BEST CALIBER ATHLETES? ‘’Westside only gets the best caliber athletes to work with”. This is something we hear and read about all the time. Usually coming from other lifters and coaches. What exactly does “best caliber” athlete mean? For the purpose of this article we will define it as having an Elite status in the sport of Power Lifting before coming to Westside Barbell. Using this definition only three or four lifters fit this description. Tom Waddle and Dave Tate are two such lifers, both of which have put three to four hundreds pounds on their total after being stuck for over four and five years. Another more recent example is Mike Ruggeria. Before training with the Westside principles Mike had best lifts of: 780 squat, 500 bench press and 750 dead lift. Mike was stagnant at these numbers for over three years and started seeking advice. After several conversations with Louie Simmons over the phone, Mike’s lifts went up to 815, 550, and 780. As luck would have it, Mike decided to move to Columbus. After training at Westside for six months Mike broke his PR’s at the IPA Nationals with an easy 900 squat and a very strong 800 dead lift with a near pull of 820. After the 800 dead lift Mike turned and thanked Louie saying he has been trying to break that record for over three years. Mike is also the fifth Westside lifter in the past year to squat 900. Mike also benched 500 after suffering a recent non-training related triceps tear before coming to Westside. What did Mike have to change to achieve these results? First, Mikes Squatting equipment had to change. It was having an adverse effect on his squatting technique. He was wearing regular tennis shoes which were causing his feet to pronate. This made it difficult for him to push out on the sides of his shoes as well as keeping his knees out. If you do not keep your knees out you are creating a longer lever arm, counter productive to squatting big weights. He had to switch to chuck Taylor all stars. These shoes have a flat base which makes it easy to push out on the sides of the shoes and keep the knees out. Mike also had to change his training suit. The suit he was presently wearing was causing him to push his knees inward instead of outward. By switching to a different brand of squat suit he was able to activate more hip intervention. Once the equipment issues were addressed we still noticed some technique problems. Mike was rocking too much while on the box. This is a very common misunderstanding about box squatting. When we advocate sitting back onto the box, we mean sit back from the start of the lift by pushing your hips way back. Not sitting down on the box and rocking backwards. This technique change is not always easy but with a coachable lifter like Mike it took only 4 to 5 weeks. This is 24 - 35 work sets. This is another advantage of performing eight sets of 2 reps. There are more work sets in a shorter period of time (workout density). Had he trained in a more traditional fashion which two to three work sets are standard, then this technique change would have taken 14 to 16 weeks! Within the first week of Mike moving here we noticed that he had very weak hamstrings. He could not do one rep on the Glute Ham Raise without assistance and had a difficult time with reverse hyper technique. We quickly added a higher reverse hyper and glute ham raise volume to his training. Getting him to sit back rather than down on the box also would help in strengthening his hamstrings. Once these issues were addressed, and the weak points brought up, the rest was HISTORY. Or in Mike’s case PRESENT because he is not done yet. Getting back to the original statement about getting the best athletes. Ask yourself as a coach which is a more difficult task, increasing a novice athletes strength or increasing a Elite athletes strength who has been stuck for a number of years? Remember there have only been four of these pre-elite athletes that came to Westside. All the others started out there as novice lifters. The same type of lifters these other coaches get to work with. Maybe they ought to look past their lifters and back at themselves to find the problem. Training and coaching is a never ending learning experience. The day you quit learning is the same day you quit succeeding. Some coaches quit learning along time ago, probably when they discovered they knew everything. ¦