I am trying to learn how to use LPILE on my own. Does anyone know of any tutorials or instructions for how to use the program? Currently I'm working just with the manual and it's quite tedious.
There’s a technical manual that comes along with the program. I suggest reading through that and play around with the software a bit. It’s not hard to figure out with some effort.
Read up on the p-y method. Reese deals with this topic extensively in many of his papers going back some time. He also published a book "Single Piles and Pile Groups Under Lateral Loading".