Mark Chaillet | Powerlifting Ultra Minimalist

Going from training with Hugh Cassidy to training with Mark Chaillet was like being paroled from a Georgia chain gang to go live in a luxury spa. Not that training with Mark was easy or breezy, but Chillet's gym was a terrific facility, easily the best gym I've ever belonged to. The people were incredible and the place was heated and air conditioned. I made Mark's gym my second home for six straight years.

Marshall Peck and I were training with Hugh when we got wind that Mark Chaillet, already a power legend, would be relocating back to Temple HIlls, where he was from originally. He would be opening a new gym dedicated to power and strength. Marshall and I were ecstatic. We had Hugh's blessing; we both had worked hard, made great progress on every front in every way, but Hugh agreed that our strength levels were making it apparent that it was time for a change. At Hugh's we used a 6' exercise bar and had taken to hanging dumbbells attached with coat hangers on each end of the bar to get over 600 for squats.

Chaillet had been working for power God, Larry Pacifico, in Dayton for several years. Larry "drafted" the finest young powerlifters from around the country to help him staff his empire of gyms and spas. At different times Larry had Mike Bridges, Mark, Joe Ladiner, John Topsoglu, and a whole host of other young power prodigies working for him. Mark decided to move back home and open a gym. He found a space overtop of an auto parts store. Mark's dad, Buck, a salty ex-DC cop, helped Mark build out the space and run the gym.

Buck didn't like too many people, but he took a shine to me. I hit it off with the whole family, Mark's mom, his brother Ray, his sister, his wife Ellen, these were great people, my second family. Mark became as close to me as a brother and I cut my big league coaching teeth handling Mark at National and World Championships. Marshall and I moved to Mark's and joined up with the most amazing assortment of power athletes I've ever had the pleasure of training with, before or since.

Everyone made progress fast training at Chaillet's Gym. A communal strength synergy took hold and each week we all seemed to get bigger and stronger. Seeing guys routinely squat 900, deadlift 800 and bench press 600 raises your game. Being a big fish in a small pond is illusory and stunting. Chaillet's was a powerlift reality gut check: a big pond full of big powerful fish.

How Little Can You Do & Still Get Super Strong?

It always seemed to me that Mark Chaillet really didn't like training all that much. Or perhaps to put a finer point on it, Mark didn't seem to like training in any way other than one way. He stuck with his particular, peculiar style of training for the six years I was his training partner. In a nutshell, twice a week he would have a mini-powerlifting competition. Mark would work up to a single, all out repetition in each of the three lifts wearing all his power gear. That was it. Monday at 4pm was squat and bench press day. Thursday at 4pm was deadlift day. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times over the years I saw him do any lift or exercise other than the three powerlifts. Every once in a blue moon I might see him perform a set of curls, or do a set of stiff leg deadlifts, but nother consistent other than the big three.

Typically at the appointed time on Monday and Thursday, a crowd of lifters would show up to train either the squat/bench or deadlift. By crowd, I mean crowd! Three platforms or benches would all be going at once. Mike Benardon, Don Mills, Joe Ferry, Bob Brandon, Marshall Peck, Jeff Bablouch, Kirk Karwoski, Frank Hottendorf, Mark Dimiduk, Ray Evans, Ray Chaillet ... on and on ... one Thursday I counted Thirteen men in the room, all of whom had deadlifted 700 pounds or more.

The procedure would be as follows: on squat day, the power rack that faced the rear wall would be used by Mark and the four other heaviest squatters in the room. This group would be the 750+ guys. On the second set of squat racs, facing the deadlift platform, the 600 to 750 pound men would set up shop. On a third set of racks, facing the wall adjacent to the bathroom entrance, the smaller guys, the 400 to 600 pound club, would squat. After squats, three benches would be set up, each handling a certain poundage range. On Thursday, deadlift day, the 700+ guys lifted on the elevated main deadlift platform. The 600 to 700 range men would lift on the adjacent floor area and the up to 600 men would lift in the area by the bathroom. It was the most simplistic power and strength program I've every been exposed to, before or since. In mainstream powerlifting orthodoxy, making the single repetition the backbone of a training strategy is viewed as insanity. At Chaillet's the single rep was a religion.

Competition Training Cycle

Mark used the classical 12 week periodization cycle that was so in vogue back in the 80's and so out of vogue today. Typically Mark would take about four weeks to ramp things up. Eight weeks before the National Championships he would get real serious and the weights would start to fly. I was intimately involved in helping him plot out the cycle and in making any in-flight corrections as circumstance warranted. I am going to do this from memory so it might not be exact, but will give the reader a real sense of how a stud like Chaillet would peak his mind and body leading up to a championship. The real work would begin after four weeks of getting into decent. shape.

Mark might start the 8 week cycle off weighing a soft 255 and by the competition he'd weigh a rock hard 280 and lift weighing 275. He was a tremendous competition lifter who routinely would come back after being behind 100 or 200 pounds at the subtotal (the combination of a man's top squat and top bench press poundage) before decimating the competition. He would take a token opener in the deadlift of say 760 then turn to me and say, "Add it up - how much do we need - can we win?" If it was anything up to 860, the leader was dead.

He was the greatest conventional deadlifter I've ever had the pleasure of training with. Mark pulled 880 and had 900 within three inches of lock-out. He consistently could deadlift 840 to 860. Mark occasionally would do some stiff-legged deadlifts using 800. One afternoon I saw him pull 835 standing atop a 100 pound barbell plate laid flat. His minimalist approach worked phenomenally well for him for almost a decade. I think that those who dismiss his approach are short-sighted. Plus, I don't see very many 269 pound deadlifting 880 nowadays. Mark squatted an IPF legal depth 1,000 in training. By legal I mean deep. I called him up on the depth on that very lift. He officially hit 940 wearing one of those old Zangas Supersuits, no briefs and legal length wraps. When it cam to leg and (especially) back power, Mark Chaillet was "cock strong."

Stopping Machine Gun Sales at Chaillet's "House of Pain"

The stories about Chaillet's Gym are so outrageous that they have taken on mythical proportions. I called Mark's gym "The House of Pain" in a Powerlifting USA article and for good reason; at Chaillet's I've seen beat-downs and sex between patrons, I've seen illegal activity and acts of heroism - sometimes all on the same afternoon. I will recound a few that come to mind. The names have been changed to protect the guilty.

The gym had a gun bin and clients were required to pass weaponry a--------cross the front desk to either Mark or Buck - no questions asked. A towel was draped over the firearm as it was passed. Serious powerlifting, competitive powerlifting, at least in the 1980s, attracted a large contingent of both police officers and career criminals. Mark's gym bumped up against a bad section of the city and the cocaine trade was keeping both cops and crooks active. One afternoon, one of the best training partners I ever head, a deep cover narcotics officer, nudge me and gestured towards a good looking young fellow spotting a monstrous  man with jail tattoos bench pressing  500 for reps. "That's ___________   _____________. He controls the coke trade in all of Southeast D.C."

Interestingly, my cop pal, the coke kingpin, and his muscle man protector/bodyguard were super cordial to each other. My man explained. "His sources have fingered me. So since he knows I am a narc, he wants to make nice out of professional courtesy." A few years later the DEA arrested the young King Pin and found close to three million in cash. He had two money counting machines in his luxury condo. They sent his whole family up the river including his grandmother.

Chaillet's Gym was like Ric's Cafe in Casablanca: Beefs and vendettas were usually left at the front door. Once you walked up the stairs and turned in your Glock or Berretta, you were no longer a lawman or lawbreaker, you were a powerlifter. During one period I trained with a DC undercover cop and a Baltimore cocaine ring enforcer who later went into witness protection. Neither knew the other man's trade. No one asked personal stuff. I overheard the coke enforcer mention he had some fully automatic AR-style machine guns for sale. The undercover cop wasn't interested in busting the guy; he wanted the rife for his own private collection and didn't want to go through the legal paperwork. The coke enforcer said he happened to have one in the trunk of his Cadillac and after the workout he'd 'front it' to my copy pal and, since you're a friend of Marty, you can pay me later." I stepped in and told each (separately) that this was a real bad idea. Ironically both men eventually landed in jail for long stretches: 20 years a piece.

Check out the links below for profiles on other remarkable men I have met in my almost 60 years of training. Each have influenced me in different ways over the course of my strength career.

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