Plague of Strength

In Westside Connection, you will learn about the original Westside Barbell, the crew who is basically responsible for turning powerlifting into a sport. This book is jam-packed with badass training routines from tons of god-tier lifters who were either a part of, and influence to, or an offshoot of the original Culver City, CA Westside Barbell like:

• legendary strongman and proto-powerlifter Chuck Ahrens
• US Olympic gold medalist in weightlifting and the 1950s god of squatting, Paul Anderson
• US Olympic weightlifting gold medalist and avid bodybuilder Ike Berger
• four-time FICH Mr. World-Universe and US Olympic weightlifting god Tommy Kono
• inventor of the incline bench press and god-tier bench presser Steve Merjanian
• the god of deadlifting before powerlifting was even a sport, Bob Peoples
• and the methods utilized by the odd gym that served as Westside’s primary local competition- Zuver’s Gym, an aggressively evangelical Christian Disneyland of a gym
• the only powerlifter Joe Weider ever begged to compete in bodybuilding, Roger Estep, whose body was as beautiful as it was capable of astonishing powerlifting feats
• Phil Grippaldi, a guy who went from being a world record holder in the Olympic Press and possessor of absurd 21″ ams at 198lbs to holding what I would imagine to be a world record for the world’s oldest crack dealer, as he was arrested at the ripe old age of 61
• and Pat Casey, the dude who was the first man to bench 600lbs in competition, as well as the first person to squat 800 and the first person to total 2000lbs.

And you can use the tragedy strung throughout the book to drive you to make good decisions that will lead to a good life/training balance as well as an insane total.

But yo, it’s not all tragedy, because although there are a couple of unfortunate heroin overdoses in there and a crack dealer, they still boasted the world’s foremost neurologist and subject of the Robin WIlliams film Awakenings as one of their record-setting members, as well as NASA engineers, aerospace engineers, Italian sword-and-sandal actors (though he was one of the OD’s), and more Olympic medalists than I’ve ever heard of gathered onto a single team that wasn’t competing in the Olympics (and from multiple sports). Rejoice! You can abandon all of those dumbass charts and cease with that endless planning, because none of it applies to you! This book explains why.

Reject the false metal and embrace the true metal of the old powerlifting gods, the Culver City Westside Barbell Club.

Liked it? Take a second to support Jamie Chaos on Patreon!