LOUIE SIMMONS INTERVIEW

 Athlete Training,
 education,
 Louie Simmons
By kyle 4

Louie
LOUIE SIMMONS INTERVIEW
8/2/11 9:35 AM

Today I had a chance to interview Louie Simmons, THE top strength coach in
the world, not just in my opinion but by just about every strength coach’s
opinion. I was shocked at how this man went out of his way to make sure he
got in touch with me, he called three times in 12 hours to make sure I had a
chance to chat with him. How many other people in the world that are the best
at what they do would even give any of their time up to an up and comer? That
alone was a great lesson for me. I was scribbling like a mad man trying to keep
up with what he was saying, so below is what I took from the interview. This
man is brilliant and it was literally like being taken to school, he was clearly the
teacher. I already use a lot of Louie’s ideas, but I can probably re-write just
about all my programs after speaking with him. Enjoy!

• To get athletes faster, Louie does no speed running work. The reason: it isn’t
effective. He utilizes sumo deadlifts, sled dragging and the pull and drop
method with all deadlifting. This will greatly affect the frequency of the stride.
• Running has to do with force production and hamstring strength. Louie told
me a story of how the Big Ten 100m sprint champion from Ohio State came to
him and the sprinters coach told Louie there is no way for this guy to get faster,
he already topped out. The guy came to Louie running a 10.47. Louie took the
athlete to a 10.17 within a matter of 2 months! (This is insane!)

• To build the starting phase of an athlete’s sprint, work on sled drags of 20-30
feet.

• You might appear to be moving slow with the sled when there is heavy
weight on it, but slow speed means high force. This is exactly what is needed
for getting faster and jumping higher. This is the ‘Tai Chi’ of weight training.

• Louie had an Ohio State football player come to train with him one summer.
This alone is unheard of because if you are playing at that level, you must train
with the team during the summer. Because of Louie’s reputation, the coach
agreed but said he must return in excellent football condition. Louie told the
coach he would be in better shape than anyone else and he was when he
showed up. The only thing Louie did for conditioning was to have line wear a
100lb. weight vest, wear 10 pound ankle weights, carry Indian clubs and drag a
sled for 1 ½ to 2 miles a few times per week. Louie said when you take that 100
pound vest off, it feels like your lungs are 20 times bigger.

• On that same note, Louie emphatically said that football is not a ‘gasser’
sport. Plays last 4-7 seconds, so Louie trains the guys for that. He will have
them perform doubles in the dynamic dead lift or squat, then rest under 40
seconds and repeat. 12 doubles for each, which means the athletes have literally
performed the equivalent of 24 plays in about a half hour. Each double lasts 4-7
seconds. This is brilliant strategy and one more football coaches should pay
attention to. He will also have them do 10-20 prowler pushes for 10 seconds on
and 40 seconds off.

• Keys to speed: speed squatting, sumo deadlift and power walking with the
sleds.

• 3 of the 4 workouts per week should involve jumping. Plyos of different sorts.
Jumping is directly correlated to speed. If vertical goes up, so does your speed.
No reason to test both.

• When asking Louie about my back and disc herniations, knowing that he
suffered a similar fate many times, he told me how he supersets pulldowns and
reverse hypers to get traction on opposite ends. This is brilliant. He also told me
to start wearing 10 pound ankle weights because then during each step, I would
be getting traction in the sacral and lumbar region. Again, simple yet brilliant.

• Louie strongly likes working with power lifting and track and field athletes
now. He likes numbers and being able to measure progress. I was literally
astounded at how easily he can take tenths of second off almost anyone’s 40
times. With that, he doesn’t work with many football players anymore.

• For in season training, if you can train 3x per week, start the week off with the
max effort training and heavy sleds as this will allow the most recovery time
before the game. The middle of the week should be dynamic effort and
moderate sleds and the 3rd day should be warm up and restoration.

• For overtraining signs, grip strength will go down when over trained; hands
may become puffy and fat. Blood pressure will also go up.

• When you get to an advanced stage of training, you can and should use 50%
of your body weight in some of your jump training.

• The box squat is nothing more than a leg curl. Analyze the motion, makes
sense. It is obviously a lot more effective than a leg curl and it will blow up the
posterior chain in a good way.

• Louie had the Cleveland Browns test him with the Omega Wave machine. He
made sure to perform his heaviest workout 72 hours before the test and it
showed he was perfectly fine. No CNS damage. He knew this would happen
and it shows that there should be 72 hours between max workouts.

• Louie has a number of college and pro teams that consult with him. He was
unbelievably gracious to me and I plan on taking a visit out to see him some
time during the fall.