The Zen of the Humble Garage



I enjoyed Vern's posts today and will have to pick up the book on Natalie Coughlin and the Outside Magazine. One thing that caught my attention was Vern's reference to his "high tech garage training center."

I am almost ready to begin research on a book dedicated to the wonderful work and knowledge generated by the numerous, legendary garage training centers and mentors in this country. It is my contention that the foundations of training technique and wisdom is generated in these humble facilities by those who prefer to be independent of the big gyms/sports performance companies. The gurus with the fancy, turf-laden sports performance emporiums simply repackage and resell that which has been developed in the trenches. They sell, sell, sell; they do not teach, teach, teach.

I'll admit is surprised me a bit to learn that Vern has a garage facility, but it makes total sense now. The weightlifting community is rife with such facilities, as commercial gyms tend to have no stomach or room for platforms, chalk and noise of dropped barbells. And commercial gyms have no space to teach people to move! They are full of useless machines and televisions (and escalators!) that provide mind-numbing distraction and assistance to the faithful masses who get their narcotic-like CNN, CNBC and Today fixes. This is exactly the environment that does not support the development of physical health--awareness, alignment, movement and strength. It creates dependence on machines and dumb's down the body's own proprioceptive abilities to move in the context of gravity.

I have finally managed to create my own little basement space (see top the picture) that allows me to lift, move, play and do Iron Maven research and development without mirrors or TV. And I can at least control the temperature a bit, which is nice. I've trained in the summer in a Florida garage and I can say that it can be brutal: the heat, mosquitoes and humidity are challenging. I salute Vern and all of the other garage-based people out there who chose the non-commercial , beautifully simple, functional path.

Comments

Joe Przytula said…
How about "The Zen of the Humble Athletic Training Room" I've been at my school for 21 years now and have never had an A.T. Room. We are the largest H.S. in the state. I have a portable cabinet from the local hardware store that houses everything from tape to my AED. I own two portable treatment tables. When A.T.'s come from other schools they get so annoyed. Since when does an athlete need to be lying on a plinth to do rehab? It's all about empowering the athlete to heal himself. All sports therapists need to remember this simple phrase:
To do is to be-Plato
To be is to do-Socrates
DoBeDoBeDo-Frank Sinatra
6:07 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Form and Function

Image
Way back in 2002, I scanned these images by Howard Schatz from Sports Illustrated (October 14, 2002). A fascinating array of elite female athlete physiques, heights and weights, eh? These are some of the women featured in his book Athlete --a very cool pictorial essay that celebrates athletic form and function.
Read more

It's About Preparing People, not Preventing Injuries

ACL injuries do not happen in a void. People sustain injuries when their infrastructure is unable to manage a specific set of physical circumstances. To describe the mechanism of the injury without the context of the person and their level/type of sport, is to miss valuable insight. In sport, we prepare the person, to the best of our understanding, to meet the physical demands of that sport. We do not just work to prevent one particular injury; we prepare athletes to navigate the total sport physical environment. By "we" I mean the coaching and support staff -- specifically the athletic development staff.  Athletic development (AD) coaches prepare athletes through the development of physical literacy and movement competencies via movement progressions. It is more than strength, power, agility; it is the acquisition of knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviors to manage themselves within the entire sporting environment. At the higher levels of sport, AD coaches coordinate wit...
Read more

Strength: Overcoming Tradition & Assumptions

Image
The term "strength" comes with many images and stereotypes. The most common stereotype usually includes intimidating men who look like action figures, in spaces that look like iron jungles. Strength is associated with mass gain, limb girth increases, muscle hypertrophy and maximal force production against an external load. With regard to lower body strength, we speak in terms of multiples of bodyweight (BW), with the ratio of 2x BW historically viewed as necessary and desirable. We have historically trained in terms of 1 RM. There has been a trend recently to adopt a VBT (velocity based training) approach, as we know 1 RM changes on a daily basis and technology now allows us to more finely tune things with velocity as the target within each set. These things can be helpful as we initially learn to measure and document progress. But I think it is important to step back from this narrow outlook, because this view of strength does not serve all of us well, in either the rehab or...
Read more