Hey Everyone,
Thanks for another great week in the gym. As the weather gets a little warmer (and lighter) it really has made training somehow a bit ‘easier’…it is starting to feel like we have really broken the back of winter (just as well ‘cos spring starts this week!) and it will be onward and upward from here.
I have a couple of topics I want to blog about in the next couple of weeks – and these things all harken back to the days when Round 1 was just something I was ‘thinking about doing’. Believe it or not, I did have a life before the gym – and as a lot of people know I was living a corporate life and NOT a gym life. Was I training regularly? Well – like a lot of people who would be reading this, I had been going to ‘the gym’ before work a few times most weeks…and to be perfectly honest I was pretty frustrated with the whole ‘going to the gym’ thing.
Round 1 Boxing/Funky Mashup Video: Round 1 Fitness – Boxing/Funky Fit Mash-up, February 2021
What was frustrating? Well – I never seemed to get anywhere. There was a gym I did love attending up in Claremont which ran some boxing-based sessions sort of similar to the one minute rounds we do at Round 1 – but that was in Claremont and it was pretty repetitive (we would do the same circuit for 3-4 weeks in a row then they would change it around). When I lived in Melbourne I went to a Boxing for Fitness gym but it was a pretty traditional place – simple circuit with skipping, hand-weight punching, Bag work and speedball in alternating 3-minute intervals – and it was real ‘go to the bag, punch the bag’ type stuff. For what it’s worth, I’m OK with that as I have done a bit of boxing in my life but a lot of the people there weren’t and that was a bit frustrating to watch…plus, I didn’t understand why we couldn’t do some sort of strength work in those classes (or even jump on a rower on occasion!) and, double plus that gym was in Melbourne and I was back in Perth.
So I’m back in Perth and going to ‘the gym’. I’m going in, doing a little bit of this and that, reading through various magazines to get some ideas on what training plans to follow, trying to tie in some pretty simple nutrition stuff with that…basically when I think back I was doing something close to nothing (thanks to Prince for the quote) which I knew and was incredibly frustrated by. I would go to the gym with no clear plan about what I was going to do – except maybe some notes I’d made out of a magazine. I would hope the equipment was available when I wanted it (and I would double hope I was doing the exercise ‘right’). Basically, I was trying hard to do the right thing but getting nowhere.
Which brings me to Round 1.
Obviously our gym has evolved (quite a bit) since opening the doors in 2010. But at the same time, having an environment where people who are ‘time poor’ can come in and be led through their workout – a new workout every day that includes boxing, cardio and strength elements – remains unchanged. We try REALLY hard – really really hard – to take away the reliance on ‘skill’ from the workouts. What do I mean by this? Well, in the boxing components, we are sure to give INSTRUCTION as to what to do rather than put people in front of a bag and tell them to hit it. I mean, of course, knowing the difference between a jab and a cross is an issue for brand newbies but generally within a couple of weeks/6-8 classes everyone has sort of grasped ‘the basics’ and after say, 3-months they have enough of a handle on things to really start moving forward…no magazines, no personal trainers – just show up and get it done.
What else was frustrating? When I did find something I wanted to do (like the boxing class at the gym in Claremont), it was on ONCE a day if I was lucky. So…if I had a meeting with the East Coast in the morning? No class. If I got caught up – even for 5-mins at the end of the work day? No class! It used to drive me crazy. I would have everything ready, but then, just one little thing would go awry and the only session I could make would be ‘Advanced Yoga’ or ‘Water Aerobics’ which held limited appeal. I wanted to be able to have OPTIONS about when I went to the gym (and I wanted those options every day). As to the ‘one class Saturday – no class Sunday’ policy followed by so many gyms back then (and to be fair, NOW), well, add that to the list of problems I had that would be solved when I was ‘king’.
When I think about the key ‘planks’ (big rocks???) of Round 1, what I wanted to create when I started the gym was a place where BUSY people could come in and get an amazing all-over workout – cardio + strength – at a time when it suited THEM. You wouldn’t have to read through “Men’s Health” every week (or “Women’s Health” for that matter) chasing the latest plan followed by the cast of the Wolverine movie in order to know what to do – when you got there, the trainer would TELL you. Basically, you could walk in – morning or night – and do a training session that hit your cardio system AND gave you some fundamental strength work. You could walk in, turn your brain off – and train.
I think we’ve managed to do it.
See you in the gym.
Michael.
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