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Last week, I had strength and conditioning coach Joe Kenn on the podcast for ninety minutes. It was a stark reminder of what this industry loses when coaches stop talking to each other.
"Big House" has four decades in the game. He's the founder of the Tier System, spent nearly a decade as the head strength coach for the Carolina Panthers, and led departments at Boise State, Utah, Arizona State, and Louisville. Now, he advises and mentors in the strongman world.
On paper, Joe and I run different systems. I came up directly under Louie, while Joe pioneered the Tier System, which aspects of it were inspired by Louie. We have different roots, different vocabularies, and different default templates.
Yet, we talked for an hour and a half and barely disagreed on anything that mattered.
That is worth writing about.
More Overlap Than Expected
Joe came down to Westside several times when Louie was alive. We met briefly at the Arnold years back. This year he came in again and we got into the nuances of strength and conditioning. That is where you find out how much actually overlaps.
When strength and conditioning coaches stop arguing, stop throwing each other under the bus at every opportunity, and start talking objectively about how we train, giving the context of the environment we're using and the athletes in front of us, and actually start sharing what is working and what isn't, you’ll see that we are not that different from what marketing or systems would tell you.
Joe converted from linear block periodization to a Westside hybrid model around 1996, after reading Louie's articles in Powerlifting USA. He did not throw out everything he had built and start cosplaying as a conjugate coach. He read between the lines.
The dynamic effort method became tier three of his tier system because his template was already built on a heavy, moderate, light rhythm. Dynamic effort fit the light day. He kept building from there.
That is the textbook example of how this is supposed to work.
Absorb, Modify, Apply
That is Joe's phrase. It belongs on a wall somewhere.
The failure mode he and I both see is coaches jumping straight to apply. They skip the absorbing and the modifying. A strength and conditioning coach reads seven articles, throws out a system they have run for twenty years, and pastes a new one on top. No interpretation. No filter. No principle behind any of it. Then the program fails and the coach blames the system.
I went through a version of this when I first got to Westside. I tried to replicate Louie. Cannot be done. Louie was Louie. Whatever I was going to figure out for myself was going to come from running his principles through my own brain with the athletes I actually had in front of me. None of mine were powerlifters. So the work was figuring out which parts of the conjugate system carry over when the goal is winning a fight, not winning a meet.
Joe said it cleaner. The way he interpreted Louie's work was his interpretation. Not Louie's. He is not Louie. Louie was not him.
Treat It Like a Trade
This is the part that bothered both of us.
Joe said the strength and conditioning industry has done a poor job of looking like a profession. I think the deeper reason is structural. We have tried to build this trade inside universities, and that choice has not served us.
A kid who wants to be a strength and conditioning coach signs up for an exercise science degree. They take four years of courses that mostly do not teach them how to write a program. They graduate with debt and chase an internship.
Roughly 32,000 students come out of kinesiology programs every year. There are about 14,000 active strength coaching jobs in the country. The math does not work, and the kids who chose this path are the ones paying for it.
The word "internship" is part of the problem too. An internship sounds like a brief stop on the way to a real career. Apprenticeship is the better word. An apprentice is in the trade. They learn the craft by doing the craft, with a tradesman correcting them, raising the standard, and signing off when the work is good enough.
Almost everything I know about strength and conditioning coaching, I learned on the floor at Westside. Reps with the team. Mistakes. Conversations with Louie. Watching the older guys handle a session that was not going the way they wanted. None of that fits inside a syllabus. It only happens in the room.
If we treated this like the trade it actually is, a lot of the rest of it gets easier. Strength and conditioning coaches would know their lineage. Debate would happen on craft terms. Joe could disagree with plenty of what conjugate coaches do. I could disagree with plenty of what some tier system coaches do. That is fine.
Debate sharpens the work when it comes from people who have put in the floor time. Underneath all of it, the job is simpler. We do what is right for the athlete in front of us. We share what is working, as objectively as we can. That is what matters most.
Lineage Matters Here
I made this point on the podcast and Joe agreed. Lineage should matter in our trade the way it matters in martial arts.
In a jiu jitsu academy, the question of who you trained under gets asked on day one. Your lineage tells people what you know, how you think, what your defaults are. It is not a credential. It is context.
We do not ask this enough. When Joe and I sat down, the first thing we mapped was lineage. He read Louie in the early 90s. He visited Westside back when the windows were spray painted black. He named the other early adopters: Buddy Morris, Joey Batson, Chris Doyle. I came in under Louie himself. We both pointed back to the people who taught us how to think, not just what to write on a whiteboard.
That mapping is what made the rest of the conversation possible. We were not strangers debating templates. We were two coaches comparing how we each absorbed and modified the same source material.
One of many things I am taking from this podcast is Joe's use of the word "purposeful." He has been backing off "intent" because it has become broad enough to mean almost nothing. Purpose forces you to answer a specific question. Why is this athlete doing this exercise on this day. What is the response I want. If you cannot answer that, the rep is decoration.
I am going to use that one.
Key Takeaways: Lineage and Purpose
Lineage is Context, Not a Credential: Just like in martial arts, knowing who a coach learned from reveals their foundation. It tells you how they think and what their default settings are.
Establish Common Ground First: Mapping out lineage changes the conversation. It stops you from acting like strangers debating random templates and lets you compare how you both adapted the same foundational principles.
Focus on How to Think: The best mentors don't just tell you what to write on a whiteboard; they teach you the underlying principles of the craft.
Choose "Purpose" Over "Intent": The word "intent" has become too broad and lost its meaning. Being "purposeful" forces a coach to answer exactly why an athlete is doing a specific movement on a specific day to get a specific response.
No Purpose Means Wasted Reps: If you cannot articulate the exact reason for an exercise, that rep isn't training—it is just decoration.
The Job
Nobody in the strength and conditioning industry is going to agree on everything. Joe runs concurrent sequencing. I run conjugate. The Olympic lifting coaches think both of us are wrong about something. Fine.
The job is not to win the argument. The job is to be useful to the athlete in front of us. If coaches can keep talking to each other the way Joe and I talked last week, coach to coach, with the assumption that the other guy has earned the right to his system, the work gets sharper. The athletes get better.
The profession gets back the standing in athletic development it has been losing to other disciplines. Other fields have moved into that lead while we have been busy talking past each other.
Stand on the shoulders. Argue in good faith. Absorb, modify, apply.
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FAQs
What is the difference between the Tier System and the Conjugate Method?
The Tier System organizes training around a heavy, moderate, light rhythm, with primary lifts placed in tier one and accessory work organized in tiers below. The Conjugate Method rotates max effort, dynamic effort, and repetition method across the week. Both develop strength concurrently rather than in isolated blocks. Joe Kenn folded dynamic effort into tier three of his Tier System in 1996 after reading Louie Simmons in Powerlifting USA, which is why the two systems share more DNA than coaches assume.
Should strength and conditioning be treated as a trade rather than an academic field?
Yes. The trade is learned on the floor, not in a lecture hall. A kid who wants to coach signs up for four years of exercise science coursework that mostly does not teach them how to write a program, then graduates with debt and chases an internship. Roughly 32,000 students come out of kinesiology programs every year for about 14,000 active coaching jobs in the country. The math does not work, and the kids who chose this path are the ones paying for it.
Why is apprenticeship a better word than internship for strength coaches?
An internship sounds like a brief stop on the way to a real career. An apprentice is already in the trade. They are learning the craft by doing the craft, with a tradesman correcting them, raising the standard, and signing off when the work is good enough. That is closer to what coaching actually is. Almost everything a coach learns comes from reps with athletes, mistakes, and conversations with people who have been doing the work longer.
What does "absorb, modify, apply" mean for coaches?
The phrase comes from Joe Kenn and describes how coaches should integrate new ideas. Absorb means understanding what a system actually is before changing anything. Modify means adapting it for the athletes in front of you. Apply is the last step, not the first. The common failure mode is coaches jumping straight to apply. They read a few articles, throw out a system they have run for twenty years, and paste a new one on top with no interpretation and no principle behind it.
Why does lineage matter in strength and conditioning?
Lineage tells other coaches what you know, how you think, and what your defaults are. It is context, not a credential. In a jiu jitsu academy, the question of who you trained under gets asked on day one. Strength and conditioning should ask it more. When two coaches sit down and map their lineage, they are not strangers debating templates. They are coaches comparing how they each absorbed and modified the same source material.
