Roman columns. When taken alongside a frequently bald head and big, bushy Viking beard, it’s almost like I was born for the sport. I danced through enormously difficult workouts with great effort, but almost no stress, and ate like a starving walrus. And yet, now, I find myself unable to participate in something that I loved for so long. Injuries have slowed me to a crawl, making it almost impossible for me to walk in the morning until I have stretched my foot. The complexities, and enormous pressures, of Westside style powerlifting training just isn’t going to be acceptable for me, anymore, at least right now.
This is why I have adapted and found solace in simplicity. Since discovering (or re-discovering, since I used a smaller version of the same a lot, back as an undergraduate) the kettlebell and girevoy sport, I have gone from doing literally hundreds of variations of the competition powerlifts[1] to two exercises, total. I perform the Turkish get-up, which feels like therapy for my poor, battered shoulders, knees and feet if anything ever has, and the kettlebell swing to raise my heart rate and, if I can, avoid dying of a heart attack in the next ten or fifteen years. I do them both in Pavel’s vaunted, somewhat controversial “hardstyle” of lifting, following his Simple and Sinister program, and strive to do them well.
Pavel Tsatsouline talks about kettlebell training.
I can hear the gym bro of myth scoffing, right now. “Two exercises?” he says. “Dude, like, how will you pump those bi’s up, brah?” Which is something that I haven’t ever cared about, anyway, so I’d go on ignoring him like I always have. But he does have a point… the Simple and Sinister methods of Pavel do, in fact, fly in the face of conventional strength training wisdom—believe me, I’ve been intimately familiar with one of the most extreme facets of it, because the full house powerlifter trains with just as much fury and flurry as the shredded bodybuilder. But… but… symmetry! But… but… squats! The rabbit in my brain cries, runs, screams… you can’t not do squats! Squats and oats! SQUATZ N OATZ!!!
Squats and oats? And, if you believe talented pitchmen on certain famous online magazines, every sort of exotic protein powder, too—only $19.95 for four ounces! The rabbit is hungry, thinks he’s starving, and demands food right the hell now. He doesn’t care what it is, even if it’s healthy or filling, he just wants it.
CrossFit star Chris Spealler performs a challenging Turkish get-up.
I calm him with a few sets of swings, five Turkish get-ups per side and Cat Power on the CD deck. I come to this place to seek the Zen mind, Suzuki’s beautiful beginner’s mind where all things are possible, using a 32 kilogram weight to do what a monk endlessly stroking a teapot might. The more I do of swings, the more I know of them… and the less I know of them, prompting me to do more. The more I work on the Turkish get-up, arising from the ground with simultaneously excruciating and pleasurable slowness, the more I know about the planes and lines, weaknesses and strengths of my own body. I am not chasing a goal down the road, screaming after a higher total with my foot recklessly pressing on life’s pedal, but instead take each training session as it comes. Each part of the body is one, and no muscle or joint can be trained in isolation of the others. The body and soul are one, likewise, and must be trained together.
[1]If you think I’m exaggerating then I invite you to check out the Westside Barbell squat, deadlift and bench press manuals… go ahead, I’ll wait. You’ll be a while.
Photo–Flickr/N3T10