IOL Strength and Conditioning

Seems like such a great dream – noble even – to build a dungeon where heavy iron hits the floor and bumper plates are heaved smoothly overhead. Instead… I look in the crystal and see a three-year nightmare that ends with you and your best-bud training partner feuding, your back account empty (or worse, owing borrowed money), and the IRS hounding you for unpaid payroll taxes. It’s a heartbreaker.

We hear from people weekly, either by email or in the forum, writing of their amazing plans to build their dream gym. They write to share their excitement, or perhaps to get a tip or two from someone who built and ran a couple of gyms over a fifteen-year period.

Each time we have the opportunity, both Dave and I do our best to talk the planner down from the lofty heights and back to reality. In only one instance do I know of a person who stuck with the plans after our badgering, and who’s truly made a go of it in the health club business. All others had everything going against them, aside from their immeasurable enthusiasm. Unfortunately, in a business that can be compared in difficulty with the restaurant industry, enthusiasm simply isn’t enough.

Your gym business, odd as this may sound, will be competing with every outdoor fitness activity… running… walking… biking… swimming. If your community enjoys good weather, this is a negative in your business plan.

• My first goal in jotting these notes is to talk you out of it.

• My second is to convince you you don’t have enough money set aside for it to work.

• Failing both of my real goals, my final goal is to get you to a Thomas Plummer workshop before you sign a building lease, and certainly before opening day.

It’s true you can build a dungeon-like gym on a shoestring, some tenant improvement money and an equipment lease. But you can’t make it run on that, and the reality will become real, real clear about three months after opening day. The joy of building and opening the gym will fade as you discover the rent’s due, the checkbook’s short, and all those guys from the foofoo gym who said they’d be over on Day One are still back at 24/7 waiting either for the rest of their eighteen-month membership to run out, or for you to find the money for the bumper plates you promised.

When’s that reverse hyper going to be delivered, anyway? Oh, right. You borrowed enough money from your home mortgage payment for the equipment, but still don’t have enough to cover the freight.

And you know what? That’s exactly how it’s going to go for most enthusiastic independent gym owners. Here’s what happens: We have great passion for our gyms, and we know – just know – we can run ours better than the gym where we currently train. A few training buds get together, jabbering about a bunch of great-sounding ideas, and they’re off, cruising the town looking for an empty warehouse to hold a huge pile of iron.

None of the chatterers have a lick of business experience; no one even knows which permits need to be purchased, let alone what city, county or state department issues said permits. This isn’t uncommon, this enthusiasm coupled with a lack of business acumen, but in our industry it’s rampant. Add in lack of free capital and we’re hearing a death rattle; it’s a killer.

If you find yourself reflected in the above paragraphs, opening a gym is likely to wipe out your retirement savings — assuming you have any, big assumption in today’s economy – or it’ll ruin your friendships and possibly your marriage.

I know you’re enthusiastic, excited, eager and can barely temper your glee, and that’s why I scratched out all this negativity. You need to hear it.

Late edit for those who can’t contain their gym-building excitement: Here’s Zach EvenEsh on how to run a successful gym.

Dave’s genius lies in seeing what we all see, but being able to describe it in a way few of the rest of us had considered. That’s why I don’t want his musings of the internal coaching personalities from the column a few weeks to disappear into the depths of the archives, now reaching a thickness of over 500 columns, without calling out those familiar nags.

Before sending them off to history, which of your internal advisers is your favorite, which visits the most often or is the most destructive? And I wonder this: Do we have the skills to bring a more positive and more successful internal coach to the forefront?

Can we send the faulty ones to the rear?

Quoting Dave Draper:

Me, the pragmatist: Ask yourself, “What if I don’t go?” That dopey question usually works. I let the five one-syllable words tumble around my head for a few agonizing minutes and…

Off to the gym I go like a scolded child.

Myself, the negotiator: Think of how much better you feel when you’re done. Go. Set yourself free. The clever statements trick me every time. I’m dimwitted. I admit it.

Off to the gym with a sappy grin.

I, the ego: Oh, no! The arms are the first to go. They hang like buggy whips in the wind. Then the shoulders, slumping forward, narrow, bony and powerless. Loose fat collects immediately around the navel and love handles. The pecs droop, airless balloons.

Absolutely unbearable. Zoom. Gone to the gym.

College professor: Now is not the time to pause, neglect or doubt, my good man. With haste summon your discipline and perseverance, your most precious assets long in development. Let this day not pass without continuous and virtuous triumph. Live, lift, learn and grow.

Off to the gym I go, a brilliant and assiduous student of life… D-

Fatherly persuasion: Be brave and courageous, my son. You’re in the shadow of the valley of tedium that must be traversed before ascending the noble and exciting mountains ahead.

I hike to the gym in mountaineering boots.

Street talker: Don’t think about it, man. Just do it, you’ll like it.

Off to the gym I go, a free spirit… with a millstone chained to his ankle.

Philosopher: Be strong. These are the times that test the soul.

I go boldly to the gym, heart in hand.

Big brother talk: Nerve and guts, that rebellious pair of wiseguys, can always be counted on when the going gets tough, you little punk. You got any nerve… any guts?

I squeeze into a tanktop and shuffle off to the gym.

Cheerleader: No wimps allowed. I’m counting on you, Double D. You can do this. You’re the man. Let’s make this work big time. Go get ‘em, Bomber. Give me a B, Give me an O, Give me an M, Give me a B.

Gym-bound, pompoms in hand.

Burly coach: Listen up, Draper, and the rest of you lugs out there. Treat every workout like it’s your last workout. Every workout counts. Never say, “I’m not up to it, I can’t do it, I don’t have it in me.” Stand tall, throw your shoulders back, spread those lats, flex those tris, grab the iron and push. Never quit! Never surrender! Never give up! Squats and Deadlifts and Presses and Curls.

Me, gym. Coach’s orders.

Fatalist: Miss one workout, miss two. The terrifying training gap has been established. Miss two workouts, miss three. You’re a goner. There’s no recovery, no turning back, you’re a dead man walking. You cannot let this happen. Do something. Do something now or we all die… aaarrrgh!

Off to the gym or I’m dead meat.

Psychiatrist: You’re crazy if you go, you’re crazy if you don’t go. Don’t go, they throw away the key and you can’t get in. Go, they throw away the key and you can’t get out.

Goodbye, cruel world. Admit me to the Dumbbell Ward.

Psychoanalyst: You think you’re depressed now; forego your workout and the world will come tumbling down on you. Hope surrenders to despair, compassion morphs into anger, enthusiasm dissolves into apathy, fear thwarts joy and light fades to darkness.

The gym, now, or I shrivel.

Cop: Drop the Bomber Blend, hands behind your head, down on the floor, spread ‘em and don’t say a word or it will be held against you. What’s this about not going to the gym? Don’t answer that. Get in the patrol car and watch your head… kaboink… you’re going to the gym. 90 minutes, hard labor.

Off to the Iron House: Voluntary incarceration.

Any more ironheads to the rescue?

What is social media? How can we use it? Why would we want to?

I know you’ve heard of it—social media, Facebook… Twitter. You may be thinking the same as Dave, which is why would anyone want to do that? That’s what he said when I told him I was sticking my foot in the social door, but that’s also what he said when I started making a three-page website back in the winter of 1998, or started the email discussion group the following summer. He said it again when I installed the forum board software in 2004. He sure was wrong on those occasions, so why not now?

How I see it is the trilogy of our well-established strength training forum, plus the personal and easy-going aspects of Facebook and the wider-reaching, free-wheeling nature of Twitter rounds out everything we could need for learning and growing our web-based education and camaraderie of iron.

We’re sharing information, passing on links, getting a quick grin from a note from a new acquaintance—a friend of a friend, perhaps—enjoying a memory of someone who was in the audience when Dave won the Mr. America onstage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1965. You’re not going to get that stuff training at home, and rarely will you get much of it at your neighborhood gym. You’re going to have to cast a little wider for the real gems, and that’s where the new social media comes in.

The forum IronOnline you know of if you’ve been reading past blog posts or are a subscriber of Dave’s weekly newsletter. That’s social media; it’s just not the social media you heard about on CNN.

The CNN stuff, that would be more like Facebook and Twitter; Facebook is a site in which you create your own page, add a profile page with a bio and a small photo avatar, then update with a status from time to time, add photos, video or blog-like posts, and begin collecting friends.

Twitter is all about short bursts of information, perhaps an answer to a person’s posted question or a link to something interesting in your field. Some people post bits of nothing; others post solid information, and what you see depends on what type of people you follow. When someone posts their every trip to the grocery store, I’ll have to unfollow—for me, that’s just too much information. But already I’ve had some truly choice links pass through my filter, stuff I would not have otherwise seen, and I’ve introduced myself to leaders in our industry in a way that simply would not have been possible via email.

Let’s say you’re mildly interested. You’ve gone over to Facebook or Twitter and signed up. What do you do next? One easy way to build up some camaraderie pronto is to go to my Facebook friends or Twitter followers and wheel through the names and avatar photos scanning for your acquaintances from our forum or your other stops around the ‘net. On Facebook, click Add Friend to send a friend request; on Twitter, a simple click on the follow link adds that person’s twitter updates to your message scroll.

You’ll be using me as a hub to your iron connections. By the time you’re finished, maybe you’ll even post one of your golden era memories on the Dave Draper fan page, or will RSVP for our next bash event, a Dan John seminar in Draper, Utah, just south of Salt Lake City, on June 6. If you’re an IroingnOnline forum regular, you’ll have certainly re-connected with a hundred or so familiar faces in about five minutes by clicking through my Facebook friends, and if you add yourself to the IronOnline business list, you’ll get a status note in your Facebook page when new videos or photos are uploaded.

Your new Facebook buddies would love to hear stories from those of you who enjoyed the training golden era in person. What was it like training back before it was cool? Did you travel to any contests, maybe hitchhike with a gym buddy? Give us a choice memory and we’ll reward you with a big IronOnline welcome.

You can further pursue your twittering interests using the follow suggestions over at the fightgeek’s blog: Strength, nutrition and conditioning on twitter.

A stunning gift to those who thrill at the idea of mountains of weight moving overhead real fast,  Arnold Classic promoter, Jim Lorimer, and IronMind’s Randy Strossen teamed up this year to bring in the 2008 Olympic gold medalist, Matthias Steiner, from Germany, along with his weightlifting team for an exhibition showcase on the main stage in the expo hall at the Arnold this weekend, Saturday, March 7 at 1pm.

Ingrid Marcum, our inspiring friend from the forum, has been invited to participate in the exhibition, so after a very short break home following her bobsled season travel, which spanned non-stop from September thru February, Ingrid treks to Columbus this weekend to join the showcase.

Ingrid’s an amazing athlete, skilled in multiple sports, and a great inspiration to those of us in the IronOnline forum, and especially those who were around in the beginning email discussion days as we watched Ingrid battle back from a career-ending back injury to where she is today, striving toward the 2010 Olympic bobsled team and competing at Olympic level in both weightlifting and bobsled. She’s our summer and winter gal.

Here’s Ingrid in action getting the weight overhead: Clean and jerk, 220.5 pounds

You can befriend Ingrid on Facebook here, and catch up on her competitive travels here at her blog.

Via Mike Robertson’s blog this morning, for those interested in more on Olympic lifting, here’s an outstanding set of youtube weightlifting videos—enough to keep you busy through the weekend.