My #1 Lesson From Westside Barbell
Being mentored at Westside was an experience that changed my training, my career as a coach and truthfully, every other aspect of my life.
The number of lessons I learned from my time there, my conversations with Louie and the books he wrote would be impossible to compile - but what I’d like to do is share the single most powerful lesson I learned when it comes to achieving a goal.
The Westside system, known as conjugate, can be tricky to implement but the entire process functions because of one core piece:
Identifying and attacking your weakest link.
This sounds simple but all of us have a bottle neck that, if we were to remove it, would allow us to make a massive leap forward. Let me give you a simple example.
If you want to increase your bench press (either because you just want to be strong or because you want the gains in upper body mass) and we were to break down each muscle group involved it wouldn’t be rare to see something like this:
You’ve got shoulders that can handle 325 lbs.
Pecs that can handle 315 lbs.
Form and an upper back that can handle 330 lbs.
But you’ve got triceps that can only bench 270 lbs.
If that were the case, what do you think you would bench?
Obviously, the answer is 270. Regardless of the “system” we’re talking about, it’s only ever as strong as it’s weakest link.
Most people, when their progress stalls, look to work harder. They try to push the gas more on the program they’re currently on, and this works - to a degree.
Maybe your shoulders and chest get a bit stronger so even if your triceps don’t improve much you can still add another 5 or 10 lbs to your bench in the next two months.
But what if you really zeroed in on your triceps? If they made a jump to a 290 lbs level of strength, what would happen to your bench?
Another obvious answer, you’d immediately jump 20 lbs!
This is the magic of targeting your weak points, they’re both the lowest hanging fruit and the thing holding you back! It’s like driving with your parking break on, you don’t have to push the gas harder - just fix the thing that’s stopping you.
You can take this lesson and apply it to your training, your diet, any goal you want to achieve. When I started applying this outside of the gym and into things like my relationships, or studying Russian, that’s when I realized how powerful this advice was - and it’s changed my life drastically.
If you sit down and focus on it, I know it will do the same for you.
