You're about to read an excerpt from this book:
Table of Contents
Introduction
Periodization is a Method That Does Not Apply to You,
Unless You Currently Live in North Korea
The Culver City Westside Barbell Crew:
Runnin' Everythang West of the Mississippi
Bill West
Bill West's Diet
The OG Powerlifter
If You're Not Cheating, You're Not Trying
The OG Westside Crew Were OG Gear Whores
The Muscle House (of Possible Male Prostitution) by the Sea
Joe Dimarco
Joe DiMarco's Basic Powerlifting Workout
George Frenn
George Frenn's Basic Program
Frenn Was Westside's Biggest Squatter
Frenn Focused on the Deadlift
Westside Barbell's Influences
Chuck Ahrens
Paul Anderson
Paul Anderson's Powerlifting Routine
Paul Anderson's Olympic Weightlifting Routine
Ike Berger
Ike Berger's Contest Prep Routine
Tommy Kono
Tommy Kono's Basic Training Routine
Steve Marjanian
Bob Peoples
Zuver's Gym
Zuver's Gym Basic Routine
The Basic Westside Routine [what you're about to read]
Westside Offshoots
Pat Casey
Roger Estep
Phil Grippaldi
Closing Remarks
Works Cited
THE BASIC WESTSIDE ROUTINE
After the wives stepped in to curtail the utter madness of their training, the Westside guys cut their workout time down to a mere 8-10 hours a week.
Training (officially) twice a week in four to six hour sessions (along with two optional, shorter workouts), they basically blew the doors off every goddamn record they touched.
Everyone who was anyone wanted to train there, and they came from all over to do so. As such, the gym was packed and their workouts were longer than Avengers: Endgame every single time they touched a weight.
TUESDAY
Bench Press - around 12 sets, working up to doubles and triples, then 2 x 10 for a pump.
Belly Toss Bench Press - 4-6 x 3.
Incline Bench - 12 sets, reps from 3 to 6 for around half the sets, then singles for the rest.
High Box Squats - work up to a heavy set of singles, using 100 lbs. over your current contest weight. George Frenn used 1,000 lbs. for singles to set up for his record-breaking 853 lb. squat.
Low Box Squats - 4-5 singles with 100 lbs. less than your contest squat.
Rack Pulls/Box Deadlifts - 5-6 singles.
Lat Pulldowns - 3 x 5 (seriously heavy).
Triceps Pushdowns - 3 x 5 (as heavy as humanly possible).
Overhead Work - Heavy Triples, doubles and singles. Not everyone did these, it was mostly the Olympic throwers who did this.
Cleans and High Pulls - these were usually done competitively between lifters, for a max effort.
Everyone added whatever they needed to onto this workout, as you'll see (and saw in the George Frenn section). Whatever didn't get added here could also get pushed to the Wednesday and Sunday workouts.
WEDNESDAY
Optional light day.
SATURDAY
At least twice a month, everyone maxed out on the three lifts, then went home. This wasn't as easy as it sounds, though, because 20 to 30 guys would show up on any given Saturday. Problem was, 20-30 guys would show up. It would take from noon until about 6 p.m.
If the guys weren't having a full meet day, they'd work the three lifts using methods described below. Either way, once the lifting was done, they started drinking, likely at the restaurant with the all you can eat prime rib and cheap pitchers I mentioned earlier on.
SUNDAY
Optional light work day.
THE ADD-ONS
"The whole idea of assistance movements is to search out weaknesses and destroy them. The power lifters of the Westside Barbell Club conduct a constant search to learn more about building power. They are ready to try any innovation, and always seem to find time and energy for a new experiment. They are dedicated to making ever-greater lifts." - Armand Tanny.
As with any program, nothing should just be plug-and-play when it comes to programming. Every program, no matter how allegedly comprehensive it might be, can address the needs of each individual as they arise. There will always be a need for customization, and as we saw in the George Frenn series, the Westside crew were more obsessed with customization than a 16-year-old who loves Call of Duty and The Fast and the Furious equally.
The Rack Pull/Box Deadlift
West and the Westside crew utilized this movement to prevent deadlift fails just below the knee. They did the following program once a month, pulling from an inch to and inch-and-a-half below their knees during their Tuesday workout, or a supplementary Wednesday workout.
The "high deadlift" program was basically just a gradual progression toward a max attempt that must be done with straps. As Bill West put it,
"When you start the pull, nothing seems to happed for several long minutes. You keep turning on more and more power, and then finally the bar begins to move off the blocks. Without the grip to think about you can pull hard and long until you are fully erect. In one long effort like this you have the equivalent, or more, of a whole set of heavy reps. It builds back muscle."
To give an idea of the progression, it would look something like this:
550x1; 585x1; 625x1; 660x1; 690x1 (with straps).
Snatch Grip Deadlift Day
Bill West, like myself and the modern Westside crew, never trained the deadlift in the gym. Instead, West added a third day of training, doing some snatch grip deadlifting on Wednesdays.
"By building the muscles from angles, the official movements are improved. We understand that the high deadlift improves the final phase of the pull. With the snatch grip, on the other hand, the initial phase is improved. The back is in a deeper bentover position, from a full powered standpoint slightly at a disadvantage, but building strength at this point completes the whole back picture. Strength exists through the entire range of back lifting. Bill uses this style for most of his deadlift training. Except for the High Deadlift day once a month, he works the Snatch Grip Deadlift every Wednesday."
Snatch Grip Deadlift - 4 x 3 (increasing the weight on each set); 2 x 3 (heavier, strapped). A typical progression might be:
225x3; 315x3; 425x3; 500x3; 525x3 and 550x3 (using straps).
Sumo Deadlift - 3 x 1 (87%1RM). This (at least for a history nerd like me) is fascinating, because I didn't know sumo deadlifts were even legal at that time. West called it a "close grip deadlift," and although Peary Rader claimed in 1976 to have done the lift in the mid-1950s, I haven't seen a pic of them that predates the 70s.
Note: I was looking into the "hands inside the thighs" style of pulling a couple years ago. Paul Anderson used it for cleans, owing to the size of his thighs, and back then I rounded up and scanned this pair of pics of him DLing with hands inside the thighs, or almost inside or what in hell he was up to here. T-shirt, dress pants, dress socks, wristwatch and that pinky finger sticking out like he was holding nothin' but the weight of a teacup, yes, "Ain't nothin' but a teacup" and "Everybody wanna be a bodybuilder but nobody wanna wear 64" waist pants" later led to the currently popular Colemanisms:
"Notice that the last three singles are done with a close grip. The elbows are inside the knees. Actually, the legs are spread wider than normal. Again, this variation strengthens the leg pull from the wide position. It becomes obvious that a theory emerges that prohibits the existence of any weak spots. By closing the gaps, there is no chance for power to leak out. It is like military strategy: For every man at the front, you have 10 men fucking, damnit, SUPPORTING him at the rear.
Here's a photo from the 1940 book, "The Keynote to Great Strength" by Harry L. Good. A description of a sumo, knuckles front (unlike the photo) grip deadlift if given along with it. Real good book!
Deficit Deadlifts
Another favorite of West and Frenn, these helped with breaking the weight off the ground for big pulls. After having his national record of 713 smashed by Gary Young, Frenn looked into Young's training and discovered that Young did high rep deficit deadlifts on a regular basis. Young had also pulled 685 standing on a low box, so Frenn discussed it with Mae West and started hammering singles on the
deficit
deadlift.
It didn't do a doggone goddamned thing for him. He tried more singles, then fewer. Singles weren't working, so he decided that if he could pull 600 for 10, he'd be able to smash through the 725 lb. barrier . . . which just killed his deadlift altogether. Once he dropped the weight even further, however, his deadlift blew up. With the program below, Frenn pulled 725 within three weeks, 740 within five weeks, and became a consistent 750-800 pound puller.
Tuesday:
Deficit Deadlift - worked up to 3 x 10 x 60%1RM. His feet just fit under the bar with 45's on it, and from the side, his chest is just about touching his thighs at the start position.
Saturday:
Deadlift Warmup - triples up to 495.
Deadlift - singles with 565, 635, then work to a daily max and do three singles with that weight. No more than three singles with any weight.
High Pulls/Power Clean:
George Frenn was an absolute monster on the high pull, but (like me) could never manage to get his arms underneath the bar for a clean (one of many reasons he chose powerlifting over Oly lifting). Frenn believed that high pulls were a far more effective movement than cleans for this reason -- the brute strength they require translated nicely to the deadlift and required none of the skill and flexibility that the clean did. If a lifter can do them with big weights, however, Frenn sees no reason to replace them with high pulls.
Cleans and/or Snatch Grip and/or Clean Grip High Pulls - 4-9 x 3-5.
Good Mornings:
Another great assistance exercise for Tuesday and Wednesday workouts.
Good Mornings - 4-9 x 3-5 (Frenn used about 60% of his squat 1RM for these.
Box Squat in the Power Rack
Note: Not to be confused with a rack-in-the-box squat. It happens infrequently, the last event being one that involved Ed Kemper, a partial female torso, a shovel and a hole in the front yard of his Mom's house. Squatting to put the trophy-part into a shallow hole in broad daylight on a residential street, Mr. Kemper found that if he dug two foot-holes just outside the ritual site, it was easier . . . and he progressed over his works, building up the ability to bury trophies in a deficit position while standing on soil piled into block-like form. Ed ran around at 6' and 300 pounds of natural strength. Next up: Cooking with Dahmer, for all your nutrient needs. Our ground floor intro offer includes hand drill for proper food prep, so ACT NOW!]. Where the hell were I here?
After nearly killing himself walking out a heavy squat attempt when fatigued one day, Bill West had an epiphany. [No, not that peanut butter and chocolate go great together]. The kind of epiphany when one wakes up in the hospital and thinks, "It's pretty hard to train for 15 hours a week when you're lying in a hospital bed with no beer and no prime rib. [The might-and-muscle benefits of pork and vodka were still as yet undiscovered. J.C. Hise, being lost in a time-bend after seeing himself in the rearview mirror of a heavy excavation vehicle at a mining site, excitedly experienced an epiphany of elephantine import-dimensions, shouting "Eureka! I've discovered the benefits of pork, vodka and verbal corn."] Yes, it's two jugs of free coffee here at work from some "meeting" or something that took place earlier.
Back to Bill West in hospital gown and stop seeing him from the rear end you perv. Apparently all that peanut oil had an effect on his glutes. Earlier on in a later time, Trinidadian Niki Minaj - no relation to Learie Carasco of St. Lucia - would've/had discovered the financial benefits of using peanut oil to expand and enlarge rear-facing bodyparts.) Just fucking stop already and get back to the excerpt here. Okay, put down the coffee and step away from the faux-meth.
As Bill West lay there, he realized that the typical weightlifting power rack wasn't up to the task he was about to set before it. [The first rack I ever used was at a local Y, one of those attach-to-floor, wall and ceiling affairs that were aimed at iso-use. Real narrow buggers, those.] The dimensions were all wrong. As such, a plan began to form in his mind . . .
"The box squat required a lot of horizontal movement, so he decided to widen the fore-and-aft distance between the two crossbars to 16 inches and lengthen by several inches the 3/4-inch steel bars that served as elevation pins.
Pants, tight, and close to tan.
"In this way he could take the bar from a sitting position on the bench and come erect with plenty of clearance. [The rack at that old small-city Y of mine ages ago had a pair of regular users. A guy and his Dad, the Dad teaching his son how to do an Olympic press circa the mid-60's. It didn't allow for much backward lean so the son learned how to Press strict . . . BONUS! I remember being young and "taking a knee" several times while squatting out of some old squat stands. A very gymnastic guy there as well, walking around on his hands for a laugh. Also, the first guy I ever saw with big muscular floppers with his shirt off, doing the pec bounce while his partner in what was still considered the crime of lifting wandered around aimlessly on his hands. You know, the usual weirdos we came to know and love. And in my case, miss now an awful lot.]
"His box is a milk crate beefed up with two-by-fours [if Peanuts was a woman that last wee pile of word-symbols would sound rather odd. Her box is a . . .]
His box is a milk crate beefed up with two-by-fours making it a perfectly rigid and still fairly light. It is virtually indestructible and grew up to become a featured character in the Marvel Universe . . . winged, unhinged, out for blood.]
Damn it!
His box is a milk crate beefed up with two-by-fours making it perfectly rigid and still fairly tight, er, light. It is virtually indestructible. It stands 18.5 inches high which puts Belinda, er, Bill himself (5'8") in a sitting position about 1.5 to 2 inches above a parallel squat. This position seemed reasonable for a good bench squat.
The whole point of the exercise is to START THE LIFT FROM A FULL SITTING POSITION. Let the buttocks roll back, and in a continuous movement start forward and up again.
Okay now, until then I'll leave off here. I love this book and recommend it, highly OR straightly to any lifter.
Picking up from yesterday, here:
You lose the effect if you don't settle into it all the way [and there's the mistake some folks make when attempting to date the use of this form of box squat, sometimes believing the old "bench squat" was this when if fact it's that. Dead-starting from the bottom in a sitting position gets the thing right for what they were after].
If you only sit on the leg biceps, you get too much rebound from the muscle when it contracts. The spotter, as an added advantage, can help the lifter do forced reps by just touching the bar.
You get the idea and how it can be used in a box squat of this type, I'm sure.
Even when only a regular squat rack is available an assistant can help the lifter get started on box squats, but extremely heavy weights would not be recommended.
West had observed that Paul Anderson's squat lockouts, as well as his had done exactly jack shit for his full squat; yeah, they made the walkout far easier, and he noticed more stability but the squat itself was unaffected. Thus, he designed the box to squat to be a 3/4 competition squat.
Using this as one of his two squat sessions a week, he'd be able to use supramaximal weights in one and then coast off those weights in the second -- his full squat would feel easier as a result. After some experimentation he found that he was able to go far harder in both sessions by alternating the two, and began box squatting in his Tuesday workout and full squatting in his Saturday session.
"From this mishap he learned one lesson, and that was never to take any more steps than necessary with a really heave weight on the shoulders."
Tuesday:
Warmup sets - 2 x 7; 2 x 5; 1 x 3.
Work sets - Drop the weight 100 pounds x 10 reps; drop 100 more x 10.
And there you have it.
It's a great book in my view, and if you get hold of one you can see this chapter without all the bozo crap added on by me. Such a salesman.
Enjoy Your Lifting!
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