“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” -MLK

We tend to ask “why,” after these all-too-often tragedies. To be brief, the why doesn’t matter. It’s done. People who were with us one day were gone the next. I received the news as I was training Saturday morning in the gym. It hit close to home for two reasons. This happened in Pittsburgh- our hometown- a place that is, or was, seemingly invincible. And Lindsey, our assistant manager, lives about a mile from the synagogue that was attacked. It brought to light a whole new perspective in regards to these “national” tragedies.

I’m not going to go down the political rabbit hole. That discussion has it’s time and place, but not here.

What ELSE can we do?

As I was sitting in the gym on Saturday, I scrolled through social media out of habit. I posted the first thing that came to mind…

We’re saddened by today’s events. Unfortunately there are people in this world that are lacking their own love and humanity. Grieve the lost. But find someone in your world that needs a little love and give it to them. A hello to a stranger. A text to someone you haven’t talked to in awhile. Anything to let them know that SOMEONE in this world does, in fact, care about them.

So, for selfish reasons, hug your family and friends a little tighter today and every day. Don’t leave things unsaid because tomorrow isn’t guaranteed.

And in an effort to improve your small community in this world, BE BOLD. Seek out those that hide in the cracks of society. For most it won’t come naturally. It will take courage. But it will be worth it.

The world IS a good place, unfortunately through these tragedies we are reminded that there are people out there that have been lost, mistreated, misguided, or missing love for so long in their lives that their only outlet is to hurt others. They try to make others feel their pain.

They don’t need our hate or our anger. They need our love. No, we can’t save everyone. But we can love our neighbors. We can show love to those that may not deserve love.

Marcus Aurelius said, “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” It doesn’t sound logical to love someone who hurt you, or someone who may hate you, but love is the way.

In memory of:

Irving Younger
Daniel Stein
Joyce Fienberg
Richard Gottfried
Rose Mallinger
Jerry Rabinowitz
Cecil Rosenthal
David Rosenthal
Bernice Simon
Sylvan Simon
Melvin Wax

With LOVE,

Union Fitness

Tools for building the body you want, no matter what that means.

When I talk about Union Fitness, one of my absolute favorite things to bring up is the huge number of women we have lifting along side the guys in the Strength Lab. And even more-so, how many of those women are very new to training with barbells. Our #powerful (women)’s class has been moving along steadily since it first began over a year ago, and many of the women that dipped their toe into lifting in that class have moved on to doing their own thing now! This has always been my number one goal as a trainer at UF, and I’m so proud of our women every day.

For many of us, when we first start lifting we realize that we’re doing something that’s not the norm. It can bring up a lot of anxieties that we weren’t even fully aware we had. Sometimes that’s related to injury, sometimes it’s just doubting that we’re strong enough to move the 45lb barbell to begin with, but usually it comes down to how we look.

“Won’t lifting weights make me too big? I don’t want to look bulky!”

Let’s break this down.

First and foremost, we need to define what “bulkiness” means in this context, and that’s not easy to do! There are thousands of articles floating around on the internet right now that mock women for having these fears. “You can’t accidentally get too big, it’s like assuming that learning how to drive means you’ll immediately turn into a Nascar driver.” Of course that’s true, but that’s not the point. There is no clear line in the sand demarcating what is “just right” and what is “too big.” That’s different for every single person, regardless of gender.

For many men in the fitness industry, there is an assumption that when women voice this fear, they’re saying they are afraid they’re going to turn into a pro bodybuilder like Iris Kyle without meaning to (and an aside, the actual women’s bodybuilding category has been all but eliminated because of lack of popularity, so think about that juxtaposition for a minute before spouting this line off). That’s usually not the case. Women who strength train have all kinds of bodies, and not all of them are #goals for every single woman who comes through the gym. This is where I wish this industry had a little more patience and compassion for new lifters. Aesthetic goals are highly individual and also tend to change with time. Slow down and listen.

If you, reader, are worried about getting too big, that’s ok! Build the body you want, not the one someone else thinks you should have, no matter who they are or where they’re coming from. It’s your body and you have complete agency over it. My only caveat that is to make sure you have all the tools at your disposal to understand what’s going on when you start resistance training. I’m going to help out with that a bit here.

Muscle Building, Strength Building

Generally speaking, men and women can train exactly the same way in the weight room. There are some minor differences (which I’ll get into below) but we don’t need to do different exercises or train at different rep ranges to build strength and get results. You can choose to alter your program for your specific goals, and you should!

The primary difference, especially in this context, is the rate at which men vs women build muscle. Surprise, men can build more and do it faster, thanks to testosterone. We don’t have much – around 1/10th of what men have on average (but that’s not always a bad thing). Without supplementing testosterone, women with hormonal profiles within normal ranges will never get that big. Our biology simply doesn’t permit it. This isn’t to say that women can never build lots of muscle, just that it takes a lot longer than you’d think!

Keep in mind that there is a difference between muscle gain and strength gain. Yes, because of their larger body size and proportionally higher percentage of muscle vs fat, males will typically always be stronger than females of equal size, but the rate at which we build strength is actually quite similar! Strength building is about much more than just growing bigger muscles: there are a lot of neurological adaptations that take place as well. As you practice movements more, your body gets more efficient at performing them, and learns to recruit more muscle tissue to help with time.

We have some advantages too. While women’s absolute 1 rep max (the most you can lift) is usually little lower than would be predicted because we typically have fewer fast-twitch muscle fibers (the ones that let us move something really quickly one time) than men, we are typically able to handle a lot more volume and variety than men. That means you can train a little more than the men around you do and you’ll have the ability to recover and get right back to it. We typically have better metabolic health due to our fat distribution, our increased amount of estrogen, and our proportionally smaller size. All pretty awesome things! It’s a trade-off, but not a terrible one.

The How

Above we talked about the difference between building muscle and strength, but not the how or the why. Let’s start with the practical bits, which means we’re talking rep ranges.

There are three general rep ranges that we use when lifting – low reps (5 or fewer) to build strength, medium reps (6 to 12) to build muscle (hypertrophy), and very high reps (13+) to build endurance. The lower the reps, the more weight you can use. For some reason, that low rep range, where we build the most strength, is the one that many women shy away from in fears of getting too big. But that doesn’t make much sense does it? A lot of women’s programs tend to work in the higher rep ranges, which may actually be more muscle-building!

All of these rep ranges are important, and we use all of them in our programs and classes for a reason. But if you’re goal is specifically to get stronger without adding size, skip that middle hypertrophy tier for the most part and focus on increasing the weight you can use for a few reps.

The last and most important thing to think about when it comes to gaining (or losing) size: how you’re eating. You can do as much work in that hypertrophy range as you want, but if you’re eating fewer calories than you’re burning each day, you will not get bigger. Your body needs fuel to build your muscles, and if you’re not providing it, your body can’t’ build it. You will gain some of those neuromuscular adaptations we talked about above, so it’s not that you’re working out in vain, but the results will not be bigger muscles. This is just another tool at your disposal: eat the right amounts for the size you want to be. Everything else is just extra.

One final aside on the practical: this is purely anecdotal but I’ve experienced it and heard it form countless other women. When you change your training program, like beginning to lift or starting a new intense HIIT program, you’ll feel some water retention. You’re using your muscles in a new way, causing microtears and inflammation that need to be healed for you to get stronger. Part of that healing response is your body holding on to more water. It’s necessary but can be uncomfortable for the first few weeks of lifting. I always called the the “stuffed sausage” phase. It’s temporary, I promise. I will gladly commiserate with you if you’re dealing with this.

The Why

Why build strength? First, for the physical benefits. Getting stronger doesn’t just apply to your muscles, it also applies to your bones. If you want to avoid osteoporosis and osteopenia later in life, resistance training is key. That doesn’t mean you need to squat huge weights, just that you need to resist some kind of force – your own bodyweight, bands, fatbells, barbells. Walking and running and jumping and playing all apply too, just move your body and resist the forces of everyday life!

Muscle is also more metabolically demanding than fat, meaning that the more muscle mass you have, the more you’ll need to eat to fuel your body. Same goes for activity – more active, more food, meaning more opportunity to get important nutrients in your system. That’s all a win.

Strength training can also help you achieve better posture! Ever wonder why we have everyone doing 5000 band pullaparts and face pulls a week? To build a stronger upper back, which will definitely make you a better lifter, but will also help you stand and sit up straighter and decrease back and neck pain.

Building strength also means building mental strength. And in many ways, that’s super personal. I can list a million reasons why getting stronger was so life changing for me, and most of them have absolutely nothing to do with the way I look. As a young(er) woman I let other people dictate how I should live. I didn’t feel like my needs or wants were important enough to override anyone else’s. Lifting was the first thing I really did just for myself, and I came to love it. Lifting taught me to take care of myself, that I didn’t need anyone to do that for me. Lifting was my coming of age story.

It comes out in practical ways – I don’t need help walking my groceries home from Giant Eagle (it’s a half mile uphill, can’t wait to share that with my kids someday). I don’t need someone to move my furniture for me. I can carry my 55lb dog around when he’s too hot/cold/wet/dry/lazy to walk anymore (something that occurs more frequently than it should, wonder why).

A lot of my blogs come back to “figuring out the why” and this one is no different. Your why may be to look a certain way, and that s fine! Hopefully now you have some guidelines for reaching those goals, no matter what they are. Maybe your why is to avoid bone density loss later in life, or to be able to hike longer and avoid knee injuries on the trail. Whatever it is, please feel free to share it with us. What makes our community so great is that we support each other in reaching our goals, no matter what they are.

Additional Resources

If this is a topic that interests you, there is a ton of information out there that goes into much more detail than I could here.

This is the article that tends to change a lot of women’s minds about strength training:
https://www.nerdfitness.com/success-story/meet-staci-your-new-powerlifting-super-hero/
Staci is a fantastic lifter that you can follow on Instagram as well:
https://www.instagram.com/staciardison/?hl=en

For more information on males vs females with regards to metabolism and strength training:
https://www.strongerbyscience.com/gender-differences-in-training-and-diet/
https://www.strongerbyscience.com/strength-training-women/

We’re going to introduce a newly recurring blog for our gym- training updates from our staff. The aim being two fold:
We want to share with you our successes and failures while hopefully teaching you a little bit of the “why.”
We want you to get to know us better through these trials. We do practice what we preach (most of the time) and this should be an honest representation of that.

Leadership:
There are times to lead from the front and times to lead from the back- this is one of those times that the former is more important. To get this ball rolling, I’ll share with you my recent goals and how well I think I’m doing to achieve those goals.

Past:
August 25th I had an international meet in Mountain View, California. It went as well as it could have, and I learned a lot from my failures that day (and really the weeks prior). Since then my training took a back seat. I just wasn’t interested in training, so I let my body and my mind wander, so to speak. My ultimate goal in this sport is to total 2300lbs which might look something like 850 squat, 600 bench, 850 deadlift. To get there will take time, effort, patience, consistency, and some tenacity. So I have to realize that if I need six weeks ‘off’ after a meet to let my body get back to baseline, then that’s the step necessary to get me closer to 2300 as opposed to jumping back in and “grinding it out.”

Present:
What happens to muddy water if you keep stirring it? Nothing- it stays muddy. But if you leave it alone, it becomes clear again. So after I let everything settle down, the path to my goal became much more clear. I need to rebuild a foundation for my training. I also want to reduce my stress as much as possible. So I hired a well respected and accomplished coach, Josh Bryant, to lay out my training for me, with the goal being to go from 235lbs to 255lbs. One week in, I’m up to 244lbs- which is to be expected. The next 11lbs will be a little more difficult. My training has looked like this for the first week:

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Being in the coaching spotlight is something I look forward to every single day. I love my clients and the members I teach and I think it’s no secret that I love to push them hard. Everyone that has worked out with me is, by now, suuuuper familiar with my so-called “maniacal laughter” when things get a little spicy. But I definitely have two sides: my well put together, has an answer for everything (or will at least attempt to find out the answer for you) and methodical coaching side and then my everything is falling apart, self-sabotaging and constantly whining athlete side.

What I love about UF is that we practice what we preach but it’s a fallacy that coaches don’t fail. In fact, we fail just as hard if not harder than the clients we teach despite knowing better. But that’s often why coaches have coaches—to bring us back down to reality when we are floating up in the abyss of self destruction and bad habits. It can be so easy to put your coach on a fitness pedestal, forgetting that they are indeed human too. So I’m here to confess all of my athletic sins to you, in hopes that the next time you yourself are floating in that abyss you can know that it’s normal and there’s hope.

So it’s time that I get real with y’all and tell you all the ways I’m self sabotaging on the post-baby-back -to -“normal” journey:

Dogging (or plain avoiding) my cardio workouts

Lifting weights is fun. You get that good endorphin rush, muscle pump and there’s just something about the sound of clinking weights that gives me those good good chills. What is not fun? Cardio. What is necessary sometimes? Cardio. Ugh. So by the time I convince myself to test out (read: suffer through) one of my Cardio Lab creations, I end up putting the least amount of effort in as possible.

Grossly undereating

Because we practice what we preach, I track and log my daily food intake. Most days it hovers between 1300-1600 calories, which between working out, breastfeeding and just my daily caloric needs, I know is not enough.

Comparing myself to my previous self

It’s always a bad, very bad, terrible idea to look at old pictures of yourself when you were younger sans kids, thinner with less gray hairs and a face like you just slept twelve hours straight each night for the last five years. A very bad idea. When Facebook pops up with those “Look at this post from X years ago…” I can’t help but compare myself to where I was X years ago. I’m constantly reading these articles all about “embracing your postpartum body” and quite honestly I want to rip them to shreds and slap the author. Yeah yeah, maybe I should embrace a little harder, instead of just whining so much.

Thinking I’m never doing enough

Free time is sparse when three young kids are involved. Add in a full time job, a pinch of single momhood and a sprinkle of Mom Guilt™ and you have a recipe for super speedy bare minimum workouts. I’m constantly battling those nagging thoughts in the back of my mind that I’m not doing enough to get to where I want to be.

Expecting progress overnight

I do one set of abdominal work and instantly check my stomach expecting to see a six pack. I eat correctly for one day and step on the scale expecting to see the numbers drop automatically. Ridiculous, I know and maybe slightly exaggerating here…but only slightly.

Weighing myself too often (and obsessing about the number)

Every.damn.day. It’s too often. I only obsess about the number for the rest of the day and it even affects my food choices for the day. I’m letting my scale rule my life right now and it sucks.

Not sleeping enough

One word: Baby. Need more be said? And if you’ve ever had a baby that slept longer than two hours at a time then don’t talk to me because I hate you.

Making excuses

Basically this whole list is one big giant excuse. Waaaah. I’ve been surrounded by the baby long enough that I’m beginning to turn into one myself.

Being too hard on myself

I face this one every day: I’m too tired. I’m too weak. I’ll never be strong. I’ll never be fast or quick or lean. I hate on my stretch marks, my wrinkles and my gray hair. I pine for something, anything other than what I am or where I’m at. Oh yeaaaahhhh, totally healthy thoughts *sarcasm*.

So there you have it folks. There is no happy ending to my self sabotaging sins right now, no problem solving and definitely no “let’s look on the bright side” talk. These are just things I’m facing at the moment, accepting them for being there and what they are. One day I’ll tackle them one by one but for now, damn it, everything sucks. And knowing that it can be a normal part of the process helps. So the next time you’re complaining to your coach about how everything hurts and how much Cardio Lab sucks, know that we really do it mean it when we say that we understand.

Think back to when you were doing your normal warm-up routine. While you were going through the motions, something in your shoulder just didn’t feel quite right. Maybe it was a slight pinch from your last workout or maybe you slept wrong. Regardless, the program says to hit something heavy today. What’s your next move? Take the gamble and push through or take a step back? Be honest now.

In my experience, I think you can categorize the majority of lifters into two groups: Performance Lifters and Therapy Lifters. If you answered that you would push through chances are you’re a Therapy Lifter. Performance Lifters tend to stop and reassess when things don’t feel right. Still unsure of which category you fit into, then ask yourself this question: Why do I lift weights?

Personally, I lift weights to be a human god amongst my friends. I love to create excitement through physical challenges. Perhaps you lift so you can deal with stress at work. Everyone has their own reason for lifting. But these individual reasons put us into certain categories. Therapy Lifters have lifting for an outlet when life brings too much to the table. They use lifting to help them deal with other, non-gym related, matters of life. Performance Lifters approach lifting to overcome the physical challenges that it brings. Of course lifters are not exactly one or the other but they do tend to lean more towards one side.

Performance Lifters are impressive. They are calculated, with each number in mind for the next two months or more. They are zoned into every tweak that they have in their body. Without hesitation Performance Lifters take care of any aches because they know that if they push through the pain, it might put them out for a month or longer. I don’t mean to say that the performance approach just means backing down at any little pain but each ache is weighed out more cautiously. Taking that extra moment to analyze the pain seems to prolong their longevity in the sport.

Therapy Lifting is hard to describe. I would argue that this approach is not heathy but I do believe that it is widely popular. Now here is something that I believe most of us can relate to, even if you are a Performance Lifter. You are wrapping your wrists or tighten that belt while placing the perfect amount of chalk on your hands, a cocktail of adrenaline is pumping through your veins. All of a sudden that pinch that you have been feeling in your shoulder doesn’t matter. What matters is getting that high after you get the weight up. You get that feeling of stress dispersing as the lift is accomplished. But this approach isn’t really therapy. Therapy is defined as “treatment intended to relieve or heal a disorder” or a condition. Training is really none of those things. True- training isn’t a treatment, it is a momentary bliss to mask the issues that one is dealing with. If you are truly training with intensity than it can be just as harmful as other damaging outlets to handle emotional stress.

Again, I believe there is a mixture. I think it is rare that a person is truly all Therapy Lifter or 100% Performance Lifter. But the person that leans towards therapy lifting too much can be dangerous. Therapy Lifters need to take a moment to realize that choosing to address issues through lifting only prolongs the stressors of life returning while actually hindering your lifting. Worst case scenario it takes lifting away from you completely. On the other hand, the argument could be made that a Performance Lifter could benefit from allowing some emotions in their training. In reality, a good Performance Lifter has the drive or intensity built in already. After a while they know when something is just an everyday annoyance vs. an injury about to happen. The more you understand why you choose to lift weights the better you can improve as a lifter. Realizing that you are more of a therapy lifter early on will only improve you quality of lifting and the longevity of your lifting.

So maybe you find yourself leaning towards the “therapy” side of lifting. No matter what your goals are, taking a page out of the “performance” lifters’ book can be beneficial. Pushing yourself day in and day out and walking away from the gym feeling good, WHILE avoiding injury is the name of the game for both sets of lifters. The next time your shoulder flares up or your hamstring is feeling a little tight, be calculated in your training approach that day.

It’s that time again- Welcome to September’s State of the Union.

The weather has remained semi-unpredictable, but we’ve had some gorgeous days as of late. Practice some gratitude and get outdoors as fall starts to cool off. We’ve been getting classes outdoors as often as possible trying to soak in the short window of good weather that our fair city gives us.

To follow along with our core values, here is a link to our website: https://unionfitness.com/about/

UF Values- EPIC: Education—Passion—Integrity—Community

Education
I’m proud of my staff for the effort they put in daily to get better- from constructive criticism amongst one another, to reading new books, and continuing education courses- they just want to be better at their jobs. That’s rare in today’s world and I try to remind them of that every day- Union Fitness is what it is because of their efforts and sacrifices.

With that being said, the education spotlight is on my friend and mentor, Steve Goggins. Steve is part of EliteFTS and was the first man (in the world) to squat over 1100lbs. (1102 to be exact). Steve was gracious enough to come to UF to put on a squat seminar that was open to the public. The cool part- our staff jumped in to make sure they learned something too. We can never be too proud to learn.

To summarize, the event went well. There were 30 participants and Steve took about three hours to make sure that he got his information across, then had the time to watch every single person squat while giving them cues and feedback to correct mistakes. From 115lb. squatters to 650+lb squatters- everyone had something to take home and work on.

Passion
This is an easy one. If you happened to be there in person to see this, you know that Stew Snyder left it all on the platform on Saturday September 22nd for the Iron City Pro/Am. Stew had a great day, but the icing on the cake for him was a 600lb deadlift that he set his sights on months ago. He pulled it successfully on his last attempt and bent over in tears afterward because he literally put everything he had into that lift. Maybe you don’t have quite that amount of passion for powerlifting, but make sure you let yourself feel something like that once you achieve your goals.

*Check out the Union Fitness instagram page if you want to see the video for yourself!

Integrity
I always like to review the definition of integrity: (1) the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles and (2) the state of being whole and undivided.

This is always the hardest value to single out because it is so encompassing. I think behind every action we can find some integrity, or lack thereof. So it’s a complicated endeavor to honestly and earnestly pick out one example, let alone a few. BUT, I think I (with help from my staff) came up with a couple good ones.

With the Iron City Pro/Am on the 22nd, we had 30 lifters and another 50-100 people in and out of the Strength Lab all day long. There was a piece of equipment a lifter left by accident that was turned in immediately after the meet. Normally, this particular item would have found its way into someone’s bag, never to be seen again. But not one of those people took it upon themselves to claim it as their own. I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal, but respecting people’s personal possessions is important in my book. So kudos to everyone from this past weekend.

In the same vein, all of the Union Fitness equipment was respected. Nothing was broken. Most plates were returned. Most bars were returned. It’s a sigh of relief when you invite strangers into your ‘home’ and they take care of it as if it were their own. So again, kudos to all of them.

Community
This one was almost as easy to pick as Stew’s passionate deadlift. The amount of volunteers that we had step forward to help out this past weekend blew me away. I’ll throw a quick list together, but please forgive me if I forgot anyone…
Justin Zak, Nate Lester, Casey Clark, Yessica Martinez, Jabez Burford, Jodie Burford, Lones Green, Heather Witherow, John Wisnioski, Joe Lucas, Alan and Rea Welding, Curtis Miller, Liz Tump, and the UF staff.

The gentlemen, led by Nate Lester and supported by the Pitt powerlifting team, supplied all the man power to spot and load on the platform. Without that, we don’t have a meet folks. So thank you all for effortlessly performing that thankless job and making sure no one was injured.

Yessica and Lones handled some lifters that needed assistance because they were traveling without friends or family.

At one point, unprompted, I walked in on Casey Clark and Connor Hassinger (former intern) breaking down bars in the Strength Lab and putting equipment away.

Liz Tump was running around ALL DAY making sure everyone was taken care of (we call her mom).

And I’m sure there were many, many other instances that I missed. But I want them to know that I and we are grateful to have the supportive community that we have. We’re trying to make the North Side as welcoming as we can, one powerlifting meet, personal training session, and group class at a time.

Confession: every time I step into a new facility (like when I’m traveling), I still have this little moment of panic when I step up to a power rack or squat stand set-up that’s different from what I use at home. No one likes feeling like the only new kid who doesn’t know how to do the basics, like adjusting hooks and safety bars. That’s the bare minimum right?! Why can’t we just always intuitively KNOW how these things work? It’s so easy to get into a cycle of beating yourself up for simply being new to something.

Those panicky feelings haven’t kept me from lifting in new places for a long time, but I know for newer lifters, and especially new female lifters, decreasing this anxiety could mean getting started on a lifting program way sooner. I want every single person who steps into Union Fitness to feel confident and comfortable getting through their workouts, so I’ve put together this basic guide on how to adjust the racks in both the Fitness Center and the Strength Lab.

A brief aside: please know that if there is EVER a piece of equipment you don’t know how to use, the first thing you should do is ask one of our staff members. I promise you, you’re not inconveniencing us, and we’re happy to help. However, I understand that sometimes, anxiety can get in the way. Refer to this guide when the thought of interacting with another person is just.too.much.

The Fitness Center Power Racks

In the Fitness Center, you’ve probably noticed the two huge power racks in the free weight area. There are three barbells between them, all 45lbs. You can use these racks for a huge variety of barbell movements: all kinds of squats, barbell lunges and other single leg varieties, overhead pressing, and you can (and should) pull a bench in for your bench pressing needs. One thing these are NOT useful for: deadlifts. You’ll need to do those out on the floor due to the height of the racks’ feet. Not a problem, just set yourself up behind the reach of the power rack and you’re ready to go (while keeping a rack open for someone else that may need it).

Now let’s talk specifics, and by talk I mean mostly show.

The power racks have j-hooks (where the barbell typically goes) and safeties (typically used so that in case of a failed lift, you have something to catch the bar and save your ass).

To move the hooks:

 

1. Twist the hook open to the outside.
2. Pull it all the way out
3. Move it to your desired spot
4. Insert hook sideways
5. Twist down and into position

To move the safety bars:

 

1. Insert bar sideways
2. Twist down and into position

The Strength Lab Rig

In the Strength Lab, we opted for a large, custom-made rig over power racks. The rig can be set for just about anything you want, and operates in mostly the same way as the power racks in the Fitness Center.

One major difference is in the variety (and therefore weights) of the bars available. If you want to read up on some of our specialty bars, look no further. For the most part, you’ll be using the Texas Power Bars, which are all marked with blue tape and weigh 45lbs. We also have a 35lb women’s bar (silver, no tape, normal length) and two 15lb practice bars (silver aluminum, short) that are super useful when you’re learning new movements.

To move the hooks:

 

1. Twist the hook open to the outside.
2. Pull it all the way out
3. Move it to your desired spots (use the numbers!)
4. Insert it sideways all the way
5. Twist down, into position

To move the safety bars:

 

1. Find the pile of safeties under the weight stack
2. Follow the same directions as above (insert sideways, twist down)

Setting Up

Some quick tips for setting up your big exercises:

When setting up to squat, remember that you always want to unrack BACKWARDS, which means facing AWAY from the mirrors in the Fitness Center (we have none to distract you in the Strength Lab). No, you don’t need the mirror to check your form – ask a friend or UF Staff member to watch, or even record yourself squatting. Unracking forward is fine on the way out, but if the weight is heavy, getting the bar into the rack facing backwards is going to be difficult and dangerous.

Set your hooks so that when you get under the bar and stand it up out of the rack, you should completely clear the hooks. Again, this will make reracking after the lift much easier. If you find yourself getting up on your toes when you go to rack the bar, take your hooks down a notch.

Remember to use the safeties! You should place these so that they are 2” or so below where the bar sits when you’re at the bottom of a squat (see picture for reference). That way if you can’t get up, you just dip down a little lower and can get out of trouble.

To set up the bench press, keep the same principles in mind for hook placement. If you are unracking the bar alone, you need to be sure that you can clear the hooks before pulling the bar out of the rack. When you go to rerack, you should be able to easily put the bar back on the hooks. If you’re hitting the hooks while reracking, go down in height before you start attempting to bench heavy weight.

You can also use the safeties while benching! If you bench with your shoulders retracted (and you should be) you’ll have a little bit of an arch to give you a buffer in event of failure. The safeties should be set just below where the bar touches your chest. If you can’t move the weight, sink down into the bench and let the safeties catch the bar.

Final little tip: write those rack heights down! We marked every other notch on our racks to make it easier for you going forward. Add a little note to your program so you never have to guess again.

That’s about it! Get out there and lift to your hearts content.

Ever come home from a workout, dripping in sweat and sore in places you never knew existed, but still have a nagging feeling in the back of your mind that you just didn’t do enough?

As a coach, it can be discouraging to see your clients thinking they aren’t getting the results they want. As a client or member, it can be even more discouraging, if not downright infuriating to not be getting the results you want. So you work harder and harder then faster and faster. After an intense hour-long class, you hop on the treadmill for one final sweat sesh. But that nagging feeling persists. You tell yourself that you’re not getting where you want to be because you’re not working hard enough. So you begin to hop on that treadmill after every.single.class. But when that soon doesn’t feel like enough, you start to do what we call “double-dipping”, going from one class right into the next scheduled class then, of course, ending it with your beloved treadmill session. This cycle is endless, leaving you feeling unfulfilled, exhausted and incapable of ever recovering properly. Or worse yet, injured.

If this sounds like you, then you have a chronic case of “More is better.” As much as we love seeing your smiling (or grueling) face here at Union Fitness, as professionals we’d be remiss if we didn’t tell you “Enough is enough!” It’s not at all unusual, at one point or another, to succumb to that persistent voice in the back of your head. We’ve all been there. So what can you do to kick that voice to the curb and start seeing the results you want?

It can be hard to admit that you’re doing too much. It can be easy to think that you’re supposed to be going at 100% all the time. It can be equally as easy to see rest and recovery as secondary to sweating and soreness. But it’s time to step off the treadmill and take a step back from all the extras. It’s time to say enough is enough!

Honestly though, I feel probably more like Arnold did after his heart surgery this year than his iconic Terminator movie. It’s been a long three months away with lots of ups and downs in the lonely maternity leave world. Balancing a brand spanking new baby with (sometimes slightly overzealous/obsessed) six year olds while trying to encourage my own health, wellness and recovery is…tricky. Naturally, my training took a back seat. Like a seat in the veeeeery back of a of veeeery long bus. Or no, not even. My training didn’t even get to ride in the bus. It was carted in a trailer behind the bus. So now, three months later, I’m back to work and things have started to settle down a bit on the baby home front. Even though that handsome sleep stealer is still new, he’s not brand spanking new anymore, so I (finally!!) feel I can start to focus on my training again. Since I shared my pregnancy workout journey with you before my handsome little man entered the world, I thought I’d share what that journey looks like now that he’s here!

With the twins I had a planned C-section at almost 40 weeks. With the newest bundle, I was hoping for a VBAC but after almost 42 weeks he was not budging. Stubborn. Hmm, I wonder where he gets it from?! Long story short, nothing went according to plan and I ended up with another C-section, this time with more complications that prolonged my recovery process. Which leads me to my Post-Baby Training (or PBT) Lesson #1: Things will sometimes not go according to plan, no matter how well thought out they may seem or how badly we want them. This can sometimes be a hard pill to swallow. I wanted so badly to be one of those moms that walked out of the hospital as fit as they were before they got pregnant. After all, if anyone deserved that it would be me, right? I’m a personal trainer, a coach, a yoga instructor! I worked out diligently my entire pregnancy! I eat healthy! NEWS FLASH, ALISON: that mom does not exist! There is no such thing! It’s a fallacy we are fed and we believe tirelessly, even despite having been to that rodeo before and knowing better. My well thought out labor and delivery plan crashed through the window before it had a chance to even open and so it was time to throw out the false and detrimental beliefs about postpartum recovery too. And so I did exactly that—I threw out all the garbage ideas I had about my training during maternity leave and sat on the couch to feed and snuggle my new baby boy. I did that, nothing more, for 6 weeks.

When I could finally begin to scrape myself off the couch and get the baby to unlatch from me long enough to breathe, I started to come up with a couple ideas for training which leads me to my PBT Lesson #2: Go Slow. Anyone that knows me well probably has an idea of how hard this one is for me. When I have an idea or something excites me, I like to go full steam ahead at 1,000mph. I wanted nothing more than to snatch a barbell over my head like the good ole days. But I knew better. I knew that I needed to heal and rebuild before I could even touch a barbell again. So I dedicated myself to twelve weeks of short bodyweight workouts & breathing exercises designed to heal abdominal diastasis and promote mindful movement. It was back to basics and, to be honest, it felt really good to start from square one. Instead of looking at it like I was taking so many steps back, I viewed it as a chance to renew my movement patterns and start from scratch. It was an opportunity, not a disadvantage or a punishment. In addition to those workouts, I added in some “cardio” aka: walks around the neighborhood wearing the baby in a wrap, chasing after 6 year olds on scooters, cleaning the house, cooking healthy meals and, if I was lucky, the occasional ride on the dusty elliptical or rower in my basement.

I knew it wouldn’t be healthy or advantageous for me to check my weight every day, so I promised myself I would only weigh myself once every week or two. Yet despite all of my efforts, beyond keeping three children alive, I found myself still plateauing on that dreaded scale. I would often text my coworkers about my frustrations on feeling comparatively weak during my workouts and about how the weight was not coming off as fast as I wanted it to. Casey would remind me that what feels hard today will feel easy in no time as long as I kept trying (and considering all the Casey has been through in the last couple years, I knew to take this advice to heart). Lindsey would remind me that my body composition is changing and it’s not just about numbers on a scale. And she would occasionally remind me that, you know, I had just had major abdominal surgery and birthed a human being. Ryan would bring me coffee from Whole Foods. All of which bring me to my PBT Lesson #3: Be kind to yourself. What that means is not allowing the negative thoughts to take precedence to the positive ones or blind you from seeing the positive changes. I can be vulnerable enough to admit that there were (still are, really) tons of negative thoughts about my body, my abilities and self-esteem that swirled around in my head at any given moment. Yet, we can practice kindness towards ourselves by shoving them to the back or better yet, dealing with them. But that takes practice too. It’s a daily exercise, just as important, if not more so, than your basic breathing exercises. And yes, practicing kindness even means taking a “time-out” to actually sit down and drink that can of (amazing!) coffee your friend brought you.

So what does my actual training plan look like now that I’ve learned all these important lessons? Well, I sat down at my desk and concocted a 6-day per week program for the next three weeks. It was perfectly planned out, with just the perfect amount of work packed into one week (read: WAY OVERDOING IT) and I was pumped to start. That was, until Ryan looked it over. With his eyebrow raised in that smirky I’m-proving-a-point way, he asked me one simple question, “How much sleep are you actually getting, Alison?” Which leads me to my next PBT Lesson #4: Sleep is so, so, SO important to training and recovery. With one silent eyebrow raise, I knew. It’s something we harp on time and time again here at Union Fitness and I was guilty as charged. My training, and subsequently my recovery from training, would never be where I want it to be until I can start sleeping more regularly instead of the 90 minutes or so every 3 hours at night. If I went through with my training plan, I would just be spinning my very tired wheels. Ryan’s eyebrow was telling me everything I already knew but just needed to hear (or see in this case). That being said, it doesn’t mean I can’t train at all, but that I just need to take down the intensity and volume for a little bit. And that in turn leads me to my final PBT Lesson #5: Repeat lessons 1-4 as often as necessary. Ok, so I’m a little stubborn (I know, surprise surprise). If you haven’t caught on by now, the theme of all of these lessons is that they aren’t easy to do or accomplish. It all takes time, patience and effort. Luckily I have a little bit of all of those things. So for now, you can look for me taking it easier than I’d like to in the Strength Lab or catnapping in the office.