Louie Simmons has set the bar for strength—and strength and conditioning coaches from his invitation only gym…..Westside Barbell in Columbus, Ohio.  Simmons's style of training ties together ideas from scholars, athletes, and coaches from the former Soviet Union and Bulgaria, as well as years of training himself and others.

No matter what age you are or what your goals are we can all learn from Simmons, it doesn’t stop you applying the Westside philosophy and training principles to achieving your objectives. 

LESSON 1 FIND HOME BASE

You need to feel both comfortable and challenged in your training environment. "You need to be in a gym where people are about at your level, but where you've got people who know more and challenge you to improve," he says.

Choose a training space that fits you and your training goals. Feel comfortable—but not too comfortable.

LESSON 2 USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM

Find a knowledgeable, dedicated coach you can depend on, and become someone they can depend on too. You've probably been in the position of spotting someone or having someone spot you. If you haven't had that experience, then you've never pushed yourself beyond your comfort zone.

You'll find that some coaches can truly help you pull off previously unthinkable goals,

LESSON 3 SET THE SCENE

Your music needs to match your personality, your mood, and your objective for your training session. "If you're a crazy person, you have to go crazy in the gym," Simmons says. "If you're not a crazy person, I want you calm. When you're training, music is very important for matching who you are as a person to what you're trying to achieve.” Yours might be classical, film soundtracks, or Elton Johns Lion KingWhatever it is, find it, press play, and make it work for you.

LESSON 4 MAX OUT REGULARLY

One aspect of the Westside Barbell method that you can directly apply to your training is to find new heights of strength every week. At Westside, the athletes max out in variations of the bench, squat, and deadlift every week of every month, year after year. "The entire gym breaks a record every training session with a 95 percent success rate," says Simmons, who has a statistician track max lifts at Westside Barbell.

The basic idea is that Westside athletes split lifting heavy in the major lifts between Monday and Wednesday, and work up to a new max on those days. When they hit the max, they're done with that lift for the week.

What does that mean for you? When you're training to be strong, you need to know where you stand, and test yourself regularly. If you can max out on something every time you'd be strong, too.

LESSON 5: AIM FOR SMALL GAINS

‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step’ It's after the first few miles that the goal may start to seem unreachable. But the way forward hasn't changed. Only your point of view has. If your goal is a double-bodyweight deadlift or adding 100 pounds to your bench? Both goals can seem distant, but the way to get there is one pound at a time.

For Westside athletes to continually hit new max lifts and progress towards bigger goals, they take the one-step approach with tiny increments of improvement. That might mean adding another 2.5 pounds to a certain squat or deadlift variation. It's this type of incremental progress that eventually adds up to truly gargantuan totals.

"Think about it this way: If you break a max by 5 pounds a month, that's 60 pounds a year. 

Stay focused, stay strong, stay patient. You'll get there.

LESSON 6 EXPAND YOUR IDEA OF A PR

Westside lifters set PRs every week, in an immense variety of the classic lifts using different widths, types of variable resistance, and ranges of motion. A rack pull PR from a certain height is still a PR. So is a close-stance box squat PR to a specific box height.

Take good records, so you know what your standards are in everything you do. And then push those standards. Only by giving your body new stimulation can you expect it to deliver new results.

LESSON 7 CRUSH YOUR PERSONAL WEAKNESSES

Is there a body part you hate training so much that you go light when it comes time to hit it? Does the prospect of even lifting weights make you want to skip going all together.

The strong get that way by targeting weakness, not by playing to their strengths. At Westside, on days when athletes aren't pushing for a max, they're banging out reps of accessory lifts and band work that can stretch into the hundreds. But this work has just as much purpose and vision behind it as a max-effort pull. Eighty percent of there training is high-rep, lighter-weight exercises that target small areas.

You may be strong somewhere, but you're not strong everywhere. Figure out the chinks in your armour and work on sealing them, rather than simply chasing pumps and trying to add a half-inch to your calves. Use high reps and lighter weight targeting stabilizer muscles with accessory lifts, and you'll see extra inches and pounds where it counts.

LESSON 8 APPROACH STRENGTH FROM ALL ANGLES

When you first get into a gym and start lifting weights regularly, you can make exponential advances without much planning. Strength and size seem to come easily, even if you do the same thing for weeks or months at a time. But soon enough, those gains slow down. Then they stop. This is a sign that your program isn't complete enough to carry you any further.

"If you turn your car left all the time, some parts will be worn out and some won't be touched," Simmons says. "Your body is the same way." Westside weaves together max-effort work, speed work, band work, and hypertrophy training into a seamless whole, creating athletes who can draw strength from a variety of sources when they need it.

Are you only turning left? Look at where your program is deficient, correct it, and get pointed in the right direction.

LESSON 9 RESTORE YOURSELF

The Conjugate Training Method pushes the most dedicated strength athletes in the world to their limits.

"To get strong you have to have restoration," he says. The most accessible recovery tool Westside uses is the foam roller for self-myofascial release. Simmons doesn't believe in foam rolling before workouts, but he likes it afterward as a recovery aid, along with massage, cryotherapy, acupuncture, and other tried-and-true methods. If you have access to these techniques, use them. If you're wondering where the money comes from, start by cutting out alcohol and junk food for a few months. You'll find it quickly enough! But if nothing else, acquire a foam roller and learn how to use it. Expand your idea of what "rest" means, and your body will be ready to expand your idea of what "strength" means.

LESSON 10 REST WHEN YOU NEED IT, WORK WHEN YOU DON'T

"Rest doesn't come on any specific week or day. When you feel it, it comes," he says. "You need to keep your baseline strength level high and never take too much time off. You have to be strong to be trainable. You want to be at 90 percent strength or higher at all times. You don't want to be at 80 percent strength and then have to work yourself to death to get back to the place where you can start to really train and get stronger again."

It's an approach that flies in the face of many conventional lifting splits, but Simmons doesn't believe in doing what's popular. He believes in doing what it takes to get people strong, and he has demonstrated that it works.

To get strong, stay strong.