Bill “Peanuts” West, Part 3- The Alchemy of the Unsung Roger Bacon of Powerlifting (OG Westside Series)

As I’ve covered in parts zero, one, two, the Zuver aside, Roger Estep, and George Frenn parts one and two, the Culver City Westside Barbell Club was a amalgamation of the most interesting and diverse cast of characters in history, and their training methodology reflected that desire to reject normalcy and really embrace their inner Gonzo… though with less reported chicken fucking than that might seem to indicate.

Though they likely didn’t create any of these training methods themselves, they were the first to combine these methods into a cohesive system for use by competitive lifters. They also had the great good fortune, like the touch system (spotter assisted reps), the box squat, cheating skullcrushers, the various and sundry powerlifting aids they used, like wrapping themselves in sheets and constructing their own knee and wrist wraps like they were seamstresses in a Thai sweatshop, incline power rack bench presses, deficit deadlifts, lockouts, and rack/box pulls.

With that list in mind, powerlifting would look about as different from its current incarnation without the Bill West and the OG Westside Club as the East Germans’ sawdust-and-plastic, two stroke engined, 18hp Trabant is from a 2019 Volkswagen Golf R. Yeah, they’re from the same area and do basically the same thing, but the performance difference between the two would have a caveman thinking them to be two entirely different species of terrifying metal monstrosities.

This was possible because Bill West was like the Roger Bacon of powerlifting- though he is credited with inventing methods and practices that he had no part in creating, he was the one that brought those things to prominence by effectively combining them into a sort of system no one else perceived. And in doing so, West’s work in powerlifting is very much like Roger Bacon’s- wild-eyed enthusiasm for experimentation that just so happened to yield incredible fucking results.

Bill West’s Original Training Methods

Just like anyone else who was bitten by the iron bug early and whose enthusiasm and work ethic translated into serious gains, Bill West trained incessantly early on in his lifting career. He made massive gains training six to seven days a week, alternating upper and lower body days. His upper body workouts lasted as long as three hours, and his lower body workouts clocked in at an hour and a half. That method was actually wildly successful for West- so much so, in fact, that he had to stop drinking milk during his workouts or he would have gained too much muscle and tipped over into the heavyweight class.

At that point, heavyweight was 198+, and West had watch Joe DiMarco suffer through competing against massive 300 pounders like Steve Merjanian and Pat Casey… which is likely why no one these days has any idea who the fuck Joe DiMarco is. Hell, even after they added a 242 class, DiMarco still found himself fucked- his choices were to be an underpowered, light 242 or a half-starved 198 and go up against Bill West. Thus, Bill stayed right where he was.

Content with drinking water during his workouts as opposed to moo juice, West thought he had the perfect system. He would soon discover otherwise, however. Though that training style yielded massive gains on the platform, it fucked him royally at home- all of the guys found that when they spent that amount of time in the gym, they never heard the fucking end of it from their wives. As such, they eventually switched to the two day a week system you see repeated as though it is the Golden Ticket for strength- it was not his preference that led to that split, but his unwillingness to listen to his wife scream at him nightly about his incessant training (Liederman). Keep that in mind the next time you see someone advocating for minimalist training- it might just be they have no fucking idea what they’re talking about.

The Basic Westside Routine

After the wives stepped in, the Westside guys cut their training down to a mere 8-10 hours a week. Training (officially) twice a week in four to six hour sessions (along with two optional, shorter workouts), they basically blew the doors off every fucking record they touched. Everyone who was anyone wanted to train there, and they came from all over to do so. As such, the gym was fucking packed and their workouts were longer than Avengers: Endgame every single time they touched a weight.

Tuesday

Bench Press– Around 12 sets, working up to doubles and triples; then 2 x 10 for a pump

Belly Toss Bench Press– 4-6 x 3

Incline Bench– 12 sets, reps from three to six for around half the sets, then singles for the rest

High Box Squats– work up to a heavy set of singles, using 100lbs over your contest weight. George Frenn used 1000lbs for singles to set up for his record breaking 853lb squat

Low Box Squats– 4-5 singles with 100lbs less than your contest squat

Rack Pulls/Box Deadlifts– 5-6 singles

Lat Pulldowns– 3 x 5 (seriously heavy)

Tricep Pushdowns– 3 x 5 (as heavy as humanly possible)

Overhead Work– Heavy triples, doubles and singles. Not everyone did these- it was mostly the Olympian throwers who did this.

Cleans and High Pulls– these were usually done competitively between lifters, for a max effort

Everyone added whatever they needed to onto this workout, as you’ll see (and saw in the George Frenn articles). Whatever didn’t get added here could also get pushed to the Wednesday and Sunday workouts.

Wednesday

Optional light day. There will be more details further in the article, but you can also see some of the extra stuff done in the Weds/Sun workouts in George Frenn Part 2.

Saturday

At least twice a month, everyone maxed out on the 3 lifts, then went home. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds, though, because twenty to thirty guys would show up on any given Saturday. Problem was, 20-30 guys would show up, it would take from around noon until about 6PM.

If the guys weren’t having a full meet day, they’d work the three lifts using methods described below. Either way, once the lifting was done, they started drinking, likely at the restaurant with the all you can eat prime rib and cheep pitchers I mentioned earlier in the series.

Sunday

Optional light work day.

The Add-Ons

“The whole idea of assist movements is to search out weaknesses and destroy them. The power lifters of the West Side Barbell Club conduct a constant search to learn more about building power. They are ready to try any innovation, and always seem to find time and energy for a new experiment. They are dedicated to making ever greater lifts. ” -Armand Tanny

As with any program, nothing should just be Plug-n-Play when it comes to programming. Every program, no matter how allegedly comprehensive it might, can address the needs of each individual as they arise. There will always be a need for customization, and as we saw in the George Frenn series, the Westside crew were more obsessed with customization than a 16 year old who loves Call of Duty and the Fast and the Furious equally.

The Rack Pull / Box Deadlift

West and the Westside crew utilized this movement to prevent deadlift fails just below the knee. They did the following program once a month, pulling from an inch to an inch and a half below their knees during their Tuesday workout, or a supplementary Wednesday workout.

The “high deadlift” program was basically just a gradual progression toward a max attempt that must be done with straps. As Bill West put it,

“When you start the pull, nothing seems to happen for several long moments. You keep turning on more and more power, and then finally the bar begins to move off the blocks. Without the grip to think about you can pull hard and long until you are fully erect. In one long big effort like this you have the equivalent, or more, of a whole set of heavy reps. It builds back muscle” (Tanny).

To give you an idea of the progression, it would look something like this: 550×1; 585×1; 625×1; 660×1; 690×1 (with straps).

Snatch Grip Deadlift Day

Bill West, like myself and the modern Westside crew, never trained the deadlift in the gym. Instead, West added a third day of training, doing some snatch grip deadlifting on Wednesdays.

“By building the muscles from angles, the official movements are improved. We understand that the high dead lift improves the final phase of the pull. With the snatch grip, on the other hand, the initial phase is improved. The back is in a deeper bent-over position, from a full powered standpoint slightly at a disadvantage, but building strength at this point completes the whole back picture. Strength exists through the entire range of back lifting. Bill uses this style for most of his dead lift training. Except for the High Dead Lift day once a month, he works the Snatch Grip Dead Lift every Wednesday” (Tanny).

Snatch Grip Deadlift– 4 x 3 (increasing the weight on each set); 2×3 (heavier, and with straps). A typical progression might be 225×3; 315×3; 425×3; 500×3; 525×3 and 550x 3 using straps.

Sumo Deadlift– 3 x 1 (87%1RM) This is (at least for a history nerd like me) fascinating, because I didn’t know sumo deadlifts were even legal at that time. West called it a “close grip deadlift,” and although Peary Rader claimed in 1976 to have done the lift in the mid 1950s, I haven’t seen a pic of them that predates the 70s.

“Notice that the last three singles are done with a close grip. The elbows are inside the knees. Actually the legs are spread wider than normal. Again, this variation strengthens the leg pull from the wide position. It becomes obvious that a theory emerges that prohibits the existence of any weak spots. By closing the gaps, there is no chance for power to leak out. It is like military strategy: For every man at the front, you have 10 men supporting him at the rear” (Tanny).

Deficit Deadlifts

Another favorite of West and George Frenn, these helped with breaking the weight off the ground for big pulls. After having his national record of 713 smashed by Gary Young, Frenn looked into Young’s training and discovered that Young did high rep deficit deadlifts on a regular. Young had also had pulled 685 standing on a low box, so Frenn discussed it with West and started hammering singles on the deficit deadlift.

It didn’t do a fucking thing for him. He tried more singles, then he tried fewer. Singles weren’t working, so he decided that if he could pull 600 for 10, he’d be able to smash through the 725lb barrier… which just killed his deadlift altogether. Once he dropped the weight even further, however, his deadlift blew up. With the program below, Frenn pulled 725 within three weeks, 740 within five weeks, and became a consistent 750-800lbs puller.

Tuesday

Deficit Deadlift– worked up to 3 x 10 60%1RM. His feet just fit under the bar with 45’s on it, and from the side, his chest is just about touching his thighs at the start position.

Saturday

Deadlift Warmup– Triples up to 495.

Deadlift– Singles with 565, 635, then work to a daily max and do three singles with that weight. No more than three singles with any weight.

High Pulls / Power Clean

George Frenn was an absolute monster on the high pull, but (like me) could never manage to get his arms underneath the bar for a clean (one of many reasons he chose powerlifting over Olympic lifting). Frenn believed that high pulls were a fan more effective movement than cleans for this reason- the brute strength they require translated nicely to the deadlift and necessitated none of the skill and flexibility that the clean did (Fernando). If a lifter is capable of doing them with big weights, however, Frenn sees no reason to replace them with high pulls.

Cleans and/or Snatch Grip and/or Clean Grip High Pull– 4-9 x 3-5

Good Mornings

Another great assistance exercise for Tuesday and Wednesday workouts.

Good Mornings– 4-9 x 3-5 (Frenn used about 60% of his squat 1RM for these)

Box Squat in the Power Rack 

After nearly killing himself walking out a heavy squat attempt when fatigued one day, Bill West had an epiphany. The kind of epiphany when one wakes up in the hospital and thinks, ‘it’s pretty fucking hard to train for 15 hours a week when you’re laying in a hospital bed with no beer and no prime rib.” As he lay there, he realized that the typical weightlifting power rack wasn’t up to the task he was about to set before it, because the dimensions were all wrong. As such, a plan began to form in his mind.

“The box squat required a lot of horizontal movement so he decided to widen the fore-and-aft distance between the two crossbars to 16 inches and lengthen by several inches the three-quarter inch steel bars that served as elevation pins. In this way he could take the bar from a sitting position on the bench and come erect with plenty of clearance. With this in mind Bill built the power rack you see in the accompanying photos. The holes in the uprights are spaced 1¼ inches between the circumferences. The uprights stand eight feet high. 

His box is a milk crate beefed up with two-by-fours making it perfectly rigid and still fairly light. It is virtually indestructible. It stands 18-and-a-half inches high which puts Bill himself (5’8″) in a sitting position about 1½ to 2 inches above a parallel squat. This position seemed reasonable for a good bench squat.”

“The whole point of the exercise is to start the lift from a full sitting position. Let the buttocks roll back, and in a continuous movement start forward and up again. You lose the effect if you don’t settle into it all the way. If you only sit on the leg biceps, you get too much rebound from the muscle when it contracts. The spotter, as an added advantage, can help the lifter do forced reps by just touching the bar. Even where only a regular squat rack is available an assistant can help the lifter get started on box squats, but extremely heavy weights would not be recommended” (Tanny). 

West had observed that Paul Anderson’s squat lockouts, as well as his own, had done exactly fuckall for his full squat. yeah, they made the walkout far easier, and he noticed more stability, but the squat itself was unaffected. Thus, he designed the box squat to be a three-quarter competition squat. Using this as one of his two squat sessions a week, he’d be able to use supramaximal weights in one and then coast off those weights in the second- his full squat would feel far easier as a result. After some experimentation he found he was able to go far harder in both sessions by alternating the two, and began box squatting in his Tuesday workout and full squatting in his Saturday session.

“From this mishap he learned one everlasting lesson, and that was never to take any more steps than necessary with a really heavy weight on the shoulders.”

Tuesday

Warmup Sets– 2 x 7; 2 x 5; 1 x 3 
Work sets– 7 x 1; Drop the weight 100 pounds x 10 reps;  drop 100 more x 10. 

Bill West’s Balls Out Bench Press Routine

True to form with the Westside Guys, this didn’t fit their typical mold, but neither did that pastiche of bizarrely lovable weirdos. This routine would be followed twice a week, plus a lighter benching day thrown into the middle of the week. The crucial point here is to find a repeatable number for a near max single and pound the fuck out of it.

When you’re using this routine, make sure you move the bench to the beginning of the workouts so you hit it fresh. You’ll do this for 6-8 weeks straight, going for a daily max or near daily max in each workout, then take a week or two off the program, hitting a less intensive bench workout for a couple of weeks, before resuming it.

The Heavy Days

Bench Press– 1 x 10; 8; 6; 4; 1; 1; 1; 1 (same weight used for each).

The Lighter Day

Bench Press– 1 x 10; 8; 6; 3; 1; 10 (last set is a light burnout/pump set)

The Westside Tricep Slaughterhouse

“The history of weight training has proved to be a constant game of hide and seek.  Truant muscles are no longer safe from the prying efforts of modern power lifters.  In the case of the bench press, the triceps, with its natural capacity for development, became suspect when it appeared to be riding on the efforts of the delts and pecs.

“At first, no one could say for sure.  Maybe it was the delts.  So they tried military presses.  They didn’t prove to help the bench a great deal.  So they tried parallel dips with plenty of weight.  Pat Casey did them endlessly, dropping to an extremely low position, but they ground up his shoulders, and he stopped.  Extreme range of motion like the military and dip was out; the pecs and delts were out.  That left the triceps” (Sipes Tricep Power 109).

“Thus comes into being the ‘Triceps Power Cheats,’ a movement that is spanking the triceps into unprecedented effort and routine [bench press] records up the line.  The movement flanks the regular bench press on the alternate workout of the week in which the bench press and [box squats].  In terms of two workouts a week, Saturday (heavy) and Tuesday, the power cheats fall on Tuesday” (Sipes Tricep Power 112).

Training with the Westside crew on occasion, 570lb bencher at 220 and only bodybuilder to defeat Arnold, Chuck Sipes, uncovered two insanely effective bench press assistance exercises- the Pullover Triceps Cheat and the Power Rack Triceps Lockout.  Done twice a week with one of two methodologies, Sipes and other huge benchers of the time considered these exercises critical for a massive bench.  Depending on your preference, you can use the Bill West style for this, Pat Casey’s style, or some combination thereof. However you do them, the best bencher under 240lbs for decades thought both styles had merit.  

Tuesday/Friday

Pullover Triceps Cheat (Bill West Method)– 135 x 10; 185 x 5; 205 x 5; 205 x 1; 255 x 6 x 1. West would put a folded towel on the bench a few inches over his head and do his pullovers from that point, heaving the weight up over his eyes and then bouncing it off the bench in between reps so he could handle bigger poundages.

Pullover Triceps Cheat (Pat Casey Method)– 135 x 10; 225 x 5; 275 x 5; 305 x 3; 325 x 1; 340 x 1; 355 x 1; 370 x 1; 325 x 1; 305 x 1; 275 x 8. Casey was the only human on the planet benching more than Sipes, and he used this method- he’d have the loaded barbell on the floor off the end of the bench, hooks his feet around the supports for stability, starts the movement as a pullover off the floor and continues it as an extension to the top.  Per the picture it looks like a pullover and press, but from the description it sounds like you’re using lat strength and momentum to get the bar moving and then finish it like you did a skull crusher from just over the top of your head.  

Power Rack Triceps Lockout (Bill West Method)– 135 x 10; 150 x 10; 170 x 7 x 7.  On an incline bench set at a 60 degree incline, take the barbell out of the rack with a grip about six inches apart and do short range skull crushers from just above your forehead to lockout.  Your upper arm should stay in the same vertical plane as the bar.

Power Rack Triceps Lockout (Pat Casey Method)– 225 x 6 x 7. Casey did these slightly differently, setting the pins in the power rack just above forehead level and pressing off the pins.  He did these quickly, for a pump.  

Seated French Presses / Overhead Extensions (as a high rep burnout)- 3 x 10.   Of note, Sipes basically thought you were a pink-bitch pussy if you used the cambered bar on tricep work and that you were basically just wasting your fucking time, so give the Olympic barbell a shot for these and see how they work for you.

The Touch System

Settle down, you fucking perverts- it wasn’t that awesome. The touch system is actually the tried-and-true handsy spotter method that all of the world now decries as useless bodybuilding bullshit, because if there is one thing the internet can be trusted to do, it’s to fuck up any good thing so irreparably that Brie Larson’s press junkets for Captain Marvel would look like a successful PR campaign by comparison. Seriously- partner assisted reps are a great way to get through sticking points if done correctly, and the Westside club did just that.

“The first thing we learned was that the Touch System was ineffective on the bench press when the lifter used a weight he could not start from his chest by himself. A sense of defeat is promptly established when the weight is too heavy to budge. The positive approach must prevail. The bar must be off the chest at a point where the mind is firing a massive volley of impulses to the muscles in the attempt to pass the sticking point. There is a moment of truth where the bar is about five inches off the chest, where the simple touch of a finger under the middle of the bar acts in some magic way to keep the bar raising to arms’ length. Of course, there is a good deal more to it than that. For one thing, it doesn’t work for two strangers. The people using this system must know each other – their strong points, weak points, sticking points and idiosyncrasies. An almost symbiotic relationship exists. It gets to where a simple command, ‘Go, Baby!’ in the middle of a lift means everything in the world. A nod, a word a touch – they all mean something. How do they get that way? By training together, by having a common purpose. They depend on each other. And more, they’ve got to have that feel of a heavy weight oozing out to arms’ length, regularly, a compulsive effort that by another expression means they are ‘hooked’” (West).

In short, this is mostly mental assistance- it’s not so much the help the spotter is providing but the belief in the help they’re providing that keeps the bar moving. To use it is simple- you work up to a heavy single, something the lifter can get for a single or two, and do six singles there, with the spotter “riding with” the lifter throughout each of the singles. Though in the picture he’s only using a finger, in practice West would grip the bar with both hands and make it look like he was giving a lot of help, even though he was barely touching the bar. This gave the lifter faith in his ability to keep the bar moving.

Bench Press– 135 x 10 warmup; 225 x 10; 315 x 5; 355 x 3; 385 x 2; 405 x 6 singles

West’s crew used them on the squat as well, utilizing the box squat weight for full squats with the spotter’s help. Frankly, that sounds fucking exhausting for the spotter, but West insisted it is what gave the entire Westside crew the ability to break record after record in meets.

“The assistant stands directly behind the squatter and grasps the bar with both hands. As the squatter begins to come out of the bottom position, the assistant applies the aid. His hands never leave the bar till the squatter is again erect. With perfect timing the assistant learns to give a slight tug at the perfect moment in coming out of the bottom position, allowing the lifter to build momentum and pass the sticking point” (West). 

Tuesday Workout

Regular Squat–3 x 10 x 395
Bench Squat– 2 x 15 x 475

Saturday Workout

Squat (Touch System)– 3 x 10 x 475

Incline Power Rack Presses

“Power rack training is a cultural necessity. You will be left behind without it. The greats all employ it at one time or another. It has helped make champs like Bill West. Leonard Ingro and George Frenn. The power rack is what helped give Pat Casey the ability to take 590 pounds from the flat bench rack, unassisted, and make a perfect Bench Press with it. ” – Armand Tanny

As I’ve mentioned in my articles on Westsiders in the past, the incline bench press was the most hotly contested lift in Muscle Beach in the 1960s, and their numbers should have everyone this side of Hafthor and Larry Wheels considering seppuku as a result. All of the Westside guys had crazy incline presses, and what made them even more impressive is that because of the lack of stanchions on most incline benches, they either cleaned the weight and fell back into the bench, then pressed from their chest, or they had the weight handed to them by spotters and pressed from the chest. That’s right- Merjanian did a pre-steroid era bottom position incline bench press with 500 lbs. And he wasn’t the only one moving fucking weight on the incline.

• Weightlifter Bill March, at 210, could press 375
• Heavyweight Dave Davis did 390
• Olympic thrower Dallas Long pressed 430 at 260
• 245lb Olympic thrower Parry O’Brien pressed 345.
• Pat Casey did 3 reps with 220 pound dumbbells on a 40 degree incline and 7 with the 200s, plus he pressed 385 on an 80 degree incline. He has also done seven reps with a pair of 200’s.
• Bodybuilder and medical doctor John Gourgott, who took second in the Mr. America, pressed 325 from chin level off the power rack on the 80 degree incline. at 200lbs.

The Westside guys had another reason to incline press, however:

“Incline Power Rack Pressing, then, is another way of intensifying effort. On the weekly basis of training where the Bench Press flat is done on Tuesday and Saturday a reserve power can be tapped in a different, and secondary, area by using the incline. Since heavy flat Bench Pressing two days in a row would only lead to exhaustion, the idea of attacking the muscles on another quarter proved to be correct. Intermediate areas in the pressing range of motion are weak.

The power rack acts as a sort of a booster station. The initial impulse to boost the bar off the chest was suspected of weakening as the barbell went up. Why should the bar rise, say five inches from the chest, from an initial maximum explosion to come toppling back. If it went up five inches, why couldn’t it have gone up all the way?

Over at the West Side Barbell Club in Culver City, California, not too long ago they began to suspect this common condition. They were losing too many presses after getting the bar halfway up. Down it come, a total loss. A flaw existed in the machine. To repeat the process meant only to be practicing their mistakes. There was no margin for error. They could raise their butt off the bench and complete the lift, but that meant practicing another mistake. What then?” (Tanny).

What they came up with was ingenious- incline bench pressing at three different angles, off the pins. Form on these were insanely strict- no bouncing off the pins, no lifting your ass. This exercise was the closest thing on Earth to sacrosanct to the Westside crew, save for perhaps beer, and they treated it with the utmost reverence and respect.

Incline Bench at 50 degrees, with the bar at chin level in the power rack (about 5 inches off the chest)- the sets and reps varied, but it was something like 135 x 10; 185 x 5; 225 x 3; 270 x 4; 295 x 1; 315 x 5 singles

Incline Bench at 50 degrees, with the bar at eye level (about 7½ inches off the chest)-
No warmup; 5 singles with 300

Incline bench at 80 degrees, with bar at chin level– No warmup; 220 x 1; 235 x 1; 245 x 1; 255 x 1; 2 singles with 270. They would also occasionally end with three sets of ten with varying weights on this incline and level for a pump.

And like with any other method, the Westside Crew’s only rule was that there are no fucking rules. They adapted their training to their time constraints, energy levels, and mood on any given day, which was a far cry from the ridiculous adherance to programs and dogmatic defense thereof you’ll find out of “lifters” who can’t lift but two things- jack and shit. And Jack left town.

“The procedure on these exercises is not necessarily rigid. Remember, these are supplemental exercises to be varied to suit your private stamina. If you happened to work extremely hard on positions 1 and 2, nothing says you can’t ease up on the third position by simply doing a light 4 sets of 10 reps. Also, you may prefer to limit this routine to once a week. A lot depends on your time and energy.”

And there you have all of the assorted tricks and shortcuts the original Westside Barbell Club utilized in order to revolutionize powerlifting. The combination proved deadly to their opposition and led to their adoption by just about every badass barbell club on the planet thereafter, including the far more famous current incarnation of the Westside Barbell Club, under Louie Simmons.

If you’re wondering, then, how Bill West’s name isn’t on the lips of every lifter, and how it could possibly be that no one has really codified the OG Westside’s methods the way I have, it’s likely because Bill West met a rather ignominious end, dying homeless, of a heroin overdose, on the beach in Santa Monica. He was buried in a pauper’s grave in the 1980s, and it wasn’t until recently that anyone had even erected a marker to commemorate the man’s life.

To the posturing internet “lifters” who work menial jobs and still live with their parents, the man’s end indicate that his life was not well lived, and that his methods were therefore unsound. That is because they have not lived, know nothing of achieving a seemingly impossible goal and having no idea where to go from there- their opinions are as meaningless as their lives. Bill West was certainly many things, but a man to be forgotten, he was not.

Lest we end this series on a depressing note, here’s one more story to clue you in on exactly how insane the OG Westside crew really was. Though I realize that this series seems like it’s jam-packed with more bullshit-filled tall tales than any other strength series ever written, I assure you that all of the tales of debauchery and obscene strength have been true (at least insofar as I can ascertain through research).

That stated, what I am about to relate next comes direct from Armand Tanny, who was a strength author and bodybuilder with serious bonafides to his name. The actor in question, who’s pictured below, was reputed to have destroyed Chuck Ahrens in arm wrestling around the same time that Ahrens was defeating entire professional football teams, in a row, in that sport. Dan Vadis was one of the many jacked dudes to play Hercules over the years, and though he was a pretty boy, was no pussy, and was well known in muscle beach for being a strong motherfucker. Both of the guys in this story trained with the Westside crew at times, as the “Ashman” mentioned is Dave Ashman, who was a member of the US Olympic weightlifting team with Ike Berger (who started Bill West in odd lifting).

“Doug Jamey, an Ashman contemporary weighing 165, did what was considered the grittiest display of back power ever made. Using wrist straps, you might say he was literally welded to the bar, he did three repetitions with 700. He hunched each rep every inch of the way. It looked like pop art in motion, the way his skeleton stretched and bent, a living impossibility. As an encore, he stood in front of the bar and did three reps from behind. At a bodyweight of 159 he did a continental clean of 400, inching it up his front in the same fantastic, drawn-out display of power. Theatrics of this sort naturally invited a bit of upstaging. Dan Vadis, now starring in European movies, challenged Doug to a finger twisting contest. It broke Doug’s finger. Shortly after, Doug decided to walk to Alaska. With full pack and barefooted he said goodbye and started walking north up the beach from Santa Monica. No one has heard tell since, but no one doubts he made it” (Tanny).

Sources:

Fernando, Ron. Deadlifting Theories of George Frenn. The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban. 12 Jan 2011. Web. 5 Mar 2019. http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2011/01/deadlifting-theories-of-george-frenn.html

Frenn, George.  Some new ideas on deadlift training.  The Tight Tan Slacks of Deszo Ban.  23 May 2017.  Web.  5 Jul 2019.  http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2017/05/some-new-ideas-on-deadlift-training.html

Hanee, Harvey.  Training the bench- Bill West (1966).  The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban.  7 Jul 2016.  Web.  9 May 2019.  http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2016/07/training-bench-bill-west-to-harvey-hanee.html

Liederman, Earl.  Bill “Peanuts” West (1961).  The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban.  17 Sep 2009.  Web.  9 May 2019.  http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2009/09/bill-peanuts-west-earle-liederman.html

Sipes, Chuck.  Triceps power cheats (1966).  Muscle Builder Magazine.  Reprinted in Forgotten Secrets of the Culver City Westside Barbell Club Revealed by Dave Yarnell.  Lexington: Self Published, 2014.

Tanny, Armand.  Bill West and the high deadlift.  The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban.  3 Mar 2011.  Web.  9 May 2019.  http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2011/03/bill-west-and-high-dead-lift-armand.html

Tanny, Armand.  Power rack box squats.  The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban.  6 Feb 2011.  Web.  10 May 2019.  http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2011/02/power-rack-box-squats-armand-tanny.html

West, Bill.  The touch system in bench pressing.  The Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban.  10 Apr 2009.  Web.  9 May 2019.  http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2009/04/touch-system-in-bench-pressing-bill.html