THE ORIGINAL STRENGTH SCHOOL FOR RELENTLESS HIGH PERFORMERS
Strength is not optional.
It's the infrastructure that everything in your life depends on.
For nearly 25 years, Diablo Barbell has been where elite competitors, visionary founders, and world-class professionals come to build their bodies into unbreakable instruments of performance.
📍 Concord, California
💪🏽 Now Accepting Applications From Serious Candidates
It's the infrastructure that everything in your life depends on.
For nearly 25 years, Diablo Barbell has been where elite competitors, visionary founders, and world-class professionals come to build their bodies into unbreakable instruments of performance.
📍 Concord, California
💪🏽 Now Accepting Applications From Serious Candidates
STRENGTH SIMPLIFIED™
STRENGTH SIMPLIFIED™
THE ORIGINAL STRENGTH SCHOOL FOR RELENTLESS HIGH PERFORMERS
Strength is not optional.
It's the infrastructure that everything in your life depends on.
For nearly 25 years, Diablo Barbell has been where elite competitors, visionary founders, and world-class professionals come to build their bodies into unbreakable instruments of performance.
📍 Concord, California
💪🏽 Now Accepting Applications From Serious Candidates
It's the infrastructure that everything in your life depends on.
For nearly 25 years, Diablo Barbell has been where elite competitors, visionary founders, and world-class professionals come to build their bodies into unbreakable instruments of performance.
📍 Concord, California
💪🏽 Now Accepting Applications From Serious Candidates
Who This Is For
Who This Is For
You already operate at a high level.
You’re not here to “get motivated” — you’re here to win the long game.
But right now, there’s a gap between your drive and your output:
✅ Your strength has plateaued despite relentless effort
✅ Chronic injuries keep resetting your momentum
✅ Muscle won’t build no matter how dialed your discipline seems
✅ You’ve outgrown every local coach — and you’re ready for your mentor
This is about installing a precision system that aligns your body with your will — so your strength becomes a competitive advantage in every arena of life.
This is for the serious athlete, disciplined professional, or elite performer who:
✅ Operates with high integrity
✅ Craves mastery over mediocrity
✅ Respects lineage, process, and legacy
✅ Wants to be surrounded by focused people because they are one
If that’s you — this is your window.
You’re not here to “get motivated” — you’re here to win the long game.
But right now, there’s a gap between your drive and your output:
✅ Your strength has plateaued despite relentless effort
✅ Chronic injuries keep resetting your momentum
✅ Muscle won’t build no matter how dialed your discipline seems
✅ You’ve outgrown every local coach — and you’re ready for your mentor
This is about installing a precision system that aligns your body with your will — so your strength becomes a competitive advantage in every arena of life.
This is for the serious athlete, disciplined professional, or elite performer who:
✅ Operates with high integrity
✅ Craves mastery over mediocrity
✅ Respects lineage, process, and legacy
✅ Wants to be surrounded by focused people because they are one
If that’s you — this is your window.
Who This Is For
Who This Is For
You already operate at a high level.
You’re not here to “get motivated” — you’re here to win the long game.
But right now, there’s a gap between your drive and your output:
✅ Your strength has plateaued despite relentless effort
✅ Chronic injuries keep resetting your momentum
✅ Muscle won’t build no matter how dialed your discipline seems
✅ You’ve outgrown every local coach — and you’re ready for your mentor
This is about installing a precision system that aligns your body with your will — so your strength becomes a competitive advantage in every arena of life.
This is for the serious athlete, disciplined professional, or elite performer who:
✅ Operates with high integrity
✅ Craves mastery over mediocrity
✅ Respects lineage, process, and legacy
✅ Wants to be surrounded by focused people because they are one
If that’s you — this is your window.
You’re not here to “get motivated” — you’re here to win the long game.
But right now, there’s a gap between your drive and your output:
✅ Your strength has plateaued despite relentless effort
✅ Chronic injuries keep resetting your momentum
✅ Muscle won’t build no matter how dialed your discipline seems
✅ You’ve outgrown every local coach — and you’re ready for your mentor
This is about installing a precision system that aligns your body with your will — so your strength becomes a competitive advantage in every arena of life.
This is for the serious athlete, disciplined professional, or elite performer who:
✅ Operates with high integrity
✅ Craves mastery over mediocrity
✅ Respects lineage, process, and legacy
✅ Wants to be surrounded by focused people because they are one
If that’s you — this is your window.
Who This Is Not For
Who This Is Not For
📸 The Instagram trophy hunter.
🤳 The “expert” who's never demonstrated true mastery.
🧠 The “know-it-all” who resists coaching.
🛑 The excuse-maker, the fragile, or the fragile-ego'd.
If you think strength is about getting attention, look elsewhere. This is about evolution.
And it’s not for everyone.
If you still think it's for you, keep reading.
What It Takes
What It Takes
There is no starting strength requirement.
We’ve taken people who could barely squat an empty bar and turned them into national-level athletes.
But there is a mindset requirement:
✅ You will surrender comfort for permanent transformation
✅ You will respect the process — and those who’ve walked it before you
✅ You will hold yourself to a legacy standard
Because here, strength is not something you try.
It’s something you become.
With the right guidance, getting strong isn’t hard. What's hard is not having the results to show for all the work you've put in.
With the right guidance, getting strong isn’t hard. What's hard is not having the results to show for all the work you've put in.
What Makes Us Different
What Makes Us Different
Most people are grinding with the wrong map. Following copy-paste programs from YouTube, generic apps, or uninformed coaches. They have the will — but not the way. They confuse effort with progress.
We offer something radically different:
A proprietary, precision-built system forged over 25 years of elite results and human transformation science.
✅ Multiple world champions and world record holders
✅ Thousands of radical physical and personal breakthroughs
This is not generic ”fitness.”
This is Strength Simplified™ — a codified system for building nervous-system-deep adaptations that create strength on demand.
What Makes Us Different
What Makes Us Different
Most people are grinding with the wrong map. Following copy-paste programs from YouTube, generic apps, or uninformed coaches. They have the will — but not the way. They confuse effort with progress.
We offer something radically different:
A proprietary, precision-built system forged over 25 years of elite results and human transformation science.
✅ Multiple world champions and world record holders
✅ Thousands of radical physical and personal breakthroughs
This is not ”fitness.”
This is Strength Simplified™ — a codified system for building nervous-system-deep adaptations that create strength on demand.
“Coaching, at its highest form, is a set of precise and clear-cut directions that take you from where you are to where you want to go.”
~ Coach Ted O’Neill
“Coaching, at its highest form, is a set of precise and clear-cut directions that take you from where you are to where you want to go.”
~ Coach Ted O’Neill
Our Contrarian Stance
Our Contrarian Stance
We reject the broken myths of mainstream strength culture:
❌ Aesthetic obsession over functional capacity
❌ Influencer ego lifting instead of disciplined progression
❌ Treating strength like a hobby instead of infrastructure
Powerlifting is our martial art.
This is not a “gym.”
This is a school for conscious evolution — where strength is trained not just in the body, but in the mind, spirit, and character.
From the Founder, Coach Ted O'Neill
From the Founder, Coach Ted O'Neill
Why do I still coach powerlifting when I’m an executive coach, author, speaker, and consultant?
Because nothing compares to it.
Strength is tactile. It’s real.
It’s the fastest, most honest way to evolve.
When someone walks in, I don’t just see who they are —
I see who they could become. And I can get them there. I’ve seen men bench 800 pounds, hand off the bar to the man benching 115, and cheer louder for him.
The environment of strength is for anyone willing to put in the effort and totally exclusionary to those who are not willing to.
The Cost of Waiting
The Cost of Waiting
Time compounds.
Every year you train under misaligned systems is a year of:
- Deeper plateaus becoming harder to break
- Chronic injuries embedding further into your nervous system
- Missed windows of peak performance
- Lost competitive advantage in career, sport, and life
- Formation of a weaker mentality
You don’t have infinite shots at mastery.
Your window is closing — or it’s opening now.
What Happens When You Commit
What Happens When You Commit
No one has ever fully committed to our process and failed to exceed their wildest expectations. Ever.
When you walk through these doors and give it everything you’ve got,
you will shock yourself.
Within weeks, our lifters gain:
✅ Earned confidence
✅ Proof that their “impossible” was just their starting line
To us, becoming strong means becoming unbreakable.
If You Are...
✅ Ready to stop settling
✅ Willing to be coached with precision
✅ Able to commit time, money, and effort
✅ Hungry to build your legacy
Then this is your moment.
We will never promise easy.
We will promise this:
If you give yourself fully to this process, you will not recognize who you become. YOU WILL SEE RESULTS OR WE WILL WORK WITH YOU UNTIL YOU DO.
“When you have the opportunity to change your trajectory—choose to do so.”
More Than 60 Elite Powerlifters
More Than 60 Elite Powerlifters
Click each to read bios and lifting stats.
Location Information
Location Information
Diablo Barbell & Lifted Academy
1018 Shary Circle Suite B
Concord, CA 94518
Concord, CA 94518
The Original Strength School.
Founded by Coach Ted O’Neill
Location Information
Location Information
Diablo Barbell & Lifted Academy
1018 Shary Circle Suite B
Concord, CA 94518
Concord, CA 94518
The Original Strength School.
Founded by Coach Ted O’Neill
More than strong. More than human.
More than strong. More than human.
Meet the Lifted Academy Founders
Meet the Lifted Academy Founders
Ted O’Neill: National champion powerlifter, founder and head coach of world-renowned Diablo Barbell. ParaPhysical Training™ developer, elite coach, and “mentor of mentors”, co-founder and CEO of Lifted Academy™ – which has been called “The Harvard of Personal Growth.”
Dr. Andrea Vitz: National champion and elite powerlifter, TEDx speaker, bestselling author of The You You've Never Met™ and creator of a global Emotional Sobriety movement, Doctor of Chiropractic, executive coach. President and co-founder of Lifted Academy™.