Erik
08-25-14, 12:10 pm
As a child, I had very little interest in anything besides comic books and action figures, and I was terrified of EVERYTHING. Then at 12, I fell madly, deeply and hopelessly in love with the simple act of picking up a loaded barbell and fighting gravity. I was not athletically inclined or naturally strong, and my body had a tendency to hold onto fat, not muscle. Still, I trained. Progress did not come easy and when I tried to speed up the process, I got punished. If I tried to increase my food intake in an effort to gain mass and strength, I just got fat. If I tried to starve myself in an effort to get ripped, I would just lose a bunch of muscle and end up flat. Strength did not come easy either. I first benched 225 for a single at 18, six years after I started lifting. Still, I kept training. I trained through some very rough patches, including my mother’s first bout with breast cancer, then my father’s death a year later and losing our house shortly after that, all before I turned 20. Sometimes I would train in a poorly maintained gym where cables snapped, other times I would lift in a garage that reeked of dog s***, and little by little, progress came. Since the internet was in its embryonic stages, the only way to learn was to ask questions from the more seasoned veterans of the iron game. So to that end, I learned to train in GYMS, and I learned to train heavy. In time, the monsters in the gym that terrified me, accepted me and I became one of them.
Over time, my lifting took me to some interesting places and brought some wonderful people into my life. I have competing successfully in powerlifting meets through the years, even winning my division at the RPS NJ States against some good competitors in 2012. In 2013, I was selected by universal nutrition to participate in their annual plane pull for charity. None of this would have been possible without the lessons that I learned in the hardcore gyms of my youth.
The gyms where I trained and learned were Spartan had free weights, hammer strength, some machines and heavy dumbbells. Most importantly, the people that trained there trained to GROW. There was no “fluff” and no sugar coating anything, if you did something wrong, you were told. Still, it didn’t matter how weak you were or what you looked like, you were treated with respect as long as you trained hard.
Sadly, all of those gyms are now gone, replaced by big box franchise fitness centers and crossfit studios. 10 years ago, the hardcore lifting community thought that the cookie cutter franchises were bad enough. However, today we have a bigger threat, Planet Fitness.
For those unaware planet fitness is a franchise that made a name by not catering to bodybuilders, powerlifters or hardcore fitness enthusiasts. Planet fitness offers only selectorized weight machines and smith machines, no barbells and dumbbells that go up to 80lbs at most. What planet fitness does have is clever marketing. First, they provide free pizza and bagels during different times of the week as well as tootsie rolls. More importantly, they go out of their way to create an atmosphere to discourage the more serious clientele. Perhaps most importantly, they classify all bodybuilders and powerlifters as “lunks”, going so far as creating commercials to perpetuate that stereotype. I should mention that I do train a friend who is a member at planet fitness and she trains hard, but she is fully aware that sooner or later, she will outgrow the place.
Now here is the problem, planet fitness does big business and as a result, they are popping up all over the place. Since there is only so much room in the fitness market, when a planet fitness opens up in a new area, it makes it hard for a mom and pop owned gym to survive and over time, those gyms are forced to close. Now here is the question, once an established, independent hardcore gym closes, where are the members supposed to go? Normally when a competing business forces a competitor to close, the customers typically would just go to the surviving Business. Now what’s happening with planet fitness is an interesting phenomenon that may not have been seen in business before. When a serious bodybuilding gym closes and the only place left is a planet fitness, the lifters are essentially left “homeless”, meaning that their only options are to travel to out of the way gyms, stop training or conform to planet fitness’s business model and downgrade their training. To be blunt, planet fitness is basically trying to force bodybuilding into extinction (on some level, they may be succeeding). Furthermore, they are limiting the progress that their current members might make in a better equipped facility, thus ensuring that everyone roughly stays at the same level. Now what does this have to do with the average person that has no interest in gym culture? EVERYTHING.
What is happening in the fitness industry is a reflection of what is happening to small businesses and individuality as a whole. In the last decade, legendary places like CBGB’s, numerous other music clubs and many other established business have all shuttered, replaced by large corporate owned chain stores or in some cases, nothing at all.
Slowly but surely, our individuality and culture are being taken away, replaced by homogenized, prepackaged, nonthreatening versions of what they once were.
I want to deadlift heavy and use chalk. I want to listen to live music by an artist that performs for the love of it in a dirty rock club, I want to drink black coffee instead of a skinny mocha latte and occasionally, I want a pastrami sandwich (unless I am cutting) from a hundred year old deli.
You will NEVER find the same quality of a product in a franchise that you would in a mom and pop place.
So if you love your hardcore gym and love lifting heavy, then you have a responsibility to spread the word about what you do and where you do it and as Dave Tate says “LIVE, LEARN, PASS ON.
Over time, my lifting took me to some interesting places and brought some wonderful people into my life. I have competing successfully in powerlifting meets through the years, even winning my division at the RPS NJ States against some good competitors in 2012. In 2013, I was selected by universal nutrition to participate in their annual plane pull for charity. None of this would have been possible without the lessons that I learned in the hardcore gyms of my youth.
The gyms where I trained and learned were Spartan had free weights, hammer strength, some machines and heavy dumbbells. Most importantly, the people that trained there trained to GROW. There was no “fluff” and no sugar coating anything, if you did something wrong, you were told. Still, it didn’t matter how weak you were or what you looked like, you were treated with respect as long as you trained hard.
Sadly, all of those gyms are now gone, replaced by big box franchise fitness centers and crossfit studios. 10 years ago, the hardcore lifting community thought that the cookie cutter franchises were bad enough. However, today we have a bigger threat, Planet Fitness.
For those unaware planet fitness is a franchise that made a name by not catering to bodybuilders, powerlifters or hardcore fitness enthusiasts. Planet fitness offers only selectorized weight machines and smith machines, no barbells and dumbbells that go up to 80lbs at most. What planet fitness does have is clever marketing. First, they provide free pizza and bagels during different times of the week as well as tootsie rolls. More importantly, they go out of their way to create an atmosphere to discourage the more serious clientele. Perhaps most importantly, they classify all bodybuilders and powerlifters as “lunks”, going so far as creating commercials to perpetuate that stereotype. I should mention that I do train a friend who is a member at planet fitness and she trains hard, but she is fully aware that sooner or later, she will outgrow the place.
Now here is the problem, planet fitness does big business and as a result, they are popping up all over the place. Since there is only so much room in the fitness market, when a planet fitness opens up in a new area, it makes it hard for a mom and pop owned gym to survive and over time, those gyms are forced to close. Now here is the question, once an established, independent hardcore gym closes, where are the members supposed to go? Normally when a competing business forces a competitor to close, the customers typically would just go to the surviving Business. Now what’s happening with planet fitness is an interesting phenomenon that may not have been seen in business before. When a serious bodybuilding gym closes and the only place left is a planet fitness, the lifters are essentially left “homeless”, meaning that their only options are to travel to out of the way gyms, stop training or conform to planet fitness’s business model and downgrade their training. To be blunt, planet fitness is basically trying to force bodybuilding into extinction (on some level, they may be succeeding). Furthermore, they are limiting the progress that their current members might make in a better equipped facility, thus ensuring that everyone roughly stays at the same level. Now what does this have to do with the average person that has no interest in gym culture? EVERYTHING.
What is happening in the fitness industry is a reflection of what is happening to small businesses and individuality as a whole. In the last decade, legendary places like CBGB’s, numerous other music clubs and many other established business have all shuttered, replaced by large corporate owned chain stores or in some cases, nothing at all.
Slowly but surely, our individuality and culture are being taken away, replaced by homogenized, prepackaged, nonthreatening versions of what they once were.
I want to deadlift heavy and use chalk. I want to listen to live music by an artist that performs for the love of it in a dirty rock club, I want to drink black coffee instead of a skinny mocha latte and occasionally, I want a pastrami sandwich (unless I am cutting) from a hundred year old deli.
You will NEVER find the same quality of a product in a franchise that you would in a mom and pop place.
So if you love your hardcore gym and love lifting heavy, then you have a responsibility to spread the word about what you do and where you do it and as Dave Tate says “LIVE, LEARN, PASS ON.