Westside vs the World

- -

Alright, let's go, Hoff.

There you go, near the belly.

Big air.

Chest, legs, hold it!

Squat, sit back, clear, clear, three, two, one, up.

Very nice, very nice.

Take a plate off on that side.

- Take a plate off, yeah? -A plate off. You got it.

Fuck, I remember that feeling easier.

Usually this is the one that feels like shit.

Then I get scared, and then I'm alright.

Shane Hamman is your lifter.

-Dave Hoff, Dave Hoff, you are on deck. -

Greg Demina, you are in the hold.

Dave Hoff, 1,135 pounds, 29 years old.

If this don't excite you guys, I'm not sure why you're here today.

Come on, turn it up!

Here we go, Dave Hoff, show us how it's done.

- He did it, 1,135 pounds! -

Good.

I'm really trying not to puke.

Welcome to powerlifting.

In the shadows of Columbus, Ohio,

in the heartland of the American Rust Belt,

lies the world's most controversial gym, Westside Barbell.

There's not a powerlifter on the planet,

that doesn't know the name Westside Barbell.

Oh wow, they were like the crazies,

a collection of lunatics with some fuckin' crazy strength.

World record holder after world record holder.

I've seen a lot of guys come in, I've seen a lot of guys go out.

People don't understand what a hardcore attitude you need to have in that gym.

It was go-time, every time you walked through the door.

- Westside was a cult. - I mean, this place--

They would rise you to the top, and break you.

It was literally hell with weights.

They were gonna talk shit to you from the time

you walked through that door until the time you left.

It's a bunch of violent, mean motherfuckers

that aren't kind and gentle in any way.

Everyone lifts weights, but we're the best at it.

You know, it's kinda like Westside versus the world.

To understand the madness of Westside,

you have to start with its founder, Louie Simmons.

The only member that has to be at Westside Barbell, is Louie Simmons.

I'm trying to fuckin' think, man, how you can even put Louie into words.

Louie's like Yoda. He kinda looks like him now too.

That motherfucker's a million years old. He's a dinosaur.

These days, Louie is known mostly as a coach,

but his story started long ago.

My name's Louie Simmons. I live in Columbus, Ohio,

and I was born on October 12th, 1947. I'm the owner of Westside Barbell.

We live on the West Side of Columbus. And you know, if they call you Westsiders,

it's kind of an insult, but to me it's a badge of honor.

Not only do I have a lot of tattoos that say Westside

for my gym, but also 'cause I live on the West Side.

I got 13 teeth. That's all I got left.

Fractured skull, broken jaw, broken hand.

Just gettin' my ass kicked, but it never stopped me.

You know, I think you've gotta get your ass kicked.

It's what you learn from losing.

In the first grade, I got kicked out of school for an entire year.

I got in a fight with a kid. The day before,

he took my shoe, and I asked my father what to do.

And he said, "Well if you tell me that tomorrow,

I'm basically gonna kick your ass."

So I remember going back to school, and the kid tried to take my shoe,

and I got in a fight, and the teacher broke it up. I ended up hitting a teacher.

And long be told they kicked me out for the entire year.

So I had two days of school, and I was kicked out for the rest of the year.

Believe it or not, at 12 years old, I was a block tender.

And I worked for a guy who drank all the time, but worked nine hours a day.

I was around masons. I mixed mortar and carried block.

That's how I grew up, nothing but hard work.

I was a loner for years. I couldn't talk to anyone.

That's actually how weights started to help me.

I got my first weight set at 12 years old.

I was also a very good baseball player.

One thing, I think, changed my mental aspect about myself,

to believe that I could be something a little different than others.

For once, I hit a ball over the fence, and absorbed all the people

yelling and applauding me, as I ran around the bases.

I Olympic lifted until I was 18 years old. I thought, you know, I was pretty strong.

Well, I lived in an apartment in Dayton, Ohio, and there was 11 men in my weight class.

I beat one guy out of 11, he was 55 years old,

and I said, "This isn't my sport." I decided right there

that I was never gonna Olympic lift again.

There was no comparison between who's the strongest.

Then I got drafted.

I have today ordered to Vietnam the Airmobile Division.

This will make it necessary to increase our active fighting forces

by raising the monthly draft call to 35,000.

Right out of high school, I was drafted into the Army,

and I was going on my way to Vietnam, but my father died.

I'm the sole surviving son, and so I never went to Vietnam.

The death of his father meant that Louie

was the last male heir of the Simmons family.

As such, he was reassigned for Basic Training.

Instead of fighting communism in the jungles of Vietnam,

he would be stationed, eye-to-eye with it, in Berlin.

It was there that he came across the writings of an innovative gym,

nearly 6,000 miles away in Culver City, California.

Right behind me there, that's Bill Peanuts West.

He was an original of the original Westside Barbell Club,

Culver City, California.

And he wrote for Muscle Power, Bill.

Uh, you know, there's nothing to do when you're on base.

You don't have to be out doing all the stuff.

Here's my only training thing, looking at magazines.

Their club had box squats and board press,

and all these things that you see in my club today actually.

They were light-years ahead of everybody else.

It was always my dream to go there.

That's why anyone that comes here, I never turn 'em down.

'Cause my dream was to go there, and I couldn't.

So anyone who wants to come here, can come here.

I got out of the Army in '69,

so I started competing full-time at the beginning of 1970.

And I had no training partners. I'd go to meets,

and I would talk to the best lifters in the world.

I was never afraid to talk and ask questions.

As it went along, it seemed like he was giving

a lot more information than he was getting.

He would just open the floodgates and just start talking strength,

talking bench presses, talking squats, talking deadlifts.

He really loved what he was doing.

Louie made quick strides.

In 1971, I was already in high school, meet record holder in a squat.

In February of '73, I totaled 1,655.

No wrap of any kind, you couldn't even wear a wrist strap.

I had the highest total in the world at that point.

And then I broke my back.

I thought my back was impervious to pain. I-- I thought it would hold anything.

But I lost my concentration in good mornings, and broke the L5.

So I was on crutches for ten months. Severe pain, couldn't work, couldn't do nothing.

No doctor could fix me, and this is 1973.

I had to set a goal, I had to come back.

With no other options, Louie looked to his training for answers.

I used to do a lot of hyperextensions and back raises.

I thought, "What if I do it in reverse?"

So I built up a platform, and jumped up and swung my legs underneath and back,

and it-- it first, it didn't hurt, and it pumped my back up.

This is a glimpse of hope. And I thought, "Well, what if I added weights?"

So I finally, uh, we made a machine, but no one had ever seen it.

The reverse hyper would remain a secret for over 15 years,

until an unlikely event inspired Louie to introduce it to the public.

Larry Byrd, he said he was gonna have to retire 'cause he had a bad back.

So I said, "Well hell, if he had a reverse hyper, he wouldn't have a bad back."

I was obligated to get the thing out in the general public, so people don't have bad backs.

Alright folks, now we're gonna perform some reverse hyperextensions.

And Dave's gonna demonstrate this.

Every time you use this machine, it works as restoration.

This is one of the greatest exercises for the lower back,

and the hamstrings and glutes ever devised.

If you want to come in second, don't buy one.

If you want to be a champion, buy one.

Thanks to the reverse hyper,

Louie was back under the bar by the mid-'70s.

His broken back was as good as new.

That was enough to win Louie the 1980 YMCA Nationals.

The YMCA Nationals was the best of the best. All came there.

Anyone that was at the biggest nationals was at the YMCA Nationals.

The '70s had seen the introduction of supportive equipment,

like wrist and knee wraps, which helped lifters to handle more weight.

But in 1977, the game changed for good.

A company called Marathon, released a singlet cut from a stretchy canvas material.

It was called the squat suit.

It looked like a wrestling singlet, was just

two sizes too small.

You know, we all got them.

There was 50 lifters in, there was 50 people

wearin' the squat suits.

The squat suit ushered in an era

of supportive equipment, commonly known as gear.

Gear is nothing short of compression.

So when you're performing a lift, the flesh doesn't have to bind up

around the joint to stop everything.

The gear has that stopping power due to compression,

and there's a lot less danger, even though the weights are higher.

By 1984, gear would be introduced for the bench press as well.

Notice the padding under his shirt, or is that padding? What exactly is that?

That's just an illusion, but it's called a bench press shirt.

It protects you from getting any tears or injuries.

The original bench shirt was a tight polyester shirt

that took three people to try to pull your head through this little hole,

and to try to hold your arms out like this,

and it was, I mean, you can get the same results

with wearing, you know, too tight T-shirts.

Back in Columbus, Louie's passion and prowess

had made him a key figure on the scene.

But it was his belief in others that led lifters to join him.

When I met him, I had never had anyone

tell me that I was gonna be great at anything.

It was life-changing. My girlfriend thought I'd lost my mind,

so, you know, I broke up with her, but he invited me out to the garage.

In the early '80s, a gang of powerlifters was a sight few had seen in Columbus.

Louie's garage quickly became something of neighborhood lore.

A buddy of mine lived pretty close to where Louie Simmons lived at,

and he always talked about these big guys that trained out back in his garage.