My Perception of Strength Was Completely Fucked

Dave Tate / elitefts

I started powerlifting in 1982.

A couple of years later, I was training between Findlay Barbell Club and New Life Fitness Center.

At Findlay, all the guys I trained around squatted over 550 pounds.

Not one of them. All of them.

I was squatting around 350.

That gap should have buried me. It did the opposite, and it took me about twenty years to figure out why.

Then There Was Bob Jeffery

Bob was a SHW powerlifter and a Deacon.

At the time, he had squatted 900 pounds and wanted to do it in three consecutive meets just to prove to himself it wasn't a one-off lift.

He did.

Understand what that meant back then. This was when only a handful of people in the world had squatted over 900. Not a handful in Ohio. A handful anywhere.

And having done it once wasn't enough for him. He needed to know it was repeatable. He needed to know it was him and not the day, not the crowd, not the suit, not luck.

That one detail tells you everything about the standard he held himself to.

Bob would help me with my squat form, and we spent a lot of time in the locker room talking about training, life, and God.

Sit with that arrangement for a second.

A man who had squatted 900 pounds three times was spending his time coaching a kid who squatted 350.

There was nothing in it for him. I wasn't going to make him look good. I wasn't going to win him anything. I was a teenager with a bad setup and a worse idea of what I was doing.

He did it anyway.

My Perception of Strength Was Completely Fucked

Here's the part I didn't understand until much later.

I didn't see 300-pound squatters.

I didn't see 400-pound squatters.

The guys around me squatted 550, 600, and more. Bob squatted 900.

So in my head, anything under 600 sucked.

That is objectively insane. A 600-pound squat puts you in a tiny percentage of everyone who has ever put a bar on their back. Most people who train their whole life never get close. But I had no idea, because I'd never seen it.

I wasn't comparing myself to the population. I was comparing myself to the room.

And the room was full of monsters.

Nobody Had to Convince Me a Big Squat Was Possible

I saw it all the time.

Belief was never a problem I had to solve. Nobody had to sell me on it. Nobody had to send me a video or tell me a story about a guy they knew. I stood three feet away from a 900-pound squat and watched the bar bend.

That kind of belief doesn't need maintenance.

Compare that to how most lifters build belief now. They read about it. They watch it on a phone. They listen to someone explain that it's possible. Then they go train in a room where nobody has ever done it, and somewhere underneath all that consumed information, they still don't actually believe it.

The belief you argue yourself into is fragile. The belief you absorb from standing next to it doesn't crack.

The second part was just as important.

Nobody around me thought I was doing something special by trying to get stronger.

They expected it.

There was no credit for showing up. Showing up was the price of admission, not an accomplishment. Nobody was impressed that I trained hard, because everybody trained hard. That was the baseline.

I've watched a lot of lifters get destroyed by the opposite environment. They train somewhere they're the strongest person in the building, everyone tells them how strong they are, and their progress dies about two years in. Not because their program failed. Because the room stopped asking anything of them.

Your Environment Sets What You Think Normal Is

Your environment doesn't just influence how hard you train. It determines what you believe is normal.

Normal is the number you'd be embarrassed to miss in front of your training partners. Normal is what gets a nod instead of a reaction. Normal is what you think about when you're driving to the gym, and nobody's watching.

You do not decide what normal is. The room decides for you.

Train around people doing shit you think is impossible long enough, and eventually it stops looking impossible.

I've said for years that the program is rarely the limiting factor. Ask someone squatting 500 what would happen if he went and trained at Westside Barbell. He'll tell you his squat would go up. Ask him why. The program has been written about for decades. The exercises, sets, reps, and wave structure. None of it is secret. The recovery information is everywhere. There are physical therapists, chiropractors, and massage therapists in every city in the country.

So if the information isn't the difference, what is?

Coaching. Teamwork. Attitude. All three are functions of the room you're standing in.

You Are Only Advanced Until You Change Rooms

I was a beginner in my neighbor's garage when I was twelve.

By thirteen, I was the strongest in that group and the most advanced guy on the block.

Then I got thrown into the Findlay Barbell Club and went right back to being a beginner. That's where the 350 squat, the 550 crowd, and Bob Jeffery come in.

After a few years, I was one of the best at the club. Advanced again.

Then I went to college in Toledo, trained around better lifters, and was a moron again. That's where I trained with Bob Wahl for a few years. Multi-world champion, multi-world record holder in the 148-pound class, squatted 661 in the early 1980s at 148. Old-school work and progressive overload. He was a great technician, and he showed me how the smallest adjustments could make a weight feel 50 to 100 pounds lighter.

Several years later, I was the best of that group again. Advanced. And my lifts stopped going up.

So I moved to Columbus and started training at Westside Barbell.

I showed up with an elite total and was immediately a beginner again.

Louie Simmons watched me do a few reps with an empty bar and told me I had no clue how to squat. I had squatted 765 in competition. He knew that. It didn't change his opinion, and he was right. He put me on a box with 135 and stapled me.

A 765-pound squatter, buried by 135.

I never became the best lifter at Westside. That's not a story with a triumphant ending. That's the point.

Your status is 100% dependent on your environment and who you are compared to. That's it. There is no objective "advanced." There's only advanced relative to whoever is standing around you.

So make sure you always stay a beginner.

When you start feeling advanced, that's not a milestone. That's a warning. It means the room has run out of things to teach you, and you're about to spend three years finding new ways to say the same numbers.

Find a way to become a beginner again.

This Is Not the Same Thing as Comparison

I need to separate two things that look identical from the outside.

Bob Jeffery never made me feel small. The room made me feel behind.

Behind is useful. Small is not.

Behind means there's more available, and you haven't gotten there yet. Small means you've decided you're not the kind of person who gets there. One drives training. The other kills it.

The test is simple. Does the room make you train more or train less? Do you leave fired up about the work, or do you leave doing math about why you're never going to be good enough?

If it's the second one, the problem usually isn't the room. It's what you're doing with it. You're using stronger people as evidence that you're worthless instead of evidence that there's more on the table.

My "anything under 600 sucks" logic could have gone either way. It could have made me quit. Instead, it made me train, because the guys with the big squats were standing right there, treating me like I belonged in the conversation.

That's the difference. A room that upholds high standards and treats you as if you can meet them will change your life. A room that holds high standards and treats you like an outsider will just make you leave.

Keep the standard. Drop the self-scoring.

What to Do If Your Gym Doesn't Have a Bob Jeffery

Most people reading this don't train in a room like the one I was lucky enough to fall into. Here's what actually moves the needle.

Drive. Findlay and Toledo were not around the corner for a lot of the guys who trained there. They came anyway. If there's a real gym within an hour of you, that's not an obstacle. It's a decision you keep making.

You only need one. You don't need a full crew of elite lifters. One person stronger and more experienced than you, training in the same room on the same day, changes what you think is normal. That's the whole requirement.

If you can't move, get in the room a few times a year. Compete. Go to a meet even if you're not lifting. Get to a seminar or a hands-on training event where you're the weakest person in the building for two days. A short, direct exposure to a higher standard will reset your baseline faster than a year of reading.

Stop curating a feed of people at your level. If everything you watch is people lifting what you lift, you're actively reinforcing your ceiling. Go watch people who make you uncomfortable.

Be honest about what your current room thinks is normal. If normal is a 315 squat, a phone between sets, and everybody agreeing that's a solid day, that's the standard you're absorbing whether you agree to it or not.

Handle the room properly when you get in. Shut up. Work. Load bars. Be useful. Nobody in a serious gym owes a new guy anything, and the fastest way to get coached is to be the person people don't mind having around.

Be the Guy in the Locker Room

There's a second half to this that took me even longer to see.

Bob squatted 900 pounds three times in three meets, and he still spent his time helping a sixteen-year-old with a 350 squat fix his setup and talking to him about life in a locker room.

Rooms like that don't happen by accident. They exist because strong people decide to spend some of their time on people who can't do anything for them.

If you've gotten strong, you're now part of somebody else's environment. You are the thing that sets their idea of normal. That's not a compliment. It's a job.

Sometimes the fastest way to raise your standards is to spend time with people whose standards make yours look small.

And once your standards get big enough, go find the kid squatting 350.

Live, Learn, Pass On.

Dave Tate / elitefts