There’s always something crazy going on in this industry. At any moment, there’s a maniac in a weight room taking a dangerous lift and a shady businessman in an office finding a way to turn dirty profits. The posts you find here in my log are the musings of a mashed-up meathead — the reactions I have as I spend my whole life watching this industry. I will share my thoughts with you here, unedited, uncensored, unfiltered, and Under The Bar. If you are offended by profanity - do not read this. 

I don't understand 

 Every now and again there's certain topics and certain items that pop up that just piss me off to no end. This one never seems to go away, and it's been a topic that drives me fucking nuts. Actually, it pisses me off probably more than most things do. Absolutely drives me fucking crazy because I don't understand it. I don't get it. I have no idea why people would even say some of this shit that they say when it comes to this.

What I'm talking about are people who say that they've trained with people they've never fucking trained with.

Or people who say they used to train at so-and-so gym when they never fucking set foot in there.

  Here's why this drives me crazy. From my own personal perspective, I've had probably less training partners than girls I've dated in my whole life. By training partners, I'm talking about people that I've swapped sets with. By that, I mean people that I've done dynamic bench press workouts with or training sessions with back-to-back sets. They go, I go, they go, I go. Or people that I've squatted with or deadlifted with. A powerlifting setting or training for a powerlifting meet.

 Typically these people are people that you're going to be working with for years. There's not going to be  a whole hell of a lot of them unless you suck as a training partner. When I was training at Westside, when it comes training, the dynamic stuff might be 2 people that I was working with. Then, on the max effort stuff there might be 5 people that I was working with - swapping sets. When it comes to swapping sets in the 12, 14 years that I was at Westside Barbell, I can probably count on both hands, probably one hand, how many people I actually fucking trained with, with those movements. The ones that matter. Yes, there were many others who trained in the gym - those were my teammates.

 According to people I hear, "I've trained with fucking 30 or 40 different people when I was there," which is complete utter bullshit. When I was there, there were 20, 25 people who were part of the club, who I would say were part of the brotherhood that I was training with, and we may do some accessories that match us together, so I would say that, yeah, they teammates. They were part of a training team if you want to call it that way, but they weren't specifically fucking training with me. They are not the issue here, not even close.

 For probably more than 60%, 70% of the years that I was at Westside, I squatted with Louie Simmons. You know the other person I squatted with is Joe Amato. Outside of that, I'm drawing a fucking blank on who I squatted with. Rob Fuzner,  I think a couple meets with. Maybe John Stafford, Chuck Vogelpohl and Mike Ruggeria for a couple meets. That’s a handful of people I can think of off the top of my mind that I squatted with - swapping sets with.

If I wasn't squatting with them I was running the monolift or spotting all of their sets as they did mine.  To train with somebody your strength levels has got to be pretty close to the same, and a lot of these other guys, it fucking wasn't. I also wanted people I could drive off of and they could drive off of me.

What I'm talking about are these fucking people, I don't even know who the hell they are, saying that they trained with me at Westside for years, and they never even fucking trained at Westside ONCE. Many I never remember them being there even to visit.

I absolutely don't fucking get it. I don't get why,  ... What possible benefit is to gain with that type of bullshit? It's ridiculous to me.

Disrespectful 

 It's stupid, and it's disrespectful.

It's disrespectful to all the all the people who did train there, for one thing, because the sacrifices they made. Just in the small group of people I still train with now that I trained with while I was at Westside. Fucking hip replacements, other surgeries, torn muscles. There is a lot of sacrifice that went on in there before you even talk about the time with each other and the gym training and pushing each other. To have people saying that they were in there training with us when they really weren't; they were not  there fucking sacrificing and tearing shit off with us.  We were paying our dues to become the best we could. These were OUR dues and WE are the ones feeling the price now. What price are these lying fake assholes paying now?

Ya, thats what I thought.

 It's fucking disrespectful to the people who I was training with. I'm not saying I was anything special, because people say the same shit when it comes to the greats that were training there like Chuck Vogelpohl, Matt Smith, Kenny Patterson, and some of the other ones. If you didn't fucking train with them and swap sets with them, or if you were not in the gym for at least a fucking year, because most of us didn't even talk to anybody until they were there for 6 months, so they were ignored, because what's the point?

They had to prove that they deserved to be there in the first place, and that wasn't an easy fucking thing to do. Essentially you were just fucking ignored. We decided if was worth trying to help you out, because we already knew what fucking ... As Louie always said.  We knew what Westside could do for you. You had to prove what the fuck you could do for us. There's some blabbermouth running around saying they were fucking training with me or Chuck or Kenny or Matt or any of these people, it's just complete fucking bullshit and disrespectful.

The other people it's disrespectful to are those who got thrown the fuck out of the gym. There were people that got thrown out of the gym because they weren't giving everything that they had. Or they weren't showing up or for a multiple of other reasons, but they fucking were at least there and tried. They deserve some respect too, even if they couldn't hang or they could hack it or they had to leave or whatever reason. They fucking deserve the respect for at least being there and trying. For some jack-off to fucking say that they came in and trained with a bunch of people they never fucking knew  is just a complete fucking disrespectful lie. Especially to people who have sacrificed so much for a sport that gives so little in return.

My parting words on this one is fuck you fake assholes! 

This goes back even to the people I trained with in college, and the people I trained with in high school. I've always taken great pride in people that I trained with, because I always sought out people who were better than I was to be able to help advance me, and make me better. I know every one of their fucking names, because there's not that many. When I started hearing ... People are saying, "Oh, yeah. I trained with him for 3 years," it's fucking bullshit. Rather than call out 10 or 15, 20 or how many fucking people have said it, I'll just call everybody out at once, and...

not just for myself but for fucking everybody this happens to.

This is NOT a sign of respect and anyone who has trained, strained and given all they had with another person for a long period of time knows this is disrespectful at the highest degree.

If you are reading this and EVER had someone tell you they used to train with any known Strength Athlete the first think to ask yourself is why are they name dropping? Then realize there is a high possibility that person never trained with who they said they did. Social Media is awesome! If this happens (as it does all the time) just fire off a post to the person they said they trained with.

 The fact of the matter, make it simple. If you never trained with the fucking person, don't say you did. Is that really so hard?

Why does this matter? 

Well I guess first, because it does piss me off because I have taken great pride in who I've trained with and worked really hard to try to make them better as they work just as hard (or harder) to make me better.

Second, this industry has so much bullshit to begin with. This adds no value to anybody or anything except leaving a very easy to expose lie. While the fake ass - training partner may not see this as a big deal - it is - because they still are a reflection of the sport they are speaking about and/or represent.  All these lies add up and many times, even the smallest actions determine how others will see the sport.

Who are the others I am speaking of?

Everyone!

Many people will say "I don't care about anyone else outside the sport" - fine, that's your right but this is also a reflection on those just getting into the sport.

So many want to try to fix and find answers to all the BIG problems with each and every strength sport but not stopping to take notice of the small issues. These small issues are easy to fix and WILL add up fast.