8/19/11
Intensity Day
Squat - 440x5 wraps
OH Press - 185x3 too heavy
Deadlift - 495x5
We had a new guy join the gym this week. Andy Deck referred him over here a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, I was lifting with a client of mine, and this kid joined us, and made us look bad. I asked this guy what his best deadlift was (his name is Josh Leonardis btw), 600lbs no belt 
But seriously, it’s great to have more strong people at the gym.
8/22/11
Volume Day
Squat - 350x5x5
Bench Press - 285x5x5
4 Board Press - 385x3
I had to split this workout between Monday and Tuesday. It was nice to bench fresh for once
Serious squatting man, nice work!
Good log dude, hope you keep posting. Had some questions on your biz if you don’t mind?
How long have you had the gym for? How many members do you have? Are you turning a profit?
Just curious. I’d like to have a facility myself but as someone who works in finance I’ve seen so many fail it’s left a bad taste in my mouth. Anyways, keep up the training and the posting.
Monopoly
[quote]ethanwest wrote:
Serious squatting man, nice work![/quote]
Thanks!
[quote]Monopoly19 wrote:
Good log dude, hope you keep posting. Had some questions on your biz if you don’t mind?
How long have you had the gym for? How many members do you have? Are you turning a profit?
Just curious. I’d like to have a facility myself but as someone who works in finance I’ve seen so many fail it’s left a bad taste in my mouth. Anyways, keep up the training and the posting.
Monopoly[/quote]
Thanks, I’ve always been good about keeping a log, it’s just the sites I’ve kept them on were not very good at staying online.
Thor and I have been running this gym since Nov 09. We have around 50 clients that we train, and a handful of general members. We are not turning a profit at all, the gym supports itself and we’re making a meager salary off of it. We are however doing consistently better every month, so probably by next year we’ll be making a true “profit”.
Honestly I’d advise against going into this business full time. It’s a rough business, and it’s very hard to make a living doing this. If I were to do it differently I would have stayed and got my masters degree, taught classes during the day and just do this part time. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do, but it’s just that hard to make it out there.
8/24/11
Recovery Day
Squat - 255x5x2
OH Press - 145x5x3
Pull-ups - 20lb Chain x8x3
Well our demo at the Watermelon Festival is officially fucked. The strongmen are not risking doing a Strongman demo in the middle of a hurricane, which is pretty reasonable. The main musical act was moved to Sept 11th, so there wouldn’t have been much of a crowd anyway. This would have been a HUGE opportunity to introduce ourselves to the community while doing something awesome. But, shit happens…
8/26/11
Intensity Day
Squat - 495x1 wraps
Bench Press - 350x1
Deadlift - 495x1
Well I got a bug up my ass about doing my projected openers. Everything felt really solid, wouldn’t say easy, but solid. I pulled conventional today for the first time in a LONG time. It felt awesome, I was pleasantly surprised. 495 was easy weight today. I’m going to work conventional from here on out.
I wanted to get all my lifts on video today, but the guy with the camera left after my squat. Thor and I had a camera at one point and were really good about getting videos and pictures, but Thor broke it and we’re too poor to buy a new one right now. So all I got was the squat.
8/29/11
Volume Day
Squat - 355x5x5
OH Press - 165x5x5
Well the guys at the gym had a little facebook spat with the local crossfit affiliate. Long story short, a couple of Crossfitters (the guy that owns the place, and his best lifter) are going to be lifting with us on Friday. We’re pretty much just going to be doing my Intensity day, plus a heavy prowler drop set. These guys haven’t done the prowler before
8/31/11
Prowler Push - 3 x a fuckton
Well the last 24 hours were drama. The Crossfitters and I had a long spat on Facebook until the head guy deleted the thread. Well, Skyler and I went over there and talked to them about this for a while. Now it’s just lifting and prowler pushing on Friday. This should be interesting. In preparation I’ve pushed the hell out of the prowler for the last 24 hours. So I’m pretty much ready to roll.
Interested side story, the crossfitters had a tire out back that nobody’s been able to flip since Eric Frasure was there last year. It was full of water and had roots and shit growing on it. Well, it was easier than my 700lb tire even with the water in it. Yeah, the 700lb tire my best 14 year old kid can flip a dozen times. Fucking crossfitters…
9/2/11
Intensity Day
Squat - 445x5 wraps
OH Press - 185x5
Deadlift - 505x5 conventional and no straps PR
Prowler - Drop-set, 365 down to 65 lbs in 50lb increments. I finished but I SUCKED
Fuck the damn prowler >:( Well the Crossfitters showed up, the did pretty well. Their lifts weren’t terrible, nothing textbook either. The head guy wanted to do a Wilks total to determine the winner. He matched me with everything except the deadlift (he pulled 500 even). Plus his deads were strapped and he hitched quite a bit. But I’m the de-facto winner since I weight 20lb less than that guy (plus I’m 3-4 inches taller).
Skyler and I were in the middle of the pack Prowler-wise. The head crossfit guy finished it pretty solid, although he said it was the worst thing he’d ever done
It was fucking fun though. I think everybody had a great time. I’ll post the pics on East Carolina Barbell’s facebook page in the next few days.
9/6/11
Volume Day
Bench Press - 290x5x5
Good Morning - 365x1
I still feeling really trashed from Friday, my calves especially were toast. The benching was problem at all, I’m looking forward to handling 315 for 5 sets of 5 soon.
Anyway, more fucking drama with the crossfitters. Long story short, they cheated like hell, their lifts were shit, and now they’re beating their chests. I challenged them to a proper lifting comp with judges and stuff, and they tried hard to back off. But they finally agreed, but only if we did some crossfit bullshit along with it. So fuck it, we agreed. We’re not fat powerlifters, we’re athletes, we can compete in whatever. We’ll absolutely dominate these clowns in the lifting portion. The Crossfit events are “Cindy”, and a 500M row challenge, we can hold our own there. These guys don’t really “compete” in anything, and no Crossfit is not a “sport”.
But god do I hate fucking conditioning work. Well, I gotta really step that up, I have 24 days to prepare which is plenty. As gay as it is, I’m probably going to have to learn how to do the kipping pullup. “Cindy” is 5 pullups, 10 push-ups, and 15 BW squat for as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes. Trying to do that with regular pullups would put me at a disadvantage.
9/12/11
Volume Day
Squat - 360x5x5
OH Press - 170x5x5
Well the crossfags continue to talk all kinds of shit on the facebook. It’s getting to be stupid, and I’m pretty much ready to facerape these smug assholes. We have so far on team ECBB: Me, Skyler, Leonardis, Keven, and Andrew. Solid damn lifters all of them, and all of them are in great shape. I’m spreading word of this event all over town. This thing will be like the dojo face-offs back in the 70’s, basically awesome.
I went over the crossfag gym today and tried their stupid rower thing, and yes it was dumb. Just fucking around with the thing I got like a 1:28 500M row. I wasn’t even trying that hard, I was just fiddling with it to see what the best technique would be. Their all-time best rower is the co-owner @ 1:15. Shit I’ll beat that, and Leonardis will probably beat my time. Oh god this shit is going to be so good…
9/19/11
Volume Day
Squat - 315x5x5
Bench Press - 290x5x5
After standing all weekend at the WSM, my back and knees were FRIED. I didn’t really want to push the squats too hard.
9/21/11
Recovery Day
SSB Squats - Average Shorties x 5x2
OH Press - 135x5x3
Neutral Grip Pull-ups - 1 CH x10,8,9
SSB Good Mornings - 65x10x5
Well I got lazy with this forum, the WSM qualifiers took a lot out of me. It was an awesome trip, 4 of us from the gym made the journey over to Charlotte and watched 2 days of the competition. Those guys are fucking huuuugeeee. I’ve never seen people that huge before.
9/23/11
Intensity Day
Squat - 455x1 wraps
Bench Press - 320x4
Deadlift - 480x5
I’m a week out from the gym challenge so I figured I get my opener in. 455 felt moderately heavy, it wasn’t terribly easy but it wasn’t burying me or anything. I should be good for about 550 next week. It won’t be easy, but I’m pretty confident I’ll pull it off, I’m dreading the crossfit bullshit though…
I’ve decided to bring this log back to life. I’ve been a bit “busy” lately. Here’s what has been going on with me the last 6 months:
I caught pneumonia in November. This was kind of big deal, it put me in the ER twice, and damn near killed me. I was out of work for weeks, and I dropped over 20 lbs (all meat). It took me 6 weeks before I could start training again. My work weights on my first day were all 135lbs, and that made me so sore I could barely walk.
I changed the name of the gym. My partner just pretty much left one day and took a good chunk of our clients with him. So I made some changes that included re-branding the organization. It was like starting all over again, but at least I get to run the place the way I feel it should be run.
I’ve been training consistently with an old client of mine, and I’d say I’m about 90% where I was this fall. I did a powerlifting meet in May, and totaled 1330 raw. Which wasn’t too bad considering I just about croaked three months earlier.
So I’m started running a basic starting strength protocol. I’ll be running that until I top it out, which should be around 405lbs for 3 sets of 5, then I’ll switch back to Texas Method.
4/30/12
Squat - 365lbs 3x5
Bench Press - 265lbs 3x5
My partner overslept yesterday so I had to do this alone with no energy drink in my system (that’s how he pays for his gym membership).
I try to keep my training schedule as consistent as possible these days. I’m doing a lot of work to get this place going again, so I don’t have that much of a window to train these days. Which is kind of funny since I work at gym.
Just to give you guys an example: this is my schedule for today, and this is my slowest day:
8:00 - 9:30 - Train my figure client Staci
9:30 - 10:30 - Appointment with a local military commander
10:30 - 11:30 - Appointment with a local Lacrosse coach
11:30 - 1:30 - Paperwork, respond to phone calls, email, etc. Clean the gym.
1:30 - 3:30 - Lunch / Nap (yeah right)
3:30 - 4:30 - 8-10 year old athlete group
4:30 - 6:00 - 10-12 year old athlete group
6:00 - 7:30 - 13+ year old athlete group
Somehow I have to find time to call my bank and my third party billing service, either phone call will easily take 30 minutes.
5/2/12
Squat - 370lbs 3x5
Strict Overhead - 150lbs 3x5
Neutral Grip Pull-ups - 1 chain 8/6/5
I had to do this one in evening instead of the morning. I don’t know what it is, but training during a different part of the day than I’m used to just makes everything suck.
5/4/12
Squat - 375lbs 3x5
Bench Press - 275lbs 3x5
Reverse Hypers - 270lbs 3x8
I’m going to try to top out at 405 for 3 sets of 5 on the squats before I move back to Texas Method. It’s going to be tough though. I think I’ll only be able to handle 2 sessions per week until then.
5/7/12
Squat - 380lbs 3x5
Strict Overhead - 155lbs 3x5
My training partner was out so I had to do this one solo. 380lbs was feeling mighty heavy. I’m going to switch to 2 days a week until I reach 405 cause just damn.
I know I haven’t put gym related updates on here that much, mainly because I know my competitors in this town monitor what I do online. So I’m kind of forced to just put things on here that I’ve already done. I have some great ideas and I’m working very hard on different marketing strategies, but I have to keep that info on the down low. I don’t like to do that, but that’s unfortunately how the business world works.