DEUCE Gym: Mislabeled

Let me be the first to tell you. We’ve been mislabeled. DEUCE is a strength and conditioning gym. It’s a CrossFit gym. It’s a weightlifters gym, a strongman gym, and a gym for powerlifters. Yet, even though these are the activities that you may do when you get here, it’s not why you’re coming here. You can do that stuff almost anywhere.

You’re coming here to get healthy, move better, and improve yourself. Don’t forget that.

I often see students opt not to enroll at DEUCE or decide to skip class once they’ve enrolled for a million reasons that miss this key point. When you’re tired, busy, or feeling banged up, it’s quite easy to decide that skipping the extreme fitness routine for the day, if that’s what you make it. It wouldn’t make much sense to skip the day’s school lesson for those reasons, however.

Us coaches spend our entire lives making the day’s training relative to those in class, including tired people, injured people, and busy people. This is your school lesson. Come practice, get coached, and improve your movement. And, for the love of God don’t skip out on this because you’re making it something that it isn’t.

I’m almost reluctant to report that some impressive people do some amazing things here, but for them it’s the proper training. It’s unfair to you, however, to project their training on yourself. Just yesterday, arguably the strongest man in North America, Robert Oberst, was training at DEUCE. Part of his training included a set of five deadlifts at 750lbs. That is ludicrous. It’s extreme, but it’s exactly what’s appropriate for one of the strongest people walking the planet. It’s not for you.

To that point, if in your mind DEUCE Gym is a crazy place for fringe weightlifting and heart blistering cardio, I’d never come either. Heck, at the first sign of a hang nail I’d opt out of that type of thing. Except, when I take class I’m there to do what I can with what I’ve got because, after all, I’m not there to train like a crazy person, I’m here to get coached, be healthy, and improve my movement.

If you’re missing this key point, check your perspective and get to class.

 

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach