The first day I walked into Westside Barbell, Louie Simmons watched me squat a few reps with an empty bar. Not a word while I was under it. Then I reracked and he said, "You have no fucking clue how to squat."

He wasn't wrong.

I had been competing since 1983. I thought I knew what I was doing. I had five years of training under my belt, a competition total, and enough ego to fill a gymnasium. None of it mattered. What I didn't have was a coach who actually knew what strong looked like and who wasn't going to let me off the hook just because I showed up.

That moment was the beginning of the most important education of my powerlifting career. But here's the thing most people get wrong: the education wasn't just about what Louie knew. It was about what I had to do to actually receive it.

Most lifters who work with a coach waste the majority of that relationship. Not because the coach is bad. Because the lifter doesn't know how to be coached.

There's a skill to being coached. Nobody talks about it. Everybody wants to talk about finding the right coach, evaluating credentials, and asking the right questions before you hire someone. That's all valid. But the part that actually determines your results — what you do before the session, how you behave during it, and what you do after it's over — almost no one addresses.

I've been on both sides of this for over four decades. I've been the lifter who burned sessions by fighting every cue. I've been the coach watching a lifter nod, walk back to the bar, and do the exact same thing I just told him to stop doing. I've also had the experience of getting every single drop out of a great coaching relationship. The difference is clear.

Before the Session: Set Yourself Up to Receive

Know What You're Actually Trying to Fix

Show up with a specific problem, not an open-ended expectation.

When I got to Westside, I was in bad shape technically. My squat was wrong from the ground up. My bench was a mess. I had injuries piled on top of bad habits. If I had walked in expecting Louie to just "make me better" without any direction on my end, I would have been lost. Instead, I started paying attention to what was actually failing. Which lift. Which part of the lift? What the symptom was. What I thought the cause was.

I'll say that last part again: what I thought the cause was.

Your assessment of your own problem is a starting point for the conversation, not the final word. You bring it in, your coach takes a look, and nine times out of ten, the real issue is somewhere else. That's the whole point. But showing up with nothing is worse than showing up with a wrong answer. At minimum, your observation gives the coach something to work with.

Don't come in expecting a complete overhaul every session. Sessions where you try to fix everything, fix nothing. Come in with one or two things to work on. Commit to that.

Get Your Head Right Before You Walk Through the Door

I knew every exit ramp between my house and Westside. Every one. Because there were training days where I absolutely did not want to go. Not because I was lazy, but because I knew what awaited me. Louie was going to put me under a weight I wasn't ready for. Someone was going to outperform me, and I was going to have to deal with it. I was going to get corrected, probably in front of everyone, probably more than once.

The drive was where I made the decision: am I going in there ready to work, or am I going in there defensive?

The days I went in defensive, I left with less. I spent mental energy defending my ego rather than absorbing information. The days I went in ready to be wrong, ready to look bad, ready to be the least experienced person in the room, I left better every single time.

Your mood going into a coaching session is not irrelevant. It sets the filter through which every piece of instruction will pass. Get it right before you get there.

A simple practice: while you're getting ready, go over in your mind what you're trying to accomplish that day. Picture the movement. Think about the cue your coach gave you last time. Arrive as a student, not a performer.

Show Up Early and Pay Attention Before It's Your Turn

There's more coaching available before your session starts than most people realize.

When I could get to Westside early enough to watch other training sessions, I did. You can learn more watching someone else get corrected than you can from your own session — because when it's your turn, you're under load, you're working, you're in your head. When you're watching, you're purely observing. Watch what the coach looks at first. Watch where the corrections happen in the movement. Watch how the lifter responds. All of that is data you can apply before you ever take a rep.

During the Session: Stop Getting in Your Own Way

Don't Rush

You hired a coach. You paid for the time. You drove out there. And then you try to sprint through everything because you're anxious to see results. So you take five corrections in ten minutes, you never actually execute any of them cleanly, and you leave having "worked on" five things and mastered none.

The worst enemy of learning is the need to hurry.

One or two things. Work them until they start to feel right. Three reps that execute a cue well are worth more than twenty reps of trying harder on a movement that hasn't changed.

When I was first learning the box squat under Louie, there were sessions where we spent an hour on one technical detail. Sitting back. Just that. Some guys would have been frustrated. I understood that if I got that one thing solid, everything else downstream would be easier to build.

Don't Fight Your Errors

When a rep feels wrong, pay attention. Don't pretend it felt right.

I worked with Chuck Vogelpohl for 14 years. One of the top squatters in the world at his peak. And there was not one session, not one, where we didn't have to cue him on something. Chest up. Head back. Something. Heavyweight exposes everything. The corrections never stopped because the standard never lowered.

If your rep feels wrong, that information is useful. Where did it break down? When in the lift did it go off? Can you even feel what the coach is telling you? If you can't feel it, tell your coach that. Don't nod and walk back to the bar.

The nod is the single most expensive habit a coached athlete can develop. Your errors are training data. Don't reject them. Don't consciously repeat them. Learn from them.

Don't Try Harder — Try Differently

When a coach gives you a cue, the instinct is to try harder. Bear down. Muscle through. Show the coach you're giving everything. That's almost always the wrong response.

A coaching cue isn't a command to push harder. It's an invitation to move differently. The correction is about mechanics, not effort. When you respond to a technical cue by pouring on more effort, you override the very change your coach is trying to create.

Relax into the correction. Let your body reorganize around the new pattern. Effort and learning are different things. You're not here to demonstrate toughness. You're here to build a new motor pattern.

Ask Questions and Repeat Instructions Back

Don't let anything slide that you didn't understand.

When Louie told me something, I made sure I heard it correctly before I walked back to the bar. Repeat it back. "So you want my weight back further, right through the whole descent, not just at the break?" Yes or no. Adjust. Execute.

If you're not sure what the correct movement is supposed to feel like, ask that too. Not just what to do, but what the correct position feels like in terms of muscle tension, balance, and timing. That sensory information is what allows you to self-correct between sets without waiting for your coach to repeat it.

Watch Everything

Get your eyes on what good looks like.

One of the most valuable parts of training at Westside was being surrounded by demonstrations at every level. We'd seen everything thousands of times before. Nothing was new. That repetition was part of the education — your brain builds a picture of the correct movement that your body eventually starts to match.

Video yourself when you can. Not to admire the lift, but to compare what you feel with what is actually happening. The gap between those two things is almost always larger than you expect. Closing that gap is a large part of what coaching does.

After the Session: Don't Let It Disappear

Review While It's Fresh

The learning doesn't stop when the session ends.

Drive home. Think through what happened. What was the main correction? What did the right rep feel like compared to the wrong one? Write it down if you can. A few specific notes are worth more than any amount of good intentions that evaporate by Thursday. Replay everything — the corrections, the failures, the moments where something clicked. Not just the best reps. The whole picture.

Keep Your Expectations in Check

This is the one that most experienced athletes struggle with.

You've been doing this for years. You have a total, a ranking, a reputation. And now you're working on something that is making your lift feel worse. Your numbers are down. The new technique feels awkward. You feel weaker, not stronger.

That's normal. That's learning.

When you're correcting a deeply ingrained habit — especially in a lift you've done for a decade — the wrong movement will feel right and the right movement will feel wrong for a long time. Reverting is easy. Staying with the change is hard.

I spent extended periods at Westside, where I felt like I was going backward. Louie never let me bail. He knew what the ceiling was on the old pattern, and he knew where the corrected version could take me. That gap between where you are and where you could be is where the coach lives. Trust it.

Practice the New Pattern Before You Compete With It

Don't take a technical correction straight into a maximal attempt.

Build the new pattern in controlled conditions. Lighter weights, full attention on execution. Let it become automatic before you put it under stress. The technique will feel foreign under maximal load until the reps are there to support it.

When you finally get it right, it should feel almost effortless. That's not a sign you're sandbagging. That's a sign the mechanics are efficient. Efficiency is the whole point. Work the new pattern until it doesn't need your full attention to execute. Then test it. Then compete with it.

The Bottom Line

Hiring a coach is a starting point. What you do with the relationship is the whole game.

Show up with a specific problem and a ready mind. During the session, slow down, feel everything, ask questions, and stop trying harder when you should be trying differently. After the session, review, hold your expectations, and build the new pattern before you test it.

I didn't start getting the most out of Louie until I stopped trying to prove myself to him and started learning from him. That's the shift. It's not complicated. But it takes humility, and humility is the one thing most competitors struggle most to develop.

The bar doesn't care about your ego.

Get coached.