Training always evolves, and if you don't evolve, you're going to get stuck. So leading up to that first world record, and what did it feel like to break it? He didn't break it though.
It was a reciprocal relationship too. Well yeah, because you're learning off each other. And it comes back, and everything was to make the betterment of West Side Barber. Just so I'm going to say this, I was here beyond my own will. I was dragged here.
Welcome to the West Side Barbell Podcast. Today's guests is Tony Ramos and George Halbert. Gentlemen, I really appreciate you coming in.
Tony, since we've got your story, a few podcast episodes back, which you can find in the description below. George, I'd like to start with you. And even before you got to Westside, when did you begin powerlifting and how did you get into it? When I was a freshman in high school, my sister's boyfriend wrestled and he said I should try wrestling.
And that's where I got introduced to bench press and weightlifting. I think the first time I benched, I benched 95 pounds. He asked me afterwards how much I could do, and I said probably 105. And he loaded the bar to 105 pounds, and I got crushed by it.
But it wasn't long before it went to a quarter and then 35 and then a 45, and I was hooked. I mean, it's the only thing I could think about in school. I wouldn't be thinking about school.
I'd be thinking about my workout afterwards. And a lot of people think that I'm a genetic freak or whatever, but I mean, I started at 95 pounds. And when I lifted in high school, I never missed any workouts at all.
So there were guys that trained at our school that would train for, you know, a couple months and they would get a lot stronger quicker than I would. But I'd never stop, you know, even if it was just a little bit, I was happy. I didn't need to make big gains. And by the time I graduated, I did 380 at 167. Damn. Which if you think about it, that's not a whole lot going from 95 to 380 in, what, three years.
And like I said, there were guys I trained with that could have done a lot better, but when they got stuck, they would quit. Did you figure this out, how to go from 95? upwards?
Actually, all I did was read books and magazines and ask questions to anyone that would answer them. And the first book I got said to do nine sets of five for the bench press. So that's what I did Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
And like I said, it worked. Was bench press, was that the only lift that you're interested in or did you do all three? I didn't do squatting and deadlifting.
I like training back a lot though. Yeah. I like doing like heavy rows and stuff like that. And everything to me was about getting stronger.
Whatever the lift was, I always wanted to get better. And I didn't just, like if I were doing shoulder presses or whatever, I would want to get stronger every workout. Did you know that that was your sport when you started making gains, that this was something you wanted to do? It was the only thing I thought about.
So, yeah. I mean, I put that before. everything else just because I enjoyed it so much. I didn't really think of it as going to work out. Yeah.
You know, people say you're dedicated. If you, if you love to fish and you go fishing all the time, you're not dedicated. You just, that's what you want to do.
So, um, I knew that's what I wanted to do. Cause like I said, that's all, all I thought about. Um, I probably should have spent more time concentrating on other stuff, but I mean, people say, you know, they look down on like gym rats and stuff like that. That's who I was.
I loved being in the gym. Not talking and hanging out, but, you know, lifting. Yeah.
I think it worked out pretty well for you in the end. Yeah, it did. So when you progressed through high school, when did you become more competitive in lifting? Well, in high school, we had high school bench press meets.
So I did all of them. And then when I graduated... I did two more meets and one of them is where I actually ran into Westside Barbell for the first time.
It was a police athletic league meet and I benched 470 at 221. That was before I tried on a shirt. And a guy from Westside was there competing at 242, and he benched 475 with a shirt, so he beat me. And afterwards, he said, you need to get one of these and see what you can do. But I didn't come down to Westside for another couple years after that. There were some guys that used to go to the world gym I was at, and they would ask me to come down.
But the gym owner, Worls, would tell me, you don't need to go train with them. You know, you're better than they are. And I'm like, but one day he finally called me and I decided to come down. And the first workout I worked out, it was me, Kenny, Louie, Dave, Tim Van Horn, Mickey Tate, Jerry Obradovich, Chuck Vogelpoel, Tom Waddle.
And they took training to a place I've never been before. I didn't even know training could be like that. And I already enjoyed it more than anything else. Now we got all this intensity and it was the greatest thing in the world.
There's no way in the world I wasn't going to go back after that experience. It was awesome. What was that atmosphere like when you first walked in?
Well, I mean, you know how Chuck is. He doesn't say anything. He's got his foot up the whole time.
But the one thing about Chuck was he always spotted one side of the bench. So the whole time that everyone's working, he's spotting. The only time he wasn't spotting was when he was lifting.
So he's always participating. And then Tom was always talking shit. And then Jerry O was one of the greatest motivating workout partners that you could possibly have. He was constantly screaming the whole workout. And then Louie's bench was with Dave and Kenny and Tim Van Horn.
So they were a lot quieter than our bench. I don't know if you remember Mickey Tate or not. I think I met him once or twice. He came in with Jerry a few times.
Yeah, he should have either been a motivational speaker or a professional wrestler. I don't know. Because he was another great person for motivation.
Yeah. So I didn't need motivation to begin with. But just to see that level of intensity and everyone rooting for each other, you know, that was something really special. Have you ever experienced a training session like that in terms of the exercises been done?
No, because, like I said, I used to read a lot in high school, and I read Louis talking about doing speed work. So I read the article, and I thought it meant how fast you could get through your workout. Yeah.
So when I did the speed work, I was like, this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. And I never tried it again. And then when I went there and I actually saw the application, then I learned what speed work was all about.
So I did try. that stuff but i didn't know how to do it because i'm learning by myself you know sometimes when you read an article you see speed you're like man i just need to see how fast i can make it through the workout but that was not what we're trying to accomplish what was it like the first time meeting louis uh actually when i was in high school they used to have the ymca nationals and the apf senior nationals and columbus okay so And my dad would take me to him. So the guys I would read about in magazines, I was able to see them. And I actually saw Louie compete at the YMCA Nationals when I was in high school. I think he came in like third place.
But it was funny because he was wearing sunglasses. And when he would squat or come out, the crowd would go crazy. And I'm like, I don't even know who this guy is.
I was there to see. The bench presser I always looked up to when I was coming up was named Chris Confessori. And he would compete at these things. So he was the main person I wanted to see compete.
And I was really lucky to be born here in Columbus because Westside Barbell and I got to see all these. Because back in the day, it wasn't like the meets today where only a few people come. Everyone went to those meets.
So the best lifters in the world would be at that meet. It's not like... Someone would go here and someone would go there. They would all come to the same place.
And were you able to interact with lifters then? Like, could you talk to lifters or get information from them? I was in high school, so I wasn't going to go up and talk to any of the lifters.
I wasn't going to go talk to Louie. One of the cool things that happened is I told you Chris Confessori was a guy I looked up to. After I lifted a Westside Barbell, I actually got to compete in the same meetas. He did. And I eventually ended up breaking his world record.
It was just cool just being in the same room with him and just seeing that he's just a normal person, just like the rest of us, you know? What was his lifts like? He broke world records at 181, 198, 220, and 242. Jeez.
And it's not like he was way ahead of everyone. Yeah. But he would always find a way to win. Yeah. And he was the guy that I followed.
So the kicker back to Westside, when did the two of you guys first meet? How long did that take? Uh, we met in...
I'll let him tell it. You, was George here first? Or were you here first?
No, George was here way before I ever came. Gotcha. Yeah, I was here when...
Before it was even on Demers Road, I was... What, Briggs? Yeah. My first workout partner was Dave Tate.
What was that like? Well, the first workout we had together, he told me this was... The rotation back then was way different than what it is now. And Dave was in charge of the group I was in. And he told me he'd...
He rotates exercises every three weeks, and the first week is super light, the second week is medium, and the third week is heavy. And if he doesn't do it that way, he tears his pack. Yeah. So I'm working out with him, and I'm beating him the first day.
So he decides he's not going to go light, and you know what happens. He ends up getting hurt, which I thought was funny that he knew that he shouldn't do it, but he did it anyway. Yeah.
So he was my first workout partner. But once I started learning stuff, I went to a time by myself where I could organize my own stuff. Did you try to do your own training separate, or did you have a group that you always worked in with? How did that work?
That always changed. There was always someone to train with. Yeah.
But it was different people. You know, when— You start getting really good and breaking world records and lots of people want to come and train with you because they think you have some magic sauce or something. They would come and go. But it is nice when you start doing really good because then the quality of workout partners you have goes through the roof, you know? I was working out with Rob and Fuzner and Kenny Patterson and Joe McCoy and Jerry Obradovich and, I mean...
There's a whole bunch of people that had world records there. Did you break your first world record at Westside? Yes.
When was that? He didn't break a world record. It should have been a red light.
It was at the Arnold Classic. My first one was at 220. I did 657. And that was probably in 1997, 98, somewhere in there. What was the training like leading up to that? Was it any different?
Did you know that the war record was in sight? I mean, the training... Westside has evolved over time so much.
During that period, actually, there was a guy named J.M. Blakely that had come down and started training, and he actually erased most of our names off the board, and we eventually got them back from him. But when he came down, his thing, he was big into sets of five, and we were doing floor presses back then that they had just...
come to Westside. So he was doing sets of five, and he was kicking everyone's butt. So I started doing sets of five, and that's what I did leading up into the first world record I broke.
But like I said, that training always evolves. And if you don't evolve, you're going to get stuck. Because most people think when they hit a peak, they think...
They've reached their potential. Yeah. But you haven't reached your potential until something breaks, you know? Yeah.
So you just have to figure out a way to stimulate your central nervous system to start making gains again. I've been stuck so many times in my life. The first time I got stuck was after high school. I did 380. Over the next two years, my bench press went back down to 370. I just kept getting slower and slower and slower. And I actually thought, I'm not going to be able to get any stronger.
That's when I realized for the first time that sometimes you just got to change stuff up because all I did was I changed to a high rep routine, which I thought was the key to me making gains again, but that wasn't what happened. When I switched to high reps, my speed came back. Gotcha. Because when I got to 380, I was pretty fast. But over time, I started getting slower and slower and slower, and I started doing some stuff like negatives and stuff because I was just trying anything I could.
And negatives just make you even slower than you already are. So that's why my training stagnated so much. And then once I dropped down the weight and started doing reps, see, I thought it was the reps, but it wasn't the reps. It was the speed.
Speed has always been a marker for me to tell me if I'm on a path that I can make gains. If I'm not fast, I'm not making gains. Now, I can be fast. And still struggle to make gains, but if I'm not fast, I'm not making gains. That's sort of my, one of the things I have to have working for me, for me to make gains.
And is that even an accessory work, or is it just main movements? Main movements. Gotcha.
No, I don't, speed with accessory work can be, you know, dangerous. Yeah. Like if you're doing tricep extensions or something like that, you rip your tendons out of your elbows.
So leading up to that. first world record and you what did it feel like to break it um he didn't break it though you know world records are are nice and everything but i never really started lifting to have world records yeah and i i'll be honest with you i would give away all my world records if i could have A year of training for each of the world records I broke, I would rather have the training than the world records. So the process was way more enjoyable? Oh, way more enjoyable. I loved lifting way more than I loved competing and breaking world records.
Did you like solving the problems of trying to get through plateaus? Was that a big challenge? Yeah, and that's another thing that competing helped me with because if it wasn't for competing...
Some of the changes I made that I learned so much about, I wouldn't have made. Because for a long time, even when I had broken my first two world records, I was really bad locking stuff out. Yeah. I would watch Kenny. He was the guy I would watch all the time because he would always sit on the end of the bench and do this before he would go.
And I could see what he was doing. But I... I could never feel my triceps when I locked out. So after I broke my second world record, Kenny came down and took that world record from me.
And then Waterman came and he beat Westside. And before that, Kenny was the best. And then Waterman came down and beat him.
So I decided that I was going to go down to Waterman's weight class and challenge him straight up. Yeah. But... In order for me to do that, I had to learn about dieting and I had to learn how to lock weight out.
So that thought process taught me a whole lot about weightlifting I would never have learned because like most people think bench press is 70% arms, but everyone lifts differently. And I was a chest presser. So they're saying arms, arms, arms. I'm like, I don't even feel my arms working when I'm bench pressing.
And I took that year of just learning how to lock out, lock out, lock out. And that's when I took off and was able to beat Kenny in watering both. I'm just wondering where that lockout was when we were working out.
That's what you were for. You always had a lockout. What were some of the stuff on that journey?
to learn or to improve your lockout what were some of the biggest takeaways you got from there uh if you want to make an improvement in a muscle in a exercise you got to learn what does that muscle do so for me anytime i would lift my chest would take over it wouldn't matter like you know louie was big into like jam presses and you know a lot of tricep stuff when i would do jam presses My chest would lift. It wouldn't matter. It would do the work. It wouldn't matter what I would do.
So what I had to do is I had to figure out a way to take my chest out of it and to feel what it feels like to lock something out. So that's when I invented, it started with a five-board press with the bands. And what I would do is I would take my elbows in, and I would lower the bar all the way down as far as I could get it without it dumping. And then I would just do an extension just to feel.
Yeah. And it was super, super lightweight. And I think this is a reason that a lot of people, when I try to teach people stuff like this, they have a hard time because For me to make all them gains, I had to step way back.
So I went from, you know, locking down around 700 pounds. Now I'm doing this exercise. I'm starting at four, going up to five, going up to six. And it's not like big jumps.
It's like little baby steps. Yeah. But I mean, I've always, I've never been a person that needs to make big gains.
If I can see a gain, then I know I'm on the right track. Yeah. So, you know, just...
a pound here, a pound here, a pound here. If you just keep at it, keep at it, keep at it, over time, it worked. Because I got a lockout. No matter what he says. I got a lockout.
I had a lockout. And I know because I had some really great training partners with really strong triceps, and they couldn't beat me at the lockout exercises anymore. Yeah.
So. All that hard work I did paid off, but I would never have gone down that route if it wasn't for competing. Did you have a hard time getting the transition from just going to a full bench from using your chest to your triceps?
Was there anything that converted the both of them together for you? Or did it just all come together? Well, like I said, my chest is going to fire no matter what. So if I can figure out how to use my triceps, my chest is already going up.
It's already going to work. Gotcha. I don't, I can't shut it off. Yeah. That was a problem when I was trying to, you know, do all these different exercises.
I would try to isolate my triceps and it would never work. Yeah. My chest would be like, you're not, you're not ignoring me.
What were some of the biggest challenges that you had to overcome? That was the biggest one right there because... They introduced floor presses and board presses and all that stuff.
And that was like another wave of West Side Evolution. Because before those exercises, I was making steady progress. And then when those exercises came in, my progress went right out the window.
Because these exercises are designed for you to use your arms. Yeah. I'm going to use my chest. So I remember the first time, Louie would always bring people in to motivate me.
He would just sneak them in. Like one time I came in and there was this guy from West Virginia and we were doing board presses that day. We were doing a three-board press and I think we got up to 550 and I missed it off a three-board and he made it.
And I'm like, so I just took the board away and did 550. Because if I can get my chest to work from here, it's gone. Yeah. But if I'm starting here and trying to use my arms, no. So that was the biggest thing was during that time period, I didn't make very good progress at all because I'm trying to do exercises that aren't working for me.
Now, after I learned how to use my triceps. Everything was on. Yeah. Did you have a process of how long you give something before you'd eliminate it if it didn't work? No.
No, and then I would come back to stuff. No. I would throw stuff out and come back to it later. I remember the first time when Louie brought down floor presses, he was having me and Joe McCoy.
He was filming us because he was sending us to a college. Me and Joe were cussing the whole time, saying how much we hated floor presses. It's the worst exercise in the world.
And Louie's like, I guess I'm not sending this video to any college. And I'm like, well, this exercise is stupid. And what? Later on, I used full presses a lot and it really helped me out. So I've learned that sometimes things just don't mesh with you, but don't throw them away.
A lot of people try things and they don't work for them and they think they don't work. Yeah. Like the first time I did speed work, that's not the case.
I just had to understand it. And once I understood it, I was able to use it. Did bands add a lot to your training?
Yeah. Because the reason I use bands... It wasn't accommodating resistance at all. In fact, I wish that the bands wouldn't release at all.
I wish it was the same. Because what I was after was I was after the speed of the bands. Because if you push a weight into a band and you stop pushing, it's coming back down like a slingshot. Now, if you have a free weight and you start pushing it and you stop pushing it, it's still going to coast a little bit. So when I was trying to learn how to use my triceps, I'm like, I don't want there to be...
any coasting. I want every millimeter I have to fight for. So once, once we brought bands down, um, I went, the heaviest I would go is I would go 50, 50, like 50% band weight at the top versus, uh, straight weight. So if it was like 800 pounds would be 400 pounds of bands at the top and 400 pounds of free weight.
So that's how I did everything. I got a funny Louie story. If you want to hear it about the bands. Yeah.
So me and Kenny and you know how things worked at Westside. You know, they brought bands, so we got to figure out how to use them. Yeah.
Speaking of the mic, if you can. I'm sorry. So me and Kenny and Rob were doing these lockouts, but we weren't double hooking the bands.
We were just single hooking them. So all the weight was at the very top. But once you would get it to here, it would just be the bar.
Yeah. So. We got up to like, I would say around 700 pounds, and Louie comes in the gym. He's like, what are you guys doing? We're like, we're trying these bands out.
We're doing these lockouts. He's like, let me try that. And we're like, Lou, you can't do this. Well, you know Lou.
So Lou takes that weight. The second Rob let go of that bar, it went whoosh. And Louie caught it right here, and he turned white.
That's the first time I've ever seen Louis fazed by anything. And he said, well, I'm never going to do that again. I think he, was that with green bands? Oh, there was more than green bands. It was a whole bunch of bands.
But like I said, they were single loops. So all the tension was at the very top. Yeah. Yeah. I remember he would tell that story about George and bands, but I didn't know it was that much tension.
Oh, like I said, we were just trying to figure out how to use them. Yeah. And.
Did you find the point of too much and to take it back down? Or did you always try to get more and more on there? Did you find what was too much? Like I said, 50 was my thing. So if I was progressing upwards, once I would get to the 50-50, I would increase the bands.
And then once the weight would catch back up, I would increase the bands. Did you have to do more work? For your upper back to counteract that, was that as important as the pressing movements and of the rows? Well, actually, I was huge in the back and that accessory work. But during that time period that I was switched to training, learning about my arms, I let some of that slide away.
And that was what caused my injury later on because I was so focused on. That was all I was thinking about was I got to, my lockout's got to get better. My lockout's got to get better. So I wouldn't even do the accessory work.
I would come in and just do, improve my lockout. That's all I was after. Yeah.
And it worked. But if you don't do all that other work, you're going to get hurt. And that's what happened.
Did the training partners that you were working with, did you all do something similar? Or was it all different? Well, unfortunately, a lot of my training partners wanted to train with me because they thought what I was doing was going to work for them.
But none of them were really chest pressers. Yeah. Now, don't get me wrong. Rob came down and trained with me, and he broke world records when he was training with me. When Kenny would come down and train, he would get better, but he didn't like training with bands very much.
But I had some workout partners that would try to do my workout, and it wouldn't do anything for them. Yeah. And I couldn't change my workout because I knew that's what was making me better.
So I would recommend to them, you know, let's find something that will work for you. But they always wanted to do what I was doing. And Louie would tell them. Yeah. He'd say, don't do what George is doing.
What was some of the most... Yeah. Valuable assets are things you look for in training partners. Consistency.
I would rather have someone that says absolutely nothing and is there. Yeah. How are you friends with that guy?
Well, I had a lot of trading partners, you know, and plus I'd pick him up at his house. So it's not like he can avoid me. Yeah.
Yeah, that's how he got me here. Did the circle back in that. So when was that around? When did you guys?
99, 2000. And you had been at Westside for how long before that? I probably came down in 91 or 92. Because there's some old school photos of you. Like there's some black and white photos of you in here with crazy ass hair.
Oh yeah. And mullet. Yeah.
And then there's the bench of the three of the kind. Yeah. I mean, this is like murder's row of Wesley when it came to benching back then.
What was that trio like going? Well, we were all, Jerry was the most explosive lifter out of all of us because Louie had a device that could measure speed and acceleration, and we would use that. Jerry was a little bit better.
And then, like, me and Rob were, like, the next tier. And then Kenny. Kenny was always a little bit slower.
And he was all arms. I was all chest. And then Rob was, like, somewhere in between. Yeah.
But, I mean, when you have people of that caliber training together, it's pretty exciting. Did that, were you just internally motivated regardless to get better, or did that help with your internal motivation? Well, I mean, I was always internally motivated, but to say that training with someone like that doesn't help, I mean, that's kind of ridiculous to say.
Because they can do things that most people can't, you know? Once you're in an environment where people are doing things that other people don't think are normal, It's normal to you. Yeah.
So to me, the more strong people you can have, the better chance you have of being strong yourself. Did you realize how special that group was going to be? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I would always try to find people that were really good at something.
And I would try to get them in my group. And then I would try to beat them with what they were good at. That was sort of my philosophy. If I can find all these specialty guys and I can beat them at their little specialty, then I can beat them at the meet. And you were never tempted to do squat or deadlift?
I did squat and deadlift when I first came. But I have a disc that's pushed forward, and it will start to pinch my sciatic nerve. So I asked Louis a long time ago, I'm like, I'm just going to bench, because I used to power lift when I first came down, and he's like, that's fine. Do you have any memorable gems of wisdom that Louis gave you along the way? There's so many things that he said that you look back on.
Like, treat light weights like they're heavy and treat heavy weights like they're light. That was one that definitely sticks with me. I mean, there are so many things that you learn from them. And like I said, it's always evolving.
And that was always the key, is to never think that you knew all the answers. That's another one that we had said was, just when you know the answers, they change the questions. Yeah. That's how piloting is, you know.
You get on a streak and you think you know what's going on, and then all of a sudden you hit a snafu and then you got to refigure things out. You think that's one of the things that made him special is that he always kept things interesting and kept changing the questions whether he wanted them changed or not? Louie was an amazing, amazing guy.
There's a lot of things that made him special. It's really hard to pick just one or two things because he was always motivating. And he always did it differently than anyone else would do it.
Yeah. You know, if you had any one of us that would have run the gym, we would all do it. all done in a different way, but he had his own there's only going to be one Louis Evans.
And we were lucky enough that we got to experience him. And, I mean, I had a lot of years with him. And he's always the person I would come to when I had questions.
The thing with Louis I learned really quick was If you really want to have a talk with Louie, you don't go to him when there's people around. Yeah. Because he's a different person when there's people around. If you want to really talk to Louie, you've got to be one-on-one. Because he's a totally different one-on-one than he is.
Because he's such an alpha figure that I think he wants to exert his alphaness in groups. Yeah. But if it's just you and him...
I mean, you can have a conversation, as long as you're respectful, you can have differing opinions, and that's fine with him. Did you guys have any of that, due to any difference of opinion, and you came to, oh, that makes sense, and that's why? Well, I had started doing... I want to hear this.
I had started doing speed singles, because... I know that they say it's probably around 70% is where your body can produce the most force with the weight. So to me, I'm thinking I want to go heavier to a single where I can produce the most amount of force that my body can produce.
And it's not to train my muscles or whatever. To me, it was all central nervous system training. So, and this was a time when I was learning to use my triceps. My bench press, my world record time went from, I think it went from three and a half seconds to five seconds, which I didn't even know that.
But Louie saw me doing the speed singles and he's like, you're not getting enough time under tension. And I'm like, I'm not doing it for time under tension. He's like, well, you know, you're getting slower.
And I'm like, I'm not getting slower. I've learned how to use, either I would smoke it. yeah or i would miss it now i've learned how to use my triceps so i'm not slower i just know how to grind now and i'm like and at five seconds three reps isn't going to be enough anyhow i'd have to do like five and then i'd have to change the thing so because you want the sum of the forces to be the most and he disagreed with me and then a year badly And then a year later, I ran to another guy that trained at Westside, and he told me he was doing speed sets of five.
I'm like, where in the world did you come up with that at? And he said, Louie told me to do it. So that's what Louie would do. He would take ideas, and if you would tell him, even if he would disagree, he would put it in his head. Yeah.
And then he would. Experiment on someone later and see if it works. Here's the problem.
George would do all this stuff and we'd do it on Wednesday and Sunday. And we'd have to come in before anybody else. And I had to train on Monday and Friday on deadlifting squat.
So every Monday, Louie would corner me and go, what the hell are you guys doing? I'm like, I don't know. And then he would want an explanation of what we did.
Friday would be the exact same thing. What'd you do on Wednesday? Or if I saw Louie after a training. And Louie would say, what are you guys doing?
I don't know. Ask George. And it was horrible because he'd be like, that shit he's doing is not working. And I'm like, oh, okay. I don't know what to tell you.
It was bad. And it was just like, and, you know, George would go to him and have conversations. And Louie would say, it's okay.
Yeah. And then I would be the guy hearing about it. How it doesn't work.
And what are you doing? And you're going to do this. And that's going to happen.
And you guys are going to get slow. And that doesn't work. And. There was a time where we were doing something, and George, I forget what it was, but it was like three weeks in a row.
And the first week, we did good. Second week, did a PR. And we did it the third week. And I remember Louie going, that shit ain't going to work. You do that thing too many times in a row, you're going to get weaker.
And it was the third workout. And, like, I got crushed under something. And Louie goes, see, I told you.
And George didn't even have to hear about it. George would just walk away and leave me with Louie. And Louie would just torture me the whole time. And I'd go, God damn, man, really?
And him and Paul Keyes would stand in the corner and laugh at me. He was, like, the intelligence of Louie is, it's hard to explain if you've never. met him or been in the gym but he was very smart in that he always put himself in a position where it was winning right if you guys succeeded the gym won if you guys didn't succeed he won and the gym won again so it was never in a position it was always about the betterment of the club and just like you said you might say something And you don't know how many other people outside of the gym are doing it. And he's getting the feedback in and he just percolates it in through his random conversations and stories.
That's a, I mean, his genius really knows no end and how conniving he was to get it into the system and to get it out. Yeah, but the thing that was so smart about him was he would take normal ideas from other people and he would try them. Yeah. He may not. Believe in everything he tried, but he would, the amount of stuff that we tried at Westside Barbell was ridiculous.
I mean, we did all kinds of things. I remember for a long time, he was doing timed, we had this like giant beach ball. He was doing timed reps with like 25 or 30 pounds. And it'd be like for five or 10 minutes, you know, which you would think there's. there's no way this can possibly build strength.
And that's sort of how Westside worked was we would try everything and what worked we would keep and what didn't we'd throw away and maybe we would try it again later. But we were always trying to get better. We didn't just rest on our laurels and say we know what we're doing.
No one knows everything about weightlifting. I mean, there's so much we still have yet to learn. The more people that you can have trying different things, the better off your gym is going to be. Now, you obviously don't want to disrupt the gym.
Yeah. No. And that's one thing I never did. I never disrupted the gym or ever disrespected Louie because we're all here because of him. And I had a communication with Louie, so he knew where I was coming from, and he respected that.
So I'm extremely thankful for Louie Simmons. yeah if it wasn't for him i wouldn't have accomplished half the stuff i accomplished but the it was a reciprocal relationship too well yeah because you're learning off each other and it comes back and everything was to make the betterment of west side barba and in that if you got better phenomenal but everything was to raise like a rising tide raises all ships and um look at the bench press manual and he accredited that a lot of from your training and your successes so like it comes to benefit and then that led to articles and blogs and then that goes out to everyone else so like one small gym has a huge reach because of the feedback and the one good thing about west side is people will give feedback whether you want it or not at times but still it helps raise everything up um where did the uh the spring bar when did that come into i never use the spring are you talking like the the one that you squeeze in yeah I never used that because, like, I mean, my gift was my chest. So I didn't need anything that I had to build because that's more of a chest thing, squeezing in. Because that's what he would use.
Well, that worked for George. This is what George used. And he got someone else to, because they had that real strong one where no one could fucking squeeze the springs. And when anyone did, they get so off balance. So his trick to get everyone else was like.
That's what helped George. And then everyone was like, okay, well, we better do it. Well, I got lucky not that I was training with George and I didn't get put through that torture. Well, you came up with the kettlebells and tried to kill us also, hanging kettlebells. That is the greatest.
He never believed in that. He was laughing at me the whole time. This is the dumbest thing you've ever done.
Why are you doing that? And he took that bar out. He went like this.
And I got a video of it. He's like this, and it goes right in his lap. And he's like, oh, shit. And then you saw the light bulb go off in his head, and then we started experimenting with it for, I don't know, a few years. Then it became the earthquake bar run.
Yeah, and like I said, I mean, like I said before, Jimmy Saitra took it to a whole other level and made a really good bar for it because we went from a 45-pound bar to a broomstick to piping, you know, plastic pipe. And then... You know, and then we was, you know, so, I mean, he pretty much took it and made it, you know, work really well that it could hold enough weight. Because I can't tell you how many times he snapped broomsticks. And I mean, there's a lot of shit that got broke, you know, practicing those exercises.
No, and a lot of people probably almost got killed trying it. But it was awesome seeing it happen. Well, I will admit that it took him a very long time to convince me.
And he didn't convince me by talking to me. When I tried it, I told him for a long time, that's not going to work. That's not going to work. And I kept telling him because he would drive me.
And I'd be like, dude, it's going to work, man, I know. Because if it's not connected and it was a whole, you know, there's a thing. Me and George have had conversations for seven hours about lifting weights.
Maybe 10 hours, 12. I mean, just hours and hours of, well, that's going to work and this should work and bands should work this way and this should work this way. And me and him would literally. And he says, he told somebody this other day, he said, I've only seen Tony get mad at me one time. And I never got mad at him, but I was trying to explain to him something about bands and he was like. He got mad at me because I said it was never going to work.
And I'm like, it will work. And I wasn't mad. I was just like, okay, don't believe me.
But he was mad. I was not mad. And it was the craziest thing because, I mean, we would just come up with the craziest ideas. I mean, you know, like we came up with the one idea the one time to make a bar that would go in between the rack.
And. I bought these ball bearings and the ball bearing would fit over top of the metal rod. And when you took the bar out, it would keep the weights directly in the path of where you were benching instead of at an angle or wherever.
And I think would slide on there. We never I mean, it worked somewhat, but it just didn't work as well as it should have. You know, it was it was it was just a little harder. But because what it was is the bar would be like this and then it had that ball bearing that would slide back and forth. And so you take it out.
And what would happen was is the ball bearings were so loose that it would kind of overshoot it and move back and forth. But, I mean, we just came up. I mean, I don't know.
I mean, I spent a bunch of money on that idea because we had, what's his name? We had a machinist make the bar that fit in there and fit the ball bearing perfect. I mean, it was like a six-week whole trial, just trying to get the thing made.
And then we get it made, and then it's like, fuck, it didn't work. God damn it. And this was all to get better. I mean, yeah, but that's all we did. I mean, me and him, that's all we did.
I mean, that's all we did was try to bounce ideas. And I mean, George was like, here's the thing. George was willing to torture himself. and torture us along with it.
You know what I'm saying? And, like, he would always try something different. We would always be doing something different. There would always, you know, it was crazy because, like, you know how somebody has a theory on something, and they're like, oh, this is a theory of weightlifting. This is how this works.
It was like, I'll never forget, man. Like, we were in there one time, and... George was like, you know, I got to figure out how we was.
He was using a Ben shirt and it was me, him and Paul Keys. And I kept saying, man, you guys are stopping yourself with the shirt or something. And I don't know what happened.
It was like a few months. later he was he took a weight out he thought it was like 750 or 800 and he just let it he let it rip and it i mean it came down easy and you know press it back up well then he figured out that, oh shit, it was only like 650 or 675 on the bar. It was a lighter weight than what he thought it was.
And he was like, I touched really easy in my bench shirt. And then it was like, we went through this whole thing. Holy shit, we've been stopping ourselves and not releasing the bar and letting the bar go. You know, so like, it was like a, it was honestly, it was like a science lab.
I mean, I've seen him, you know, he's come up with some crazy, crazy stuff. And I've seen him do some crazy shit. I mean. And like he was talking about when people come in and he likes to compete or, you know, once somebody, you know, Mike Wolf came down, I mean, his light bulb goes off in his head. He's like, oh, my God, I got this guy.
He starts loading up this bar and all these bands. And he, you know, he's like, shit, I got, you know, he's like, it's really funny, though. I used to be like, George has got another test rat.
And that's what he would do to him. I mean, he'd put him in a maze and see, okay, see if he. he shots himself to death and people would come down and I mean him, Mike Wolf, Nick winners. And you know, it's like he, it's like, uh, it's like a kid when he got things like that.
It's like, he got a new play toy and he was like, Oh shit. Check this out. I want to see what this guy can do. And I've seen him so many times.
You know, he took people and made them great bench pressers. I mean, you know, everybody who worked out with us, I mean, always did really well. I mean, and, you know, he sits here and says, well, my workout didn't work for everybody.
But he wouldn't. I would see him. He'd be like, hey, don't do this because this isn't going to work for you. Don't do this because this isn't going, you know, and he'd have them do their own thing. And he'd be like, you go over here and do that right now.
You go over here and do that right now. Then I would get stuck being tortured working out with him. And it didn't work for me at all.
You brought up two big names there with Nick Winters and Mike Wolf. What were they like to train with? Abused.
It's funny because Mike came down just when I was getting ready for a... A meet and the only reason I was going to the meet was because my strength. I was OK, let me back up.
I was getting ready for this meet where there was going to be the top two guys. in my weight class at that meet. And I've always been a guy that I've always wanted to compete with someone and not beat them because they had a bad day. I want my best day against their best day, you know? To me, if you beat someone and they're off, I mean, I'm not in it for the title.
I want to know how good I really am, you know? So... I was getting ready for a meet, but with the shirt thing, I was like, that's when I figured out I have no idea what I'm doing with this shirt. So I'm not going to even get ready for this meet anymore. I'm just going to start concentrating on just my regular bench press.
So during that time period of about eight weeks, my bench went from 580 to 625. I was, it's funny because I was going to take a weight and Louie showed up that day. I don't know who told him I was taking a weight, but it's on the one of the Westside videos. It was 625. And the gym.
625 raw. The gym. At 235. Yeah.
I thought he was lighter than that. The gym record at the time was 615 was the most anyone had benched raw. So I was going to take 620 that day, but Mike Wolfe had just started, and he had just benched 620 raw out of me. So he said, well, I've already done 620. I'm like, well, put on 625 then.
So that workout is when I made my 625. Mike had some of the strongest arms, except for the only person had stronger arms than him was Nick Winters. But I don't know who had stronger arms than Nick Winters. I mean, he was a freak.
When he would come down, I would... come up with the hardest exercise I could possibly come up with that I knew no human being could do. There's only one person that can do this exercise, and it's him.
So anything I would introduce to him, he would break the gym record the first time. I mean, the first time he did four presses with chains, it's shaking like this. When he goes to press, I mean, it's effortless. You're just like, this isn't even fair.
And that's where I'm... I made my mistake with him because he would come down every couple months and he came down one time and he was hurt and he didn't tell me. Now you're coming down and I am going to give you an exercise that is so unbelievably hard that no one in the world can do it. And you're not telling me you're hurt. So we double banded him with a green and a purple.
And It was 315, and when he touched his chest, his chest came off. And who knows what that, I mean, obviously he passed since then, but who knows what he could have done. And there's no way in the world I would have had him do that exercise if I knew he was hurt.
I mean, that would hurt a healthy person. And that was a tough one for me. Because, you know, when you have something that's that amazing, and you're partially responsible for breaking it.
You know, that's a hard one. Yeah, but he knew what he was doing. He could have had a choice to say no. I mean, that's just how it is.
I mean, I don't think he ever blamed you for any of that, man. And he was, you know, he's just like, okay, cool. The pictures of his upper back and his arms were just, he was a. I mean, to see him in person and do the things he did.
Yeah. And it's crazy because he's one of the nicest guys. And I remember when he first came in, I was like, and George. Watch this. Holy shit.
And it's really crazy to see what those guys could do, man. I mean, like I said, I mean. What was his best bench? Seven. He was right around the seven.
High six to a seven. I don't think he ever got a seven in a meet, but he's in the gym. What were some of the hardest things you? You couldn't believe he got through.
Like I said, everything I gave him, he was... He never failed at anything. He never didn't break a record, the gym record, ever.
Of any of the lifts I gave him, if there was a gym record, he was beating it. I mean, he was a freak. If you looked at him from the side, he had to be like that thick.
He was unbelievable. Yeah. Also, when he was talking about that band thing with the sliders... This is the reason that we did that.
If you have someone that trains with a lot of bands, some people will lose their stability when they take the bands away. Now, that doesn't happen to every lifter. Yeah. But there are lifters that if you take the bands away, they lose their stability because what does a band do?
It's pulling in different directions. It's like if you have a tower, you have all these cables. They're not supporting the tower, but they're stabilizing it.
So when you have bands pulling in different directions, it's stabilizing the weight. So when you take the bands away, you're shaky. So my thinking was, if it's going straight down, just like the weight's going straight down, then we take away the stability of the bands.
That's why we were trying to get the slider to stay underneath the weight. So when we took the bands away, there wasn't a stability issue. Were you always that...
mechanically minded towards everything you approached? Physics. Physics? Yeah, for whatever reason, math was always my subject when I was younger.
He bores me with that shit sometimes in the car, talking about black holes and wormholes and quantum physics, and I'm like... I just want to go to sleep, George. So would you take that level of thought into what you were doing in exercise?
It wasn't just lifting a weight. There was way more purpose behind everything you did? Once I got to a certain level, it was never about lifting weights.
There's always a purpose for everything. Yeah. And that all really started once I understood what speed work was.
And then, like I said, the thing that helped me the most was Changing myself from a chest presser to learning how to be a tricep presser. Most people, when they train, they only learn one way and they don't have the, they weren't blessed enough to try it a different way. I was able to be very successful using, doing it a couple of different ways. So to me, it's all about science and trying to figure out the best way to train. Like I said, we're...
We're going to learn a lot here in the next 50, 100 years. I'm sure the evolution of training is going to be crazy because, I mean, there's just so much we don't know. Did you find it hard to help and coach other people while lifting? No, because when you're lifting, coaching is easy. Because if you're lifting, your main job as a coach is to succeed.
Because if you have a group of people and you're the leader and you're going to come in and there's going to be days when everyone's going to be off. Everyone can't be off. It's your job as the leader. When everyone else is off, you've got to step up and bring it. So to me, coaching when you're lifting is easy.
It's coaching when you're not lifting is not so easy because you can't show them. If you can show someone how to train and how to train hard and how to train smart. It's a lot easier than telling someone how to train hard and train smart.
Louie complained a lot about people being lazy. And he asked me one time if I wanted to come in and talk to him. And I'm like... What am I going to say?
That's why George used me. He'd be like, hey, go yell at him. And I'm like, what?
Go yell at him. I'm like, OK. You got to show people. Yeah. People don't know how to work.
You can explain working hard, but the first time I worked out with Westside, it was totally different than any workout I've ever experienced in my life. Yeah. There's no way I would have ever experienced that by myself.
Or if someone would have told me about it, it wouldn't have worked. I mean, I had to actually experience it. So to me, being a coach and not lifting is way harder because you can tell people how to work hard, but.
You have to feel it. Yeah. See it. Well, when you see it, it's.
Yeah. We had conversations recently about the intensity that we used to have in our workouts. Like him and I and Paul and stuff and the things that we used to do. It was like. I don't, even if we had an off day, it was a super intense day when we trained back then.
There was like, it was just unwritten, but it's just how it was. And George used to say all the time, he'd be like, man, I kind of got, you know, he'd come in and be like, he would tell me like, I got this feeling, I can feel it now. And every set would get like, get better and better.
And then he'd feel his brain and his. everything connecting and going snap snap and then you would see it and you'd be like holy shit i've never like he said jerry it was fast as shit but i i mean and but i've never seen anybody move weights like him at the speed you know what i'm saying i mean it was crazy some of the things i've seen him do and some of the speed he's produced and and what we've done so i mean I don't know. I just think that I think that our intensity was was the thing that pushed a lot of people through and got them to a better place. You know, I mean, I can talk shit pretty good and get people going.
You know, I'm not offensive. I don't you know, but I find something that, you know, motivates them in some way or somebody, you know. It's just what it is, you know. So I've, you know, I mean, there was a period, too, when I was coming in with George, and I wasn't even working out.
I was just sitting in a chair. I was just like, you know, I might screw around a little bit. And I'd be sitting in a chair, and I'd be all the way in the corner or something, and George would come over and be like, come here. I'm like, what? He's like, you need to talk shit to him.
And I'm like, OK, I got this, you know, and then I would just talk shit to him and then, you know, and try to get everybody to do that. Like, you know, it's just like you said, you know, when he asked when he said, you know, Louie's asked him to come in because. People are lazy.
I mean, you remember when Louie said, hey, can Tony come back in the gym and talk shit to people? And then I did, and it was the weirdest thing because some people just shut down. And I was like, oh, this isn't what it used to be.
Well, it's from Tony. talking with i mean i don't think i've talked to this many members of all different generations and there's huge common denominators of each group it really goes the culture that's created creates a consistency and once you have culture and consistency whatever the methods are once you're willing to try success is going to follow but each group has their own different culture within west side and it's so interesting that you have people of different mindsets introverts extroverts all mixed together but there's a common culture and then that consistency once and consistency is key right um or for most of us yeah yeah well his consistency was inconsistent yeah right exactly um but it comes back to the culture and um i think that's what a big thing that west side and louis set forth is having a place where culture can thrive and having a place where you can look like a fool but if it works great if it doesn't onto the next one. Competitiveness.
Well, yeah, and to be the best and to be around people who want to be the best. And it's not to be the best in the world, it's to be the best person or lifter that they can be. And there's a lot to be that, to where a lot of people want to be the absolute best in the world, but if you can be the best person you can, well, you're an asset to your training group. And everyone had a purpose.
There's not many people I've met that didn't have a purpose in the gym and that's why they were there and within their group, which is another thing which is pretty... unique you don't have to be the strongest but once you turn up and you're there and you're helping and you have a purpose to the greater good well then you function at westside Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I just... Like when you have someone turn up to your house every day to bring you training.
Yeah. Yeah, either my house or somebody picked me up someplace else or something like that. That's happened a few times also.
You know, I was like, George, like, you know, and it was funny because like, yeah, George liked to set me up a lot in the gym. Like, you know, he's like, I had a really good lockout. And one time he sent me over and he was like, I bet you a dollar you won't go over there and do that. And it was like.
And after I did it, I thought, oh, shit, why did I do that? Because some guys were lifting and they were doing lockouts. And I had a really good lockout. And I could just lay down and lock out anything. And he sent me over there.
And then I did it. And then Louie started yelling at the guys. And then I looked like a total asshole. And I walked away.
He thinks it's funny. I'm like, shit. Maybe I shouldn't have done that, you know?
I mean, when I first came down. Uh, I got ahead of Kenny and then Kenny came back and got ahead of me. And then I think it was like 95. We went to the greatest bench press in America and it was in Dallas and all the top bench pressers in the world were there.
I think Kenny was 21 or 22 and he, he won. He beat everyone. So. How lucky am I that my training partner just beat everyone else in the world, you know? Yeah.
I mean, if those are your training partners, how can you fail? Yeah. I mean, I guess you can quit. But it's funny because Louie would always, I would come in and be like, you know what Kenny did today?
I don't care what Kenny did today. He would always try to pit me against Kenny, but to me, Kenny wasn't my competition. Kenny was my brother at Westside Farvel.
Yeah. I mean, Kenny was very competitive to me, but to me. we're all on the same team we gotta take everyone else out yeah so when he would beat me back in the day that It didn't really, it wasn't like someone from another gym beating me. Yeah. That would adversely affect me.
If Kenny beat me, I would have to listen to him talk some smack, but that was all right. Would you dissect that? If someone from another gym beat you in anything, would you analyze what happened? Yes.
Like I said, the only person that didn't happen with was Kenny. Yeah. And the only reason...
That I switched over was even though it's because Kenny didn't beat Waterman. If Kenny would have beat Waterman, I would have probably still been on the same track I was on. But once our gym got beat, someone's got to beat them.
So I decided I was going to go down and take them on. So that's what I did. Would you look at other people who bench press outside of Westside to see what they did right and wrong? Yes.
Oh, I. There could be someone I was and I. anti-West Side Barbell that they would say would be our worst enemy, I would call them up and ask them what they were doing. He'd get lied to all the time, though.
And we've been lied to our face. We've been standing at a meeting, ask somebody a question, and they lie right to our face. And the whole time I'm watching George, he's gritting his teeth.
And I'm like, I know George knows he's lying, and I know he's lying. And there was a couple times where I'm like, you're fucking lying. But For the most part, they would just lie to him.
There were some dudes that would tell you because they were proud of what they were doing, you know? So getting information from people really isn't super hard. Yeah.
Because most people are proud about what they're doing. Well, yeah, some people definitely lie. But some people want to tell you what they're doing because they're so proud of it, you know?
Did anyone give you any really, really good advice that was outside of here? There's a guy named Bill Crawford. who was a metal militia.
And it's funny because a lot of people think I'm really good with a shirt. I suck with a shirt. My secret was never the shirt.
It was strength. And then I would learn a little bit, get me by with a shirt. And Crawford was like the master of shirts back in the day.
So I called him up. And I asked him how to use a shirt, and he talked to me for at least an hour. And he broke it all down to me. And everything he told me was true, but I didn't understand what the fuck he was talking about. That's funny.
What he's saying doesn't make sense. But after time and washing the shirt and learning, everything he told me was right. I don't even remember that he called him.
I just know that Louie told George before we went to a meet one time. Tell Tony they're our friends. Came out to the car.
I would, if I knew someone knew something or I had a chance to train with someone that was good at something I wasn't good at, I would go wherever. I remember one time we went to Michigan because there was a bunch of lifters going there. Well, the only reason I went was there was a guy named Rob Lawando. That was lifting, and he was a guy that started breaking a bunch of world records in shirts.
So he's going to train where? I'm going to go see it. And then you get to see firsthand, and you get to learn. Because back in the day, we didn't have guys having carryovers that we have now. No one had those kind of carryovers.
Now, we would compete against people with those kind of carryovers, but we wouldn't have them. So we had to slowly but surely figure out what are these guys doing? And we figured it out.
And we weren't afraid to go to other people's gyms or whatever to learn something. And then we would bring it back and share it. Did many people come to you for advice outside of Westside?
And many competitors ask you what you were doing? Yeah, but they didn't want to hear what I was doing. They wanted me to tell them whatever they wanted to hear, and they wanted to talk about themselves.
They wanted him to listen to voicemails from their doctor about their shoulder surgery. People think that you have some magic pill or something that you take. It's just called hard work.
Yeah. I mean, there's been people that have come in, and they've had a 100-pound improvement in a workout. I've seen that.
But those are very few and far between. Most people come in and they don't get anything with the first workout, you know? Yeah.
So there's a lot of people that ask questions, but most of them don't listen to what you're saying. They think that it's not real. Or that you're a freak or something.
I've heard that so many times, and that's so not the truth. I just didn't stop working. He told me the story.
He said that he had accepted that Kenny was going to be the best, and he's like, I'm just going to try to get better. I mean, because we would have conversations about, man. I'm not going to get this.
This isn't working. And he would be like, told me a story about him and Kenny. And he was like, well, he's like, I think it was after he won the greatest bench in America.
And George was like, well, I guess I'm not going to get as good as him or whatever. And George just said, well, I'm just going to work hard and just do the best he can. And then eventually he just ended up passing him up. Yeah, I didn't think. He didn't think he'd ever beat him.
Yeah, when he was younger than me and beating everyone else, I was like, what is this? And he's. better with a shirt than I am.
So how is this going to work, you know? But I figured it out. Do you think a lot of the times when people will come and go, that mentally they would break, that physically they had more talent, but they couldn't handle the mentality of that the true secret is hard work?
It was never physical unless I got hurt. It was always mental. A lot of people would come here and think that. There was something magic going on there.
It's just a bunch of people working their butts off, you know? Yeah. Well, some of us encourage each other.
I guess there's a lot of, some people have animosity in the gym with each other. But, I mean, like you said before, there's people from every spectrum, introverts, extroverts, but we're all here for the same reason. We all want to get stronger.
Yeah. And to me, the stronger your training partners are, the stronger you are. I mean, that's always, if I would go to the gym and at least one of us hit PRs, I would be happy.
It didn't always have to be me. Yeah. Just as long as one of my training partners, as long as one of us is making progress, we're doing good. George, and this is the truth, we've seen people before come here, and they're really good lifters, and they have more potential.
And we've seen them get beat by somebody in the gym or somebody outlift them, and they're done. I mean, it wrecked them. It ended it for them. Like, they couldn't.
Like, it was like their head just couldn't fathom that this happened. And I don't know. Then they start trying to do crazy stuff or something different.
And, I mean, we've seen it a few times with a few people, like their mental capacity of, you know, looking at somebody and thinking, you know. I should beat that guy. You know, how did that guy beat me at this? I'm bigger than him. I'm outweighed.
You know what I'm saying? And that would happen. I mean, I've seen it happen before.
I mean, it's crazy because guys would have a mentality that they would come here and they would say. Um, you know, they, they would think, well, why is this guy beating me? Or why is this guy here?
Or, you know, we've seen a couple of people that when they got outlifted, it was the end of pretty much the end of their career, you know what I mean? And then you have people come here and say, why is that guy here? You know, and then they see him do something and they're like, shit, I didn't think you'd be that strong.
It's the, it's, we've, we've seen that many a times in here. And like, there was guys that had came through here that could have been. really great lifters, but their mind couldn't, their mind could not get wrapped around what was going on.
I mean, they couldn't understand it, you know, it's like. Could you tell when they would just say someone new came into the atmosphere of Westside, into the ecosystem, could you tell pretty fast if they were going to burn out bright? A couple of ways.
It's hard to say, because I've had some people when they would show up. I would be like, there's no way they're going to last. And then the next thing I know, they're with me years later. So it takes a couple, within a couple of weeks, you know. But the first day, no.
Because like I said, no one's walking in here knowing what's going to happen. Like the first time I came to Westside, there's no way I would have known that was going to happen. There's no way.
Because I've never seen anything like it before. Did you guys ever talk about... Um... the mentality of it like to where like hey mentally you need to be as strong if not stronger physically did you guys share that or is it is that just who ended up staying and training together was the people who are naturally had more mental strength uh i think it's more uh priority and expectations i mean if you expect that You're just going to beat everyone and take over. That's not a realistic expectation.
There's going to be a struggle. I mean, I don't know how many times I've had training partners come in and they start doing really good with me and they start making gains. and they're making better gains than me, I don't ever go, oh, no, I'm ruined. I'm like, to me, this is awesome.
I got some guy that's making really good gains now, and he's training with me. So I would always use anything as a... for me to get stronger.
I would never look at it as something negative. The only thing that's negative is when you get hurt. If you got someone that comes in and is starting to take over the group, that's the best thing that could possibly happen.
Fresh meat. Because like I said, JM came in and he knocked all their names off the board, but guess what happened? We came back and we took them all back.
That's what the people that last the longest, they realize this isn't a sprint. You might be making gains better than me right now, but it's all going to come around. How has Westside or has it impacted your life? I mean, if it wasn't for Westside, I wouldn't have. I mean, I would have always lifted weights, but my potential would have been so much less because I had so less tools.
Yeah. I mean, all the tools I've learned here, I mean, that's what helped me become who I am. I don't even know who I would be without any of these tools. I would have, who knows even if I would have even benched 500 the first time, you know?
Maybe not. Yeah. But, I mean, this. I was super lucky to be here in Columbus.
I mean, even though he lives here, it's a pretty good place to live. Is there any one thing that stands out to you the most that you're most proud of within Westside that you were a part of or you did? I mean, it was cool to watch the evolution. Like I said, it wasn't.
I was like 23 and Kenny was 22. He was already beat everyone else, you know, so. I mean, just being able to partake in the growing strength. And sometimes the west side would go down, but it would always come back up.
And just the amount of lifters that I've got to lift with because I'm here. I mean, I remember I came here one time, and somehow Louie had the Swedish bench press heavyweight champion. I'm like, where did you come up with these people at? But he would always come in with someone that he would think that I wasn't motivated.
But like I said, there was a period of time where the floor presses and the board presses and all that stuff that wasn't working for me. So it wasn't that I wasn't motivated. Yeah.
It's just that my workouts weren't going as well. So he would always bring in someone that I think he was trying to motivate me. And I would make sure that I beat him that day. But as far as helping me in the long term, no. But it was nice to see that he invested in me, you know.
Yeah. Because he invested a lot in me. And I really appreciate that. Is there any other areas that you guys want to talk about outside of what we've done? Well, that we can talk about?
I'm pretty quiet today. Like I said, I'm just, I'm very thankful for... Westside Barbell and all that it's given me. I got one of my best friends from Westside, so it's all good. I don't know why he's my best friend.
I wonder sometimes if he's got mental problems. I definitely have mental problems. you can talk to for seven hours about weightlifting. What can be bad about that?
I mean, that's, yeah. If we're going to conclude on one thing, if we have people out there who are beginning, getting into weightlifting, getting into what you guys did, what are the three things that you would tell them? Patience.
Don't do what I did. Patience, knowledge, and determination. Yeah.
I mean, not for nothing. I mean, you could say consistency, but I was. inconsistent as fuck. I still did okay.
Yeah, imagine what you could have done if you were consistent. I can tell you what, that's the most consistent thought process towards Tony. Imagine what you could have done. Yeah, I probably could have done something great, maybe. I mean, I don't know, I mean, don't give up.
I don't. and find somebody to talk shit to you yeah and a failure isn't necessarily a failure yeah no fail is uh this is you know what fell stands for first attempt in learning and that's you know That's like the one thing that, listen, man, I got my ass kicked by George and everybody for years. Only thing I never lost was a lockout competition.
It's the only thing. But I got beat at everything else consistently. You can't expect that you're going to turn into Hulk Hogan overnight.
Yeah. Now, don't get me wrong, there are some people out there that can turn into COVID overnight, but those are few and far between. I've worked out with people that they can get hurt and then it seems like they just turn everything around overnight.
Every time I've ever got hurt, I never just jumped back to where I was. It was always. a process, always working, always grinding.
So if you're just coming into this and you're going to get out of it what you put into it and you can't get frustrated and give up, just use it, learn, and get better. So you're saying that the rumors that George Halbert's a freak is actually you have patience, knowledge, and determination and never straight away from that. He's a freak in a way, not weightlifting, but probably a math freak. How about that?
Like I said, if one of the people that I had trained with that quit, if they had stuck with it the whole time, they would have beat me. I mean, I'm not going to lie and say I'm something I'm not. Yeah. But I stuck with it, and not because I was forced to, because that's just what I wanted to do.
Even if I would lose, I still get to lift weights. Yeah. I mean, so the last prize is I still get to lift weights. So let's all win.
Yeah. Gentlemen, I appreciate the time. George, thank you so much for coming in. Tony?
I was here, just so I'm going to say this, I was here beyond my own will. I was dragged here, just so you know. He picked me up and made me come, just like I come to the gym.