What actually makes a gym? That’s actually a pretty broad question, so let me be more specific; what equipment do you need in a gym?  At our facility, we tend toward the minimal. The vast majority of our space is open and the rest is filled with free weights. This might seem strange to anyone reared in commercial gyms, where any open space is quickly occupied by expensive machinery. This is a pretty big divide. Why does it exist in the first place?

Good question. I like where you’re going with this.

Historically, we don’t need to step back terribly far. Prior to industrialized society, people were pretty active by default. Performing supplementary physical work for its own sake was relatively uncommon up until the nineteenth century. By that time, the sedentary lifestyles that technology had created were also contributing to diminished health and vitality. The physical culture movement stepped into the fray with thinkers (and doers) such as Eugene Sandow and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn.

The early proponents of physical culture used relatively little equipment – not that there was much at the time – and tended toward practices such as gymnastics, lifting free weights and stretching. Nothing changed dramatically until the 1970s. I think that there were three major events that changed the face of the commercial gym industry during this period:

1. The widening use of anabolic steroids by athletes. Although steroids were in use by Olympic athletes as early as the mid-1950s, their use didn’t become widespread for another 12-15 years. Anabolic steroids allowed athletes to work harder, longer. As bodybuilders later discovered, some types also allowed users to maximize size gains.

2. The release of the movie Pumping Iron in 1977. This movie may be remembered by many as the introduction of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, it was also the first glimpse of bodybuilding by pretty much anyone who wasn’t part of its immediate subculture. These men enjoyed a combination of genetics and newfound steroids (still legal at the time), that made them gargantuan by the standards of the day.

3. The advent of commercial gym machinery. Arthur Jones, a quirky iconoclast who fancied safaris, guns and alligators, invented the line of gym equipment that became known as Nautilus.

How did all this play out? We had big guys getting even bigger and a successful film that exposed their subculture to the world. This resulted in a deluge of young men hitting the gyms in hopes of achieving big muscles and all the rewards they brought. And if there’s one thing we know about the fitness industry, any product that promises better, faster results will gain a lot of attention. Enter the machines. It only seemed reasonable that we would evolve from coarse farm boy methods of lifting free weights to the use of sophisticated equipment designed to isolate muscles – to deconstruct the body and build it up again.

While there’s plenty more room for discussion of how the subculture of bodybuilding has evolved since the mid 1970s (and why machines have limited use), we don’t need to over-think things; the shiny new lines of equipment were not only accepted, they were expected. This made all the difference in the world.

To this day, many people evaluate a fitness club on whether it has one machine or another. Effectiveness remains inconsequential because of common expectation. Not only is it expensive and space-consuming, the presence of machines generally leads to their use – even when that use is counter-productive.

The epilogue to this story is that trends are changing. People seem to be gravitating back toward the basics.  The same things that worked in the 1800s work today. We’re starting to ditch our unnecessary baggage and moving a lot faster because of it.

GG

For those of you who don’t know, I’m a big fan of strength coach Mike Boyle’s work. He’s applied a logical and practical approach to strength and conditioning for athletes for over 30 years. Couple this with the fact that he’s always learning, always experimenting and never afraid to change his mind. What you get is an accomplished coach who’s worked with everyone from young athletes to Olympians and who is still trying to get better. He is also – and this is a direct quote from one of his friends in Boston – “as nice as he is smaht.”

I’m proud to be able to call Coach Boyle one of my mentors and I try to stay abreast of any changes in the way that he works with athletes, since he’s generally ahead of the curve. You may not always agree with what he says, but it’s always worth listening to the thought process behind it.

I try to travel up to Boston semi-regularly to check in with Coach Boyle and what he’s doing. Most recently, I attended a seminar where some really smart guys spoke on some worthwhile subjects. Here are a few of the things that I took away from that:

Brijesh Patel spoke about getting the most out of your athletes. There were a lot of real-world examples, but suffice it to say that one clear message emerged: work hard.

It’s very easy to get caught up trying to create the perfect program and many of us have fallen prey to sub-optimal workouts in the interest of doing things perfectly. Forget all that. Once you know you’re not doing anything idiotic that will get you injured, kill it! Intensity and consistency trump science a lot more often than we sometimes realize.

I think that one of the best things we do at Bang! Fitness is show people what it feels like to really push themselves. It’s part of our general policy of reducing the number of grown-up babies in the world and I can say personally that it’s inspiring on a pretty regular basis.

John Pallof dropped about a hundred smart bombs on us as he discussed the anatomy of the shoulder joint and how to keep it healthy. He got me thinking about re-integrating more shoulder isolation work into our programs. I had taken a step away from a lot of the conventional rotator cuff work because I didn’t see it as typically helpful. However, John did a great job of detailing isolation work that actually made sense and it became a lot clearer to me as to how it should be integrated into a larger continuum that spans from post-rehab into functional athletic training.

There’s a big difference between studying traditional anatomy and it’s isolationist approach to function and getting the insights of a great physio like JP on the unbelievable amount of synergy taking place – from tendons (right at the bone) to seemingly unrelated muscles – is always amazing.

Mike Boyle spoke about minimizing ACL injuries in athletes. As I mentioned, MB always takes a logical approach to training and that was clear in the way he integrates injury prevention into his conventional training. ACL (and other knee injuries are always a risk). By not addressing the demands of an athlete’s sport in training, we wind up leaving them at an increased risk of injury down the road. After all, outside of traumatic injuries, it’s typically quick stops or rapid changes of direction that will maximize stresses.

If BP’s presentation was on working hard, MB’s was on working smart. An intelligent progression of exercises helps sidestep the all-too common attempt to get people working as hard as possible for as long as possible. With the popularity of athletic training styles working their way into bootcamps and Crossfit franchises, it’s important that people understand what a decent baseline looks like. If you don’t know how to land, you have no business moving on to more ballistic forms of plyometric training. End of story.

Eric Cressey packs a big ole brain inside his 28-year-old skull and he took the time to break down some of the myriad medicine ball exercises he performs with his clients. Since he works primarily with pitchers, EC’s training approach is founded largely in the same conceptual work that applies to sprinters. On the continuum between absolute speed and absolute strength, there’s often an absence of resistance training that occupies the ground closer to speed.  In the same way that sprinters have conventionally used light resistance to bring up performance, EC has pitchers using medicine balls in some pretty creative ways. Cool to see and plenty of food for thought.

It’s also worth mentioning that Boston is an awesome city. My girlfriend Steph and I took the time to spend an extra day there and geek out over local history. The people were great, the sites were great, the food was great and it required a conscious effort for about a week following for me to not speak with a Boston accent.

Sometimes I am stymied by the simple question “Why?”

This is usually in conjunction with someone asking a training question, or wondering about something I’ve instructed them to do during a group training class.

I think “Why?” is a great question, but not one that I’ve thought to ask often enough during my years of interest in the fitness realm.  My questions were more along the lines of “how much, how often?”

Lifting weight is not a holy endeavour, but if you hang in the training circles for long enough you will hear certain things repeated so often, that they are practically a fitness Scripture.  These things include, but are not limited to;

• Use big, compound lifts like the deadlift, press, squat, chins and row for most of your training (the squat is “the king” of lifts, the chin up is “the upper body squat”
• To squat correctly, push your hips back and your knees out
• The power clean improves rate of force development
• Use isolation movements to address weak links and for rehab
• Train mostly with a full body schedule or an upper/lower split
• Consume a gram of protein per lb. of bodyweight (which I always think is funny as it mixes the archaic and metric measurements)
• Use a full range of motion
• Take advantage of the body’s “anabolic window” by eating or drinking a meal immediately after training

These chestnuts are just examples; everyone immersed in Strength & Conditioning could contribute a line or a chapter to the big book of fitness adages.

But not everyone is “immersed” in this field.  Lots of people would just like to be in great shape to attract a mate or improve longevity.  Since they don’t see the whole process as remotely “holy” they’ve never heard of any of this stuff.  Or perhaps they are a highly advanced athlete in a field where weight training is a new development, maybe even formerly deemed unnecessary.  Some of the traditional martial artists and boxers might fall into this group.  These athletes may be hell-on-wheels in the ring, but ask them to do a power clean and they might just hit you with “Why am I doing this?”

When I hear that, I have this mental process going on something like, “well, in 1986 when I was a little boy trying to get big and strong, I read a Muscle & Fitness article (actually thousands of them) and it said the power clean was one of the best mass exercises.  Later on I discovered that M&F was a big fraud, but by then other people I trusted had vindicated much of what I’d learned, except they felt the exercise was primarily to improve explosion.  Then a bunch of other people indicated that the power clean was unnecessary; all you really needed to do was different med-ball throws and weighted jumps and so on.  But I think the movement is still a good one if you can do it, and I can’t arrange for a decent overhead throw in this low-ceilinged room, so I thought the power clean would fit the bill.  After all, picking something up off the floor and shoving it overhead is a pretty natural movement, and it might just give you a better uppercut.”

But they naturally don’t care about that.  I can’t blame them for not wanting to field the differing opinions of all the different experts who are invested in different disciplines and who will defend their point of view (and their bottom line) at all costs.

They want to hear just the last part; “this will be good for your uppercut”.  Or, “this will turn your abs into a rock wall”.  Or in the case of the group that is really not athletic and just wants to look good, feel good and potentially attract a mate, “this will make you look good naked”.

Not long ago a person dropped into our group class, and during the squat portion of the session when I told her to push her knees out, she asked “is that safe?”  This is kind of a sneaky way of asking “why?”  I mean, I would hardly recommend you do it that way if I already thought it was unsafe, right?

What I said was, and I believe this is verbatim; “Yes”.  What I wanted to say was, “Well power lifting super-coach Louie Simmons says to do it, Jim Wendler says it, Dave Tate says the same thing, all the world’s top squatters do it, your knees will work better if you do it too, and yes, it is actually safer than letting your knees cave in, and provides a greater range of motion than squatting with your knees straight ahead, which in many lifters only allows a quarter squat, and doing it this way has allowed me to train hard and heavy for years without incurring too much trauma”.

That’s “why”.  But that answer sucks almost as much as just saying “yes”.

Here is the deal.  If you really want to know why, please read the following;

Starting Strength, by Mark Rippetoe

The Strongest Survive, by Bill Starr

The Weightlifting Encyclopedia: A Guide to World Class Performance, by Arthur Drechsler

The 5/3/1: The Simplest and Most Effective Training System for Raw Strength, by Jim Wendler (available on elitefts.com – read all articles on this site, also read the training logs)

Core Performance Essentials, by Mark Verstegen

The New Rules of Lifting, by Alwyn Cosgrove, with Lou Schuler

The Encylopedia of Bodybuilding, by Arnold Schwarzenegger

Power To The People, by Pavel Tsatsouline

From The Ground Up, by Dan John (available free http://danjohn.net/from-the-ground-up-free-ebook/) –read everything on this site.

Advances in Functional Training, by Mike Boyle (available at http://www.davedraper.com/fitness_products/product/BMBA.html)

Now, if you don’t want to do the reading, no problem.  You are busy people, and I completely respect that.

But, then if you ask me “why” we are doing something, I think I’m going to defer to a stock answer from now on.  It will be the following:

“This will make your butt look great.”

I think that covers everything.

Ron Dykstra

One of the questions I used to get asked a lot was whether non-athletes can train with us. The answer, of course, is yes. We’ve tried to make this pretty clear on the website, but there is often a little trepidation when people come in. For those used to working out in commercial gyms, it can often be a little overwhelming to walk into our space and see people doing stuff like hitting a tire with a sledgehammer, pushing a weighted sled or performing Olympic lifts. Little do they know that they’ll probably be doing the same (and doing it well) in relatively little time.

There is often a fear — when seeing other perform well — that we will not be able to compete with them. Even worse, that we’ll do poorly and maybe even embarrass ourselves. That fear is imminently human. But if you feel it, know that it does nothing but slow you down. Ditch it.

I feel like we’ve done a great job of creating an accessible environment. In a 3,000 square foot space that we share with an MMA club and have filled with thousands of pounds of cruel implements, people feel welcome and comfortable. I believe this to be largely due to a single philosophy that we make clear: Your standard for success is you.

There is nobody at our gym that isn’t awed — in one way or another — by someone else. There’s a lot of talent there; way too much to try comparing yourself to. So we don’t bother. The only question that anyone has is what you’re capable of right now. Yeah, you.

Our job is to give you the best game plan possible. Your job is to bust your ass sticking to it. And that’s pretty much the whole story. Your own limits may be great, they may be humble. Our only expectation is that you will push them.

The last person to set a record was you. The next person to break that record will be you. There is no one else.

For some people, it’s liberating to take everyone else out of the equation. For others, it’s frightening. It means admitting that progress is the direct result of your own efforts. That may seem like a real bitch but I’ve got news for you: if you’re not going to take responsibility for your own success, no one will.

Do you have to be an athlete? Absolutely not. Do you have to push? You tell me.

Geoff