Barbell Shrugged - 169- Strength: A Way of Life w/ Dave Tate of EliteFTS

Episode Date: March 18, 2015

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we interview CEO of Elite FTS, Dave Tate. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Something stick out my mind. A lot of twos. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe. I'm sitting here with Doug Larson and Chris Moore. We have traveled up to Columbus, Ohio.

London, Ohio. Oh, we're actually in London, Ohio. Right now, yes. Yeah, we traveled to Columbus, Ohio. That's London's nearby for the Arnold Classic. And we decided to swing over to Elite Fitness to hang out with Dave Tate. And Dave has been a power lifter for a very long time trained at Westside for a long time

started Elite Fitness started EliteFTS.com it's a fantastic website that has a lot of awesome resources I think Doug, Chris and I all have been on that site many a times getting our learn on.

So when Dave said he would sit down with us and talk, we were pretty thrilled. But before we go any further, make sure you go over to barbellstrug.com, sign up for the newsletter. Also go over to iTunes, give us five stars, and leave a positive comment. Only positive comments. Or stop listening. We will delete all your negative control comments. If we had the power to, we would. Dave, how long have you been in the powerlifting game?

Oh, man. I did my first powerlifting competition in 1983. I did my last one in 2005. So, a long time. Jeez. A long time. Yeah. So, I started as a teenager. I did my first meet when I was 13 years old what got you in?

trouble I was fortunate enough that my father that's a good question I don't really know how to answer it because what got you into lifting weights is a little bit different than what got me into powerlifting but getting into trouble

and stuff like that my dad was looking I had the cement block weight sets that most people would have I had that for maybe three months because I trained with that my dad saw that I was training hard and that I liked it and then there was a barbell club in town, Finley Barbell Club.

Was that here in Columbus area? Yeah, it's in Finley, which is right outside of Toledo. Okay. And there were a group of powerlifters that were in there that was a private club, kind of like Westside and other powerlifting clubs. That's where I was. So I had maybe four months of training, and then I was cast right

into a powerlifting environment with people showing me how to squat bench deadlift and drop my fire yeah a lot to learn really quickly well that you're really fortunate most people I mean like myself I spent years toiling in the gym with no direction I never squatted without somebody showing me how to squat properly that's that's awesome know, and the same with the bench and the deadlift. So that's what got me into the sport. I didn't even know it existed. I was wrestling, playing football, and so forth. But powerlifting was by far my most favorite sport.

So I would go to football practice and then come back and train with those guys. And then before I graduated from high school, I didn't have to do any conditioning and work with high school. It was all done with the guys I was training with who took me under their wing. Ma'am Snot knows 13 year old kid. Yeah. And, you know, these 30 year old powerlifters taking me under their wing, showing me how to compete, you know, powerlift and taking the time. And that's a lot of the reason why I do what I do now is because these guys didn't have to do that. They didn't have to bring me into a private key club gym. I mean, who does, who brings a 13 year old kid into a private key club

gym, you know, and they did, you know, so because of them, I mean, that was the start of people helping me out without asking anything in return, which is why I continue to keep trying to do what I do today, because that just, that process continued all through my powerlifting career up until Louis and beyond with people taking the time to help out. That lesson shows in everything elite fitness is always done. I think it's been an education giving first and then you know sell and offer things second like education and because i mean i was 19 years old left high school got into playing college football and the first thing i found before i got into sports science or anything i think i found it first through deep squatter.com

bunch of old articles louis i read pouting to say read your stuff this was back in you know 98 99 2000 one of the coolest things i ever bought was the old, I can't remember what it's called, Dave. You guys sold like a, it was a purple case full of like 15 VHS tapes, like the West Side Seminar series. I saved up like $200 and bought that thing. And for a year, had my mind blown by the quality and all the information you put in there. It was like you, for 12 hours, with slide decks and everything. It was really one of the things that got me to pursue piloting and sports science.

It's led me here for sure. It's basically that one product and that one website. We've always said that we're an education company that puts out great quality product. You know, the highest quality

strength training equipment you can get. But the education in all of our messaging is always before outfitting. It's been that way on purpose from the very beginning so we try to put out the highest quality education we can but when it comes to the products that we

put out on the market that has to match the highest quality education that we put out otherwise it's not a continue it's not a perfect fit yeah you know you can't put out great education and crappy product or vice versa yeah you know you have to keep the messaging the same. And that's what Elite FTS has done ever since it was, since I founded it in 98. Speaking of equipment, this is like a power lifter's dream gym. Oh, yeah, it is. It seems like there's a lot of variety in here. There's, you know, all kinds of monoliths and squad racks and whatnot,

but it seems like no individual piece is the exact same. Everything seems unique here. They're all prototypes. Some of them, you laugh, some of them are like, oh, we never brought those to production. Well, yeah, there's a few things in here that we never brought to production.

I laugh because most of the things in here, there's something fucked up with every piece in it. That's where the charm comes from. You have the concept, then you put it out, then it comes to you when it's pretty much finalized, and then that gives me the opportunity. Usually, we'll sit on a piece for about six months before we'll put it out on market. That way, I can have our athletes in at least once or twice, then we can have the weekend

crew train it on it for a while, and then we can find the little intricacies of that we need to change to be able to make it perfect. So you put a lot of weight on every one of these devices. And you guys have a training team that trains throughout the week, or is it just a weekend crew comes in? I have a – well, my staff trains throughout the week. Then I have a weekend crew that comes out here, and then a lot of our athletes will come out. And then on maybe a quarterly basis, we'll bring out a whole group of our athletes. And that's –'s you know there's

multiple reasons for that we can get interviews we can get you know images that we need for the site and articles and we can also get them to get to know each other a little bit better and they can try to break the shit out of the equipment which is it's a win-win on all sides yeah because i don't want to make anything that a thousand pound squatter can't use i have no desire to make something that's only made for a 400 pound squatter and down i have no desire for that yeah you know so it's for the best in doubt i figure that way it covers everybody you know you cover that you cover it all you know i just the the lower end crap i just really i wasn't brought up like that i i don't care you know know, other people can take care of that market. That's not what I want to do. The universities and the colleges, that's what they're

going to want as well. So they sit in here. I mean, I can go through each item and say, here's this fucked up. Here's this, you know, but that's kind of how it happens. Now I'm running out of space. When we first came into here, it was like wide open. I think it's when actually when AJ first came out to do that, we were at a different location. You'd walk in and there'd be like four racks and like all this open floor space. And now it's like, I don't think we got room for one more thing.

Well, if you got a bigger place, Dave, wouldn't you just fill it up with more shit? It's like, oh, I know, yeah, we would. You'd grow into that space. Oh, most definitely. I know I would because I've done it three or four times. And I still say right now, if somebody said, hey, we're going to send this to you, do you need to test this? Do you have room?

Yeah. There's plenty of room in there. I'll find room. I just found room for two more monoliths and a bench. Don't you already have five leg presses? We can make room for a sixth one. We can fit it. We can fit it.

Ask my staff, man. They'll laugh about it all the time. I always say that. We'll fit it. We can fit it somewhere. Say yes to the opportunities. What made you – well, you have this facility. What came first?

Did you ever have a gym that you were running, or did you kind of go from – No. You just went straight to education online? I went to – I was a personal trainer for a number of years, so 10 years. That was a hustle just to keep the bills paid, to keep in the game of power for a while, right? Yeah, kind of. I mean, I went to school to be a strength coach,

and it didn't take me long to realize I didn't want to be a strength coach. It's a tough profession. Like a college or professional team type environment. Yes, a strength and conditioning coach. So after one internship, I knew that's not what I wanted to do. Yeah, well, I think, well, why didn't you want to go down that path? Because I have a lot of people that send me messages that go, hey, I think I want to work for a sports team.

It's got to be the right fit. I'm not sure they know why they want to do it. It just wasn't me. You know, I'm a power lifter, so, I so i mean i got that part of me but i'm just not i'm not a rah-rah type thing a guy and i i didn't really want to take on the challenge of trying to figure out how to train 80 guys at one time and that was that was one constraint with it the um you knew you couldn't train them optimally or yeah yeah yeah and that difference in power thing there's 80 kids who don't really want to be there versus a bunch of hungry people who do

want to be there so culturally it's it's got to be a different kind of person to manage that kind of client it's just and i think a lot of it too i mean if i was just to be brutally honest is i never liked playing football i really didn't you know was good at it, but I never really liked it. You know, I was always a powerlifter wrestler. You know, I kind of had to trade the wrestling for the football. And I didn't want to be around it anymore. And it seemed like that's where the majority of the strength and conditioning was. You know, I love the aspect of the strength and conditioning.

I love the aspect of the strength and conditioning when it comes to the athlete because it's a little bit more broad scope than it is with powerlifting because you need to deal with what's going to train what has transference what's going to actually have the correspondence to what happens on the field more in powerlifting is more quantifiable yeah you know this you know carries over to this the bodybuilding is a little bit different you know as well from that sector or standpoint. And I didn't want to work the number of hours these guys are working. Little did I know how many hours it was going to take doing personal training. You don't want to break down your pay by the hour.

Oh, no, not as a trainer. No. So, you know, so I did that for eight years, maybe nine years. And that was, I mean, that was a six o'clock in the morning until 9 o'clock at night deal. Wow. What kind of facility were you working at? It was a high-end facility downtown. The average member income was about $250,000.

Wow. Which is, when I took the job, is what I knew. That was back in the early 90s? Early 90s. Yeah. So when I took the job, I knew the back in the i was back in the early 90s early 90s yeah so when i took the job i knew the opportunity was huge for personal training and it wasn't being it wasn't being the offering that they had the sales that they had were just dismal so i knew to go in there and to

set up a program an effective program to that money was never going to be the objection it was just to set up a sales process that was going to be the objection. It was just a setup, a sales process that was going to be able to give the customers what they really wanted and what they needed, and then to implement it in such a way to grow. And I was able to do that. And I got to a point where financially, there was just no way. I was not going to be able to make any more money no matter what I did. It was capped. There was nowhere to go. And at the time, we didn't have this group training. The only group training we had was like aerobic classes and shit like that.

So it was pretty much all. I could just see you like with some. Yeah. Yeah, with the tights. The socks. The steps, you know. The step up. Give me the extra riser.

I'm going to go high. I need to make more money. It's aerobics classes. That's what's next in age. I'm a power lifter. I'm a power lifter. I need five extra risers to make sure I'm always high. It's all jazzers. Exactly.

But then it got to a point where I didn't, you know, you start thinking more long term. Like, how can I have a family? How can I sustain this for the long term? A lot of people don't do that part, actually. I was fortunate to have clients that saw something more than me than I saw in myself. So we would sit down on actually a regular basis for a while to try to brainstorm what I wanted to do. Were these like business owners that wanted to mentor you?

Yes. Oh, wow. And so we discussed the option of a facility, you know, personal training, sport training type thing and decided against that because my way I was doing the seminars and helping Louie with the seminars at the time, Louie Simmons. And I really like that part. I really like giving back from from what I learned and your teacher spirit. Yeah. And I really wanted to embrace that as much as I possibly could. And that was limited if it was just going to be in one facility. So it became, how can we take this seminar thing and maybe use that or, and then that became constrained. Well,

you're only going to be able to do this, this, this, and this. And it just, it ended up being retail. You know, that retail was going to be the driver, you know, for the content that we would be able to put out for free. And so my big push from day one is the content always has to be free. Never are we going to charge for the content. There's not eBooks. Yeah. I mean, there's, that's a product that's a different type thing, but the content is not, it's always that's a product. That's a different type thing. Yeah. But the content is always going to be free. That was the only caveat that I had going into it because I never had to pay for it except debatable.

I mean, college education and so forth. But to give back because people don't. You know, they don't have the access to that type of thing. So that's what started. We started with the Q&A, and then it just kind of built up from there. So I think that kind of answers the question i think people forget that if you if you start we're just trying to give back and provide to others and create value for the people then you can see the kind of opportunities that could come after that like following the initial drive just

to teach and give back and then people are then interested in what you have to say especially if you can help them yeah and you never want to stop stop. You just don't want to start with that intention and then pull it back. This has got to be part of, and it's not part of everybody, but it's part of me. It's the drive that I've had since day one. It's always going to be giving back. I owe so many people for what I've been given

that to me, there's no choice. It's just what you do, you know, and it's part of the environment, culture, and everything that we do here at Elite FTS. And I guess if you ever lost that, you'd know it was time to go pick up something else and do something different. I mean, if this all went to shit,

I would still be writing articles. I'd still be finding a way to help people, you know, with their training, you know, and it would be free. You know, I would people, you know, with their training, you know, and it would be free. You know, I would, I would rather, you know, bag groceries than charge people for a fucking pay site. You know, it's just, I can't see doing that. That's not me. You know, I'm not saying that it's wrong by any stretch of the imagination. It's not wrong. It's just not me. And if I can't be true to me,

then why in the fuck bother? Yeah. We got to put that on a quote pick. No, but you said there's a lot of people. People struggle with this a lot. We all struggle with it, still struggle with it. But young coaches, they're discovering coaching, and they're thinking, I could be a coach. I could get in a crossfit.

I could get into teaching. Would you recommend that they have to first decide what is really firing them up what they what could they see themselves doing for free for the rest of their life would that be the first clue yeah I mean there's there's so many you have to know what your own purpose is you know what do you stand for what are your values what is your purpose what are you here for you know and that really once you lock into that that really really shouldn't change. Then everything else from there that you do is to move that purpose forward, to move the needle. Maybe it will be in this industry.

Maybe it won't be. Maybe your best way to serve in this industry is to not be in it. It's defining what that purpose is. And that purpose, it could be a philosophy. It could be many different things. And with coaches, as you said, one of the biggest teaching factors I put out to them is everybody wants to try to use somebody else's program.

And that's fine if you're just starting out because you really don't have a choice. You got to learn from something. Yes. But if you've been doing this for 10, 15, 20 years, you have a pretty good idea of what works for you and what doesn't work for you, what works for your clients, what doesn't work for your clients. You've established what your own training philosophy is. So at that point in time, you have to continue to keep learning, but you're not learning to replace your philosophy. You're learning to

build on your philosophy because the one thing nobody can ever steal is you. You know, people can steal workout programs left and right. They do it all the time, but they can't steal you. So if your training philosophy is based upon all the mistakes that you've made, you know, and all the clients that you've made, that know, and all the clients that you've made, that's unique to you. And then that's what you share and that's what you build upon. You're saying, you know, you kind of throughout some years there, you know, you've been doing this for 10, 15, 20 years. What is that timeline? I think, I feel like a lot of times coaches actually try to go off their own programming, maybe too early with a lot of clients.

Maybe they should follow somebody else. Maybe they're a little too chomping at the bit to do their own thing. How long do you think it takes for someone to really be maybe mentored by somebody before they are ready to kind of make that leap into making their own mistakes? Plus or minus two weeks on this estimate. Yeah. I mean, that's a really good question. And it's, you know, in my mind while you're asking that, I'm thinking education experience, education experience,

education experience. You need to have a solid base of education. And I know that, you know, there's always been that debate and this debate's been going on since the dawn of time. You know, what's more important, the education or the experience? Well, both. All right? Because if you don't have a solid education in the exercise science or exercise discipline or training and so forth,

you don't know if that person sitting across from you who may or may not be an expert is full of shit or not. You have no idea. Because what they're saying and the words that they're saying, they good to you but they may be completely out of context they may not even be what they are defined you know the energy system is a great example of this is how fucked up people make that and you can listen to people and hear them and be like man that sounds good but he has no idea what he just said. You know, scientifically, it doesn't even fit what would be an exercise phys 101 book. Right. You know, so the education is important.

So fucking Wikipedia it if you have to. You know, but you are correct. You know, there's a lot of people that are jumping the gun, I think, when it comes to that. But at the same time, if you're going to use somebody else's program, you need to study what the methodology is behind the program. The concepts. The concepts. Understand,

and I know Westside and conjugate, concurrent, whatever you want to call it, extremely well. So you need to understand what the variables are and how this was put together and why it was put together, why the parameters change for this group compared to this group

and understand that. That way, that program, while you're using it, you're learning from it, not just from the results and what you're doing with the day to day, but with why was it put together? Why did Louie decide this instead of this instead of this yeah you know then you study that aspect and then while you're doing that you're becoming educated and your philosophy starting to be developed i like to do other people's programs a lot of times just do like a cycle of what they're doing just to see it's like oh i see what they did there it's like if you understand like what you're talking about if you have the education you understand the underlying principles principles of physiology, biomechanics, whatever, and you're doing a program, and the next thing you know, you see that they superseded this with this, and you're like, oh, that's actually kind of brilliant. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah, and sometimes you need to get in and actually do some of the things to really get a handle. Yeah, and that's why I like to actually do other people's programs versus just read them. That's totally different. Sometimes you're explaining things on paper, but you're doing it just to get somebody to experience what it's like, and then you would say, if you're coaching them live, aha, see, that's why I would say it like that. It's something you have to feel sometimes as well.

There's other things too, and I have John Meadows writes my programs now, so I don't even have to think about it. Sometimes you'll see things on paper, you'll be like, oh, that didn't mean too bad. Oh, shit. I definitely had that happen. AJ's laughing. It's happening to him.

Oh, hell yeah. You get two exercises into it. Well, AJ tried crossfit. He's like, this shit looks easy. Yeah, it looks easy. On paper, this shit is a kick. Fucking 95 pounds, bro. Yeah.

It ain't nothing. It ain't nothing. You get halfway through it, you're like, oh, my God. I'm seeing stars. I'm laying on the floor. So there's some merit in trying it. And that's an advantage that a coach has who doesn't – isn't really training for anything because you can't play around.

I mean, that should be a coach's job, you know, is to experiment and to play around. You don't want to do that shit with the athletes you're working with. Don't experiment. I mean, I think maybe, I mean, experiment maybe to maybe 5%, right?

Maybe more. I mean, the coach's job is to... But like, experiment a lot on themselves. Yes. A little on the athletes. Yes.

Because the clients, your job is to go from here to here. You have to do whatever. Kind of how I like to approach it is like, 90% of what I'm doing, I know works without a doubt.

Yes. 10%? Eh. Theory. Yeah. We'll see what happens. Yes. Yeah.

You know what you need? You need your population, like 3 million fit, young, 18-year-old Chinese gentlemen. You just fucking make them all max out every day. And then 10 who survive make you look like a goddamn genius. There you go. That's one strategy, too. Let's take a break. And when we come back, I'd like to find out the mistakes you look like a goddamn genius. There you go. That's one strategy. Let's take a break. And when we come back, I'd like to find out the mistakes you've made over the years

and how other people might be able to learn from that. Okay. This is Tim Ferriss, and you are listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Barbell Shrugged is brought to you by you. To learn more about how you can support the show, go to barbellshrugged.com and sign up for the newsletter. And we're back with Dave Tate of Elite FTS.

And we're here to find out. I think the first half of this show is amazing, by the way. But we're about to find out your training mistakes you've made. The things that you could probably tell lifters and weightlifters and powerlifters and crossfit, anyone in training that might be able to keep them from hurting themselves. Help them get stronger. Stay training longer?

I don't know. Now you're shaking your head. He's got no advice. It's like the mistakes are many. Where do you start? AJ was telling us you were at Westside. Let's focus on there. I I got three decades of mistakes. I wouldn't stop by the mistakes there. We did part three, four, five.

AJ was saying that a lot of the mistakes that you made specifically helped him personally do as well as he did in powerlifting. That's Westside. I was at Westside for 14 years, and I've known Louie since I was first competing. And when I was 13, 14, 15, Louie was in the warmup room, helping me out, giving me advice, you know, so in one form or another, I've known, you know, Louie since my whole entire life. So when I graduated, I was, I was actually the first person to ever move to Columbus to train at Westside oh well um and when I came I knew what I was coming into you know not not that I knew that it was going to be a brutal training environment but I knew the history you know I I knew what rep what Westside represented

what what was the history then that he started in his garage, you know, and then at that time when I came up, he still had a commercial gym. And then as soon as I got here, I was in a sling from a mistake with a tech pair or a tech pair. As soon as I got here, he got rid of the commercial gym and he went back private. And so that started, you know, a whole other phase. So it was maybe a 10, 14-year phase where in my time period that I was in there, I saw the floor press be used at Westside for the first time. I saw boards being used for the first time. I saw the monolith being used for the first time, chains being used for the first time, bands for the first time.

I think I was actually the first one to use chains and bands. I was like, I think we're going to throw some chains. Dave, get under that bar. I'll tell you a story about the fucking bands. I've got a story about the bands myself. We've all got band stories. Oh, my God. This is a good one.

We had breakfast, as we normally did, and then Louie was like, hey, we're going to run into this basketball clinic. It's like squat day, man. just had a two barnyard busters i'm ready to go squat that's what i'm eating a lot of barnyard barnyard excuse me ma'am have two barnyard busters please so we go to this basketball clinic and you know it's Dick Hartzell's there with his bands and Louie's got and I'm looking at these bands he's like well what do you think and I grab this stupid blue band and get it behind my

back and you know two people have to help me get it back there and I'm like pressing it. How old are you at this time? What's that? How old are you at this time? Oh god this was 91 so I have no freaking idea. You'd have to do I need to calculate. He had a lot of hair because I remember the old West Side Tapes. I still had hair. Fuck it.

I don't know. So I'm pressing. I'm thinking, we're going to press bands? This is stupid. And then Dick's on the floor rolling around with his leg back behind his head and doing shit with his ankles and all this flexibility crap. Which you have to see. YouTube this.

Dick Hartzell, father of the bands and stretching. Oh, my God. And I'm watching this and all I'm thinking is, man, I am not getting on the floor. You know, the only time I get on the floor

at Westside is for a floor press and I'm using the rack to get up. I am not laying down and rolling around with a fucking band to stretch my hamstrings out.

It's just not happening. I'm 300 pounds. I'm not made to be on a floor. You know, AJ can relate to this he was there he knows what i'm talking about we're not made for that shit even when even even when you walk in there and you see the floor press loaded you're like mother fucker you know you start trying to talk your way out of it it's board press day no it's floor press no it's

board press anyhow louis just grab them all so i grab them all and i'm sitting in his trooper and we're driving back to the gym and i got all these bands in my lap and i'm just thinking to myself what are we gonna do with this crap and then we get in there and i ask what are we gonna do he's like i want to hook it up to the barbells i'm like what are you talking he's like they like the chains i'm like no wait a minute well wait a minute you mean you're gonna hook one end there and one end on the monolift and then we're gonna squat against it it's like yeah that's what i'm talking about load it up you know so we didn't know how to hook them up or i mean we just threw them on there so me and joe have four blue bands on each side well it's not tight because it's just... Oh, okay. Really tight top, floppy bottom.

Yeah, I mean, Louie didn't put the 4x4 and the slipknot and all the other shit that's in there now. It was just underneath the monolith. I got you. But we had great success, huge success with the chains. You know, both Joe and I squat went up 60 pounds, so I'm like, I'm all for this shit. I love chains.

Yeah, as soon as I stood up and I felt the bands push me down, then I start thinking keep in mind my background is in this you know you got overseed eccentrics going on here you know this is something that you typically don't have so we're now we're actually making the box squat pretty much a plyometric with your ass is what it's becoming instead of your foot hitting the ground for the plyometric it's now basically your. And you have the overseed eccentrics to be able to create that stretch reflex. So I'm thinking to myself, this is fucking genius.

You know, I had no idea that it was going to end up being 900 pounds of band tension over the six years from there. But that's kind of how it worked. You know, something like that would come in, then we would start really on the moderate end, and then it would just get insane, you know, as far as how much band tension we were using. We just kept pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing.

To just see how much tension would. Not tension, to see how hard he could push us until we broke. Yeah. And we were like, motherfucker, we'll do it. Yeah. And he had a group of guys, you know, the guys that I trained with, that we'd run our head through a wall, you know, to get stronger. So we did anything that we were told to do plus plus

something you know and a good athlete yeah i mean coachable coachable yeah that is coach yeah i mean from a genetic standpoint we had a couple guys in there that i would say were actually genetic freaks everybody else were just you know hardcore lifters to the bone, you know, that got to where we did, you know, myself, including just by getting as close to that edge as you possibly can to where you're going to fall and then staying there, you know, and that's not the most optimal environment to train in. And, but you get seven people with that same mentality, you know, and I was perhaps one of the worst, you know, then you perhaps one of the worst you know then you got louis and me and louis going back and forth so and he'll tell you my goal was i wanted

louis to tear something off every time we trade that was my goal i wanted to fuck him up and send him to the hospital you want i want at least a few of those that he tore off plenty i wanted that was my goal to send him to the fucking hospital you know that was that was just the way it is and vice versa and because of that you know that that time period that we're there you know i can look back now and i there was a speed bench video that was posted not too long ago the crew that i trained with and i went through and counted how many surgeries there's been it was like 46 and there was only like there's only like eight of. And this was before we left the gym. This was before the guys left. This was while we were there.

Oh, my God. I mean, there was always somebody under construction while we were there. You want to make some omelets, Dave? You got to crack a few eggs, man. But, you know, it was just accepted that, you know, if you're going to do this shit, you're going to get hurt. You know, that's how we felt. And that's how we trained. And that's how we felt and that's how we trained and that's how we what we realized and now looking back you know you see that where where louis extremely excels and people i don't

think give him credit for this is he learned from all that he learned from he took our blood guts surgeries injuries mistakes and then applied it to that next generation that came through that aj came into and now they're fine. You know, they don't have anywhere near the injury rate that we had. They're not getting their hips replaced. They're not getting their shoulders replaced. They're not getting reconstructive surgery for all this and all that. We did that.

So they wouldn't have to, you know, and that's kind of how I look at, you know, Westside in general, when I look back at it, it's like this long fraternity, you know, that I was very fortunate to be a part of, you know Westside in general when when I look back at it it's like this long fraternity you know that I was very fortunate to be a part of you know and I was a part of a growth phase you know where you know we may not all put I mean there's still world records being broke you know that's but we had we had the metal guys you know the crazy ass people that would just do anything to try to get stronger you know that now you know when when now it's louis brings people in you know more than he more than he did when i was there and it's just and it's it's it's conscious effort you know he he is recruiting he'll tell you he's recruiting because he wants people to break all-time world records and he'll flat out tell you he doesn't want to start with building somebody to an elite total give him the lead toll he's earned that so in my opinion nobody's got the right to criticize the fact that the guy is recruiting lifters right because he

built them for 40 fucking years yeah you know so now he's able to recruit those guys you know like you're talking about the all the millions of chinese lifters he can recruit the best of the best and then take them and create something really special you know so for all of us that have been through west side to be able to look and watch from the outside in that's really fucking cool because we didn't have those genetic gifts and that skill set that those guys do now and i don't even know them you know i don't even know who these guys are but you see the lifts that they're doing in the records you're doing and you're like man i was a little bit i was a little part of that you know because

louis was smart enough to learn from it most coaches don't you know and that's the thing that the coach has to be coachable exactly i mean you mean, you have to know what you know, and you have to know what you don't know. And Louie excels at that. He knows what he doesn't know, and then he knows how to execute what he does know really fucking well. And that's what he was able to do. I lifted more than I ever thought I would be able to. There's no doubt in my mind.

I thought I was tapped out in a 1950 total which was stuck for four years the same thing until you made that trip to west side yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's the person that told you to move in case i didn't get picked up on the mic yeah yeah yeah so there were a lot of mistakes there you know and but before that i made a ton of mistakes you know just as far as training. Sticking with a linear model for way too long. The progressive overload for way too long. That whole Milo and the cow bullshit.

That only serves for so long. Did you ever get the cow picked up? No. I tore my fucking knee in half. The cow kept getting bigger. That's the trouble with it. I mean, for the first couple years, it's great. That serves you for a period of time as a novice. Yes, most definitely.

I mean, I did. I think most people that listen to this show are novice. Yes. So, like, these guys don't need to be jumping into something too complicated too soon either. That's a fantastic point. Yeah. You know, because when I started, it was one basic progressive overload linear periodization with the percentages scaled back.

And they were scaled back because you don't grow your strength linearly. It comes in spurts. So I was smart enough to, or not smart enough, but had people smart enough working with me that understood that if this guy figures out his squat and the technique locks in his squat may jump 30 pounds so we need to adjust the percentages because he just became 30 pounds stronger technically you know that's why i've always said weak points are either technical mental or physical and most of the time it's it's it's technical 80 of the time it's technical and you fix that you get stronger that's why people will go to these seminars and you teach them how to squat then they break prs right how do you take somebody that's been squatting for 10

years and then they break an all-time pr in a freaking seminar with 15 other people well you show them how to do it right and they're like oh boom they didn't taper for the seminar yeah exactly and most definitely um so i i totaled, I think three or four elites before I even knew what Louie's training was, conjugate training was. And even after that, you know, when I did get to Westside, I thought he was full of shit. You know, everything I read from him I thought was just horseshit. I didn't go to Westside for the training because I figured that was just a

life or some other thing that they were doing. What did it look like back then? I mean, we know what it looks like now. Oh, it was small, man. It was maybe 600 square foot at the most. It was a dump. It was a dump. Actually, the first one was even worse than the one on Demers.

The first one was like this bottom of a house and there was a hole in the floor. There was a boxer that lived in the basement. I didn't know until I went in there one night and I heard some dude down. I didn't even know There was a boxer that lived in the basement. You know, and I didn't know until I went in there one night and I heard some dude down, I didn't even know

there was a basement. You know, some guy downstairs and there's like a troll living in the basement. Sure am. Getting tired of you guys dropping those bars.

Oh, this is terrible, man. And there was like a lady sold like pottery in the front end of the building so every time

she'd break shit. Oh my God. Let's put a crazy powerlifting gym with a pottery. Oh, this is a shop. It was shaved guys with goatees on this side, pottery on this side. Yeah, it was on Sullivan Avenue. And all I remember is that was like the first,

because I trained at Matt Dimmel's gym, because he, Louie. The great Matt Dimmel. Yeah, Louie split, you know, his commercial gym. He gave half the stuff to Matt and said, go ahead and open a gym. Then he had this dump, you know, on Sullivan. Well, I was in a sling, so I couldn't do pretty much anything that was in Westside at the time because there was just nothing there.

You can't squat with one arm. You know, I can't bench with one arm. So Matt had some of the machines, so I was training there for a few months. Then when I finally got in and walked in and trained arm you know i can't bench with one arm so matt had some of the machines so i was training there for a few months then when i finally got in and walked in i and trained you know i was in there to spot and watch the guys lift i'm thinking to myself this place sucks man i've always trained in private private gyms i i think six months of my life i was in a commercial gym oh wow so and i'm like this is the worst dump i've ever been in and they've all been dumps but this is the worst but this is the dumpiest this is the absolute worst then when we moved off to the one on dimmers which i think was 400 square feet you know that was like a godsend you know

then there's black spray paint on the windows so nobody comes in right and um but that that was that was great you know that was you gotta set it up so it's really attracted the potential clients but that was so great that's the first Westside Tapes

ever got speed benching sessions I'm like man that window's just fucking painted black it's pretty hardcore I mean we didn't want anybody coming in

it was just you know we're there to train and then as it grew he moved off to where he is now and that was maybe i spent maybe one two years there and um i never really liked it there i mean that's my own personal opinion i

didn't like it there you know when you got 12 years in another place but you know he he wanted to grow he wanted to get more lifters in yeah and it was it was getting a little crowded you know there were a little bit too many fights going on at one time yeah but there was there was there was also a dynamic with that closeness not like brotherly love or anything like that because most of us hated each other it didn't sound too brotherly yeah i mean when you were when you were so close and you're on top of each other you know you're bumping into each other it's like you know the aggression's high enough to begin with it just it fueled that then when we went over to the other place and it's you know if somebody was doing reverse hypers at the old gym they could easily be over there and

spot a max effort lift in a second it's like three steps then at the new place it's like man you got to go all the way across the gym so guys just quit doing it for powders this is a long way to walk yeah i mean they just they just stayed down there. It's like, what the fuck, you know? Is anybody going to come down here and run this freaking monolift? You know, and so there was that little, you know, kind of getting used to that whole aspect, which it worked its way out, but I don't think I was there long enough for it to see it really come to that. What did the training look like then versus now? I can't tell you how they train now.

I really can't. I have no idea. But how we trained then is everything that I've ever wrote. I never lied when I wrote anything. It was, you had your max effort day on Monday. And it did change throughout the years. The max effort work moved more from really heavy singles

to actually backing down a little bit to where some of it was triples, some of it was actually just submaximal work. The speed percentage dropped tremendously. My first bench workout, dynamic bench workout, I think was 70%, 75%. It used to be pretty heavy. Yeah, for eight sets of three.

And then I think before I left, it was down to 40%. Oh, wow. It might be lighter now, AJ. 35 or 40. And I remember the first time it dropped, we had a guy named Tim Van Horn, and he tweaked his pack, so he had to bring his training down

because we always used, we had three different benches where we benched at. So you had the over 500 benchers, the over 400 benchers, and then the slap dicks. You bench under 400, you're a slap dick. Get over in the corner with the plastic weights yeah so i was in the i was in the 500 club i'd be in that slap dick yeah you'd be down

there we didn't we didn't give a fuck what you did um so he tweets his peck and he instead of using 315 and 365 like we did he had to use 275 well then he ends up going to a meet and he destroys his record by 40 pounds wow and then he goes oh oh yeah then across the board we're like get that fucker off you know we're all using 275 now yeah you know and bam bam bam then everybody's benches start going up it's funny the insight starts with a tweak or injury or presumably a bad thing but really all that is is a data source that you can use to get a feel in real time how things are going it's just one clue that something's not working for that person? I've never learned anything from anything that I've

done that's been successful. The greatest things that I've ever learned and anything that I've ever learned moving forward, albeit business, life, or training, has always been through adversity. You know, through adversity comes prosperity, you know, without prosperity is, you know, or without adversity, you're just mediocre, you know, so it's mediocrity. So if you avoid adversity, you're going to leave a life of mediocrity. You're just, you're just going to be nothing, you know, so you can't, you have to embrace that. You have to take that, you know, that risk. And if it's in training, that, that risk is in the training, but it's also in the guidance of the training.

What we needed back then was somebody to be able to say, okay, dial it back. And I'm not even sure that would have worked because Louie may have tried to dial us back, but he was just as insane as what we were. So it didn't work. You mentioned one more, the great Chuck Vogelpo, I guess he didn't help you dial back anything.

He was in a mix too. The guy Louie told me one time, the great Chuck Vogelpoe. I guess he didn't help you dial back anything. He was in a mix, too. The guy who told me one time, oh, he's great. One, he warned me not to squat with him, but two, he said don't let him. And you did anyway, right? I did. I paid for that one. They maybe said don't let him touch you. Don't let him put his hands on you was his tip to me before training.

I was like, what? Don't let him touch me? He's like, yeah, that would be ill-advised. He's an intense guy. Yeah, I mean, Chuck's known for being really intense, but he's probably one of the most humble person that I've ever met in life. And the one thing I always throw out there is what people never realize from those videos is they never saw that Chuck was usually the first person

in the gym getting everything ready, and they never saw that he was usually the last person to leave putting everybody else's shit away. And that's just who he was. That's how he always was. So there's a lot of things that I wish were in those videos that really weren't. I mean, there's a lot of really cool shit. The guy misses a weight that just crumples him,

and then three minutes later he comes back and hammers it. He may have added weight to the board. Which videos were those? These are all of Louie's old, like on his website you can probably find them, but the West Side series too. Dave has them

on his website. Yeah, like the squat work. man, if you get some of them on YouTube. You have those available?

No, no, we, DVDs don't sell for shit anymore. Remember, I was buying these. You can find them

on eBay or YouTube. Oh yeah, eBay. Yeah, find them. Louie Simmons seminar series. There may be some clips. There's some. Yeah. And if you get, if you create them on eBay, you can find them. Great Simmons Seminar Series. There may be some clips.

There's some. And if you're creative on eBay, you can find them. Great, awesome. And you see a young... I remember Dave and the guys, fuck with you because you're doing Spend a Good Morning with tight jeans on. I remember all that shit.

Cheater Dave, get your ass back into power. Cheating. I mean, we always trained in whatever we wanted to work in, man. I mean, there's no sense to change for working out. You put on your training clothes? Are you fucking kidding me? I don't know, but all this points out to me is that, like, when you go to a big gym like this, you get a feel for, like, oh, yeah, I get why this place kicks ass.

There's a feeling. There's shit you can't put down into an e-book when you go to a place like Westside. And it's what you're missing if you read about it online. You go, cool, AJ squatted 1,200 doing this shit. I'll do that and then I'll take what Rich Froning does

because I want those abs and then I'll do what this guy's doing for nutrition. I'll combine it all into this. Well, you're missing all this

like this rich data and this story. You got to know all that before you're going to try to do speed squats of blue and green bands over a bar. You're going to get hurt.

You don't know the story. Dave, before we wrap this up, one last last question what would you tell somebody who's new to training what would be your your one piece of advice to them define new how many how many because that can be a lot of things that can be the guy that's never worked out before in his entire life it can be the guy who's been in the gym screwing around for a few years and just get serious i would say somebody who just somebody who i guess the latter yeah they've been in the gym but they're now just discovering squat bench deadlift and they're wanting to get those numbers

to go up they decide they want to be strong yeah they they want to get strong they may have trained before but they they maybe not have trained with a powerlifting crew or weightlifting or something like that the advice that i would have is pretty much the same advice i give to to all coaches is you know to execute what you know that's the first thing so if all you know how to do is a body weight squat and push up then do them right do them the best that you possibly can learn the progressions from those. If you've got to teach it to somebody else, know how to go from a knee or a power rack

to a regular push-up. Know how to progress from the squat if you can't do the squat. So execute what you do know. Then know what you don't know. So that way you don't start applying a bunch of shit that you really don't understand and you don't know that's when people get hurt that's when people go backwards as far as their progress because people are trying to fake it before they make it right

that's great with a lot of different things business and so forth it's terrible in training so you gotta you gotta know what you don know. And then you need to continue to learn. And you need to continue to learn based upon that know what you don't know. Continuing to learn is a lifelong process that never stops. We just had a sport performance summit that we put on and had 300 attendants. And I have Buddy Morris and Joe Ken who have both been in the industry. Buddy was the second strength coach ever hired. And his key takeaway is you never stop learning he reads every single day and out of buddy morris and joe ken and these people that have been in the industry for 30 years prime leaders 30 40 years they're all

sitting taking notes off what the other presenters were doing you know so that speaks volumes that you have to continue to educate yourself the very last thing is know how to validate your source. And that's become more of an issue in the recent years of the internet gurus and all the other kind of stuff. You need to know how to really validate where your information is coming from. What do they know? Where do they go to school? Who did they mentor under? Who have they trained?

What have they done themselves? You really need to dig through the bullshit and find out if they really do know. And if they really are somebody that you should listen to, because a lot of times they're not. And it's, it's not a mystery and it's not this big complicated maze that you have to go through to determine if somebody is actually credible or not. Right. It's pretty easy to figure out. You just need to take the time to do that. So if you do those four things, you're always going to progress forward. Wow. That was awesome. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for joining us. Yes, thank you.

Yeah. Where do people need to go to find out more about what you have to offer with education? Elitefts.com. That's it. What if they want to follow you on twitter or instagram don't um why i mean i enjoy i got the instagram is just like a gym pic of the day so i don't even know how to work instagram i just post fucking pictures of the gym um i'm on twitter i think it's under the bar is my what they call it a handle a tweet handle with the name yeah yeah you know the instagram and the Twitter is the same. I'm on Facebook.

You can follow me there, I suppose. Then the Elite FTS Facebook homepage. I think I'm on every social media there possibly is. Half of them I don't use. On Pinterest? Yeah. I mean, the best way. Dave puts his cookie recipes on Pinterest.

Look him up. Yeah. I mean, if anybody really wants to follow me, I got a training log on EliteFPS.com, and I try to keep everything aggregated there so they'll be able to know if I did a podcast, you know, here's the link to the podcast and so forth. So that's the best way. And you did write a book under the bar. That's excellent.

Yeah, I got about 20 books, but that's probably the most. That's probably the one someone should start with. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's the one that's based upon values. And that's the one that were, you know, I wrote about the values that I learned in the gym and how they've applied throughout life and business. So awesome. Cool. Thanks so much. Thank you.