RIP Louie

[augeleven]

[KevinMcGrath]

Very sad, don't know if there's many who were more influential in the powerlifting world. One of those guys you think will live forever and at the same time wondered how he was still going.

[5hout]

Don't over train, that's stupid. But don't under train, that'd make you a puss. Train optimally.

[MarkKO]

Kind of thing you knew was going to happen but kept hoping it wouldn't.

In Louie's own words, Westside is pretty much done. Without him, it isn't Westside.

[mgil]

I don’t agree with all of his training stuff but…

1. Who am I to comment?

2. He was pretty consistently innovating in his space.

3. Had a significant record of turning out strong lifters.

He was certainly an influence and left his mark. RIP

[bobmen10000]

He was very kind to me during a brief introduction and even cheered my paltry deadlift at a local meet - his voice was by far the loudest encouraging me to complete the lift. The world is a less interesting place for the loss of one its true characters.

[BenM]

He was very kind to me during a brief introduction and even cheered my paltry deadlift at a local meet - his voice was by far the loudest encouraging me to complete the lift. The world is a less interesting place for the loss of one its true characters.

A couple of years ago, a guy in the Baker Barbell Club posted this. I hope he wouldn't mind me sharing it (I don't think he's a member here, could be wrong).

Ok I have a pretty good story for everyone. A young man who is very close to our family, and I coached him for years in football, is back in town from Annapolis and has been lifting with us in the garage. He is a voracious reader and student of all things strength..podcasts, videos you name it.

Well he is really into conjugate training and the whole mystique of Westside. So today on his way home as he was going thru Columbus he decides to stop at Westside and see what happens. Turns out Louis walls in, talks to him a few minutes and says “let’s go”, and away they go to the back building and he proceeds to work Luke out for the next 45 minutes! He ran him thru a box squat session, some hyper and also blasted him with the belt squat machine. Luke is a strong kid so he worked up to 500 on the monolift which seemed to make Louis happy.

After they’re done, Luke is thanking him and saying goodbye and Louis says “come on we’re going to dinner”. So Luke can’t believe it and hops in Louis’ car and away the evening crew and Luke go to some pizza place and Louis buys!

Now they get back and again Luke is falling over himself thanking Louis and he says “See ya at breakfast tomorrow we have bench day”. Luke says he lives in Dayton so they decide breakfast is to early, but he is going back up to bench with them!

How cool is that. I guess the moral of the story is don’t be afraid to just make yourself available to situations like that and ask some questions, you may be surprised at what happens.

The mark he made on the world of strength sports is indisputable. But even more importantly, from the kinda things I've seen and read he was an extremely decent human being as well. I hope when my number comes up that people remember me half as fondly as Louis will be remembered.

[Hardartery]

No matter wht anyone says or thinks about his training methods, I have never heard anyone say a bad word about Louie. Ever. There are not many people of whom that statement can be said. That is indeed a sad thing.

[KevinMcGrath]

Well he fell out with many of his lifters like Matt Wenning, but they all still had massive respect for him.

[5hout]

Hadn't tried box squatting in a really long time, so tossed it in on my last set today. He might have been on to something! Felt really smooth and helped me avoid going to deep without cutting too high (too deep = ankle pain right now, working on the mobility issue).

[MarkKO]

No matter wht anyone says or thinks about his training methods, I have never heard anyone say a bad word about Louie. Ever. There are not many people of whom that statement can be said. That is indeed a sad thing.

I also thought so, until I saw what Jamie Lewis posted. I've always known he considers himself superior to almost everyone, but I never thought he would have the bad taste to respond to Louie's death by writing a long post calling him a plagiarist and casting aspersions on him and his lifters.

Not that Louie would have cared, I don't think.

[mgil]

No matter wht anyone says or thinks about his training methods, I have never heard anyone say a bad word about Louie. Ever. There are not many people of whom that statement can be said. That is indeed a sad thing.

I also thought so, until I saw what Jamie Lewis posted. I've always known he considers himself superior to almost everyone, but I never thought he would have the bad taste to respond to Louie's death by writing a long post calling him a plagiarist and casting aspersions on him and his lifters.

Not that Louie would have cared, I don't think.

Hasn’t Jamie Lewis posted some rancid nonsense about others in the past? Like a decade ago? It’s easy to talk shit when the other person is unable to rebut.

[MarkKO]

No matter wht anyone says or thinks about his training methods, I have never heard anyone say a bad word about Louie. Ever. There are not many people of whom that statement can be said. That is indeed a sad thing.

I also thought so, until I saw what Jamie Lewis posted. I've always known he considers himself superior to almost everyone, but I never thought he would have the bad taste to respond to Louie's death by writing a long post calling him a plagiarist and casting aspersions on him and his lifters.

Not that Louie would have cared, I don't think.

Hasn’t Jamie Lewis posted some rancid nonsense about others in the past? Like a decade ago? It’s easy to talk shit when the other person is unable to rebut.

I haven't followed him long enough to know, honestly.

I will say, while the history he posts about is interesting he seems to trade strongly based on his (brief, if I understand it) time as an ATWR holder in the early days of raw powerlfting that by today's standards is barely elite, if that.

My understanding is that in the powerlifting world he is at best a short footnote, and has no grounds at all to put himself forward as someone worth listening to.

He seems to reserve a particular disdain for Westside, Elite FTS and those associated with both brands and apparently ignores the fact that those are two groups of people who earned a significant status in powerlifting over a span of decades, far surpassing any achievements of his own.

[hector]

No matter wht anyone says or thinks about his training methods, I have never heard anyone say a bad word about Louie. Ever. There are not many people of whom that statement can be said. That is indeed a sad thing.

I also thought so, until I saw what Jamie Lewis posted. I've always known he considers himself superior to almost everyone, but I never thought he would have the bad taste to respond to Louie's death by writing a long post calling him a plagiarist and casting aspersions on him and his lifters.

Not that Louie would have cared, I don't think.

Hasn’t Jamie Lewis posted some rancid nonsense about others in the past? Like a decade ago? It’s easy to talk shit when the other person is unable to rebut.

Oh yeah. Lewis definitely did.
Lewis is a mixed bag. Some of his writing is great. Some isn't.
Anyway, Louie wouldn't rebut even if he were alive. He'd be too busy doing shit instead of typing pointless responses to nonsense.

[hector]

I have a budget model Reverse Hyper and love it. I'm glad Louie invented it. Think it has done a lot for my lower back resiliency.

The documentary on Netflix about Westside is great.

[Hardartery]

No matter wht anyone says or thinks about his training methods, I have never heard anyone say a bad word about Louie. Ever. There are not many people of whom that statement can be said. That is indeed a sad thing.

I also thought so, until I saw what Jamie Lewis posted. I've always known he considers himself superior to almost everyone, but I never thought he would have the bad taste to respond to Louie's death by writing a long post calling him a plagiarist and casting aspersions on him and his lifters.

Not that Louie would have cared, I don't think.

I honestly have no idea who Jamie Lewis is. Which is surprising if he was anything in Powerlifting at some point, I have at least read something about most of them. And Louie would not care, he pretty openly used and espoused other guys ideas, and gave them credit. Like the Box Squat, which he did not invent and never claimed to have invented, and the name "Westside Gym", which he bought from the original owner even though it wasn't even an operating gym anymore and no one wlould have known any different. He didn't have to buy i, he did that to reward one of the originals and honour the name. Guys "Fall out"with him, but never seem to have a personal problem with him - it's usually a training thing. Heck, he FIRED Mark Bell, and Bell still shouts his praises. he also gave Dave and Tracy Tate the inventory to sell that got them started in business, specifically to start them in business even though they would be competing for the business.

[augeleven]

I honestly have no idea who Jamie Lewis is.

AKA Jamie Chaos, formerly of Chaos and Pain. He has had a blog for a while. I’ve seen his blog described as Not Safe For Life.
Also there is a bit of potkettleblackism with him calling Louie’s west side chums “toxic” AND routinely embedding images of girls fisting themselves in his strength blog.

That being said - I like his writing, although there is a decent chance I’m also human toxic waste. YMMV

ETA - my take is he is probably using his troll skillz to ackshually out his love for obscure lifters, in this case George Frenn. Cool. Frenn is cool. Maybe don’t piss on a grave to jumpstart the Frenn convo though.

[Hardartery]

I honestly have no idea who Jamie Lewis is.

AKA Jamie Chaos, formerly of Chaos and Pain. He has had a blog for a while. I’ve seen his blog described as Not Safe For Life.
Also there is a bit of potkettleblackism with him calling Louie’s west side chums “toxic” AND routinely embedding images of girls fisting themselves in his strength blog.

That being said - I like his writing, although there is a decent chance I’m also human toxic waste. YMMV

ETA - my take is he is probably using his troll skillz to ackshually out his love for obscure lifters, in this case George Frenn. Cool. Frenn is cool. Maybe don’t piss on a grave to jumpstart the Frenn convo though.

George Frenn is cool. Still don't get pissing on a guy that actually drew attention to guys like that and would talk at length about how important and formative they were for him as well as his sport. It would be like me trashing Anderson or Terry Todd.

[MarkKO]

No matter wht anyone says or thinks about his training methods, I have never heard anyone say a bad word about Louie. Ever. There are not many people of whom that statement can be said. That is indeed a sad thing.

I also thought so, until I saw what Jamie Lewis posted. I've always known he considers himself superior to almost everyone, but I never thought he would have the bad taste to respond to Louie's death by writing a long post calling him a plagiarist and casting aspersions on him and his lifters.

Not that Louie would have cared, I don't think.

I honestly have no idea who Jamie Lewis is. Which is surprising if he was anything in Powerlifting at some point, I have at least read something about most of them. And Louie would not care, he pretty openly used and espoused other guys ideas, and gave them credit. Like the Box Squat, which he did not invent and never claimed to have invented, and the name "Westside Gym", which he bought from the original owner even though it wasn't even an operating gym anymore and no one wlould have known any different. He didn't have to buy i, he did that to reward one of the originals and honour the name. Guys "Fall out"with him, but never seem to have a personal problem with him - it's usually a training thing. Heck, he FIRED Mark Bell, and Bell still shouts his praises. he also gave Dave and Tracy Tate the inventory to sell that got them started in business, specifically to start them in business even though they would be competing for the business.

Which makes the allegations even more ridiculous because it's common knowledge Louie was open about simply using the box squat etc rather than inventing it. I didn't know he bought the Westside name. That was a very decent thing to do.