A Peak Inside

Thought I'd share some of the goings on within the walls of Gain Line Performance

http://youtu.be/DD61kVkJSFI

Guess Who's Back

Guess who’s back, back again.  Gain Line’s back, tell your friends (sung in the whitest of white guy voices).  Well, the time has come to get back to business and start contributing to my blog again.  For those of you who don’t know, the reason behind my nine month hiatus and having to “get back to business” in the first place, is due to the fact that I finally took the leap and went into business.  Gain Line Performance is officially Gain Line Performance LLC!

Check it out yo!

 I’ll wait while the applause die down.  “Thank you, your support means a lot, thank you, thank you”.  “Thank you this is too much, really, thank you, I must, I must be moving on, thank you”.  Wow that was great, I never knew you all cared so much. 

In all seriousness, this has been a long time coming.   I’ve been harboring thoughts of opening my own place for years now.  The concept has certainly evolved a bit from its original form, but it has been there, ever present, none the less.  If I really think about it, this ambition (my wife would probably say obsession) to someday open my own facility was probably directly involved with why I’ve always found it extremely difficult to be happy, or maybe satisfied is a better word, with the majority of my previous positions within the fitness / sports training industry.   I mean “come on”, it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that one of my most endearing / enraging (those are synonyms, right?) traits is my uncanny ability to be an opinionated pain in the “you know what” where training is concerned, could it?  I mean that only lead to the occasional butting of heads.  Nah, couldn’t be.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, I simply couldn’t handle having to wade through considerable red tape any time a change was suggested or needed.  A new idea, red tape, want a new piece of equipment, red tape, a new program, red tape, a new place for corporate to stick it, wait what?  Yeah I said it, sue me. Long story short, I could no longer handle all the bureaucratic BS that comes along with working within the typical big box style gym. Yes the change from employee to owner/manager/employee/janitor/and a million other things, means a lot more work on my end.  However, I happily take on the burden of extra work in exchange for the ability to write what I want, program how I want, change things when I want, and buy cool new training items when I feel like it.

Over the better part of a decade now I have been slowly accumulating equipment and storing it away in my garage, basement and other various places around my house (and the houses of others on occasion, sorry) for when the time was right.   Turns out the time was right last summer, or at least I was feeling courageous enough to quit two of my three jobs at the time and dive into the process of making Gain Line Performance a reality.  Once the decision was made, the remainder of the summer was spent piecing together equipment I still needed and hunting for a home for the business.  Unfortunately I wasn’t born with a silver spoon so the budget was, well, small.  Money may not buy happiness, but it seems to be pretty important to anyone selling weight equipment (someone should inform them of how much happier they would be without my cash so that they may drastically reduce their prices). 

 

Lucky for me, free weights don’t need to be shiny and new to retain their effectiveness.  A 45lb plate is 45lb plate, a little rust just gives it character.  I scoured auctions, business closings, Craigslist, garage sales, and various other avenues in an effort to locate the best deals I could; come to think of it, the History Channel should have given me my own show, American Gym Auction Hunter Picker Star has a nice ring to it.  Anyhow, through a little extra work I was able to track down most of what I needed on the cheap and found a couple of small equipment manufacturers who did good work and offered affordable prices to purchase a few completely new items from. 

While my bargain shopping spree was taking place, I was simultaneously searching for a suitable building to house the business.  I was naive enough to think that this would be a relatively simple process.  I’m not sure I could have been farther off base with my thoughts.  My wife and I went out multiple weekends to look at various different properties around the Grand Rapids area that met the size and price requirements needed.  In most cases, we could only get one or the other, right size, wrong price or right price, wrong size, but we also ran into landlords who frankly didn’t seem very interested in unloading their listed properties, representatives of landlords who knew essentially nothing about the building or space they were supposed to be representing (is being aware of square footage numbers really too much to ask?) and in one case a city ban on gyms being located in commercial buildings.

About the time I was ready to just say screw it, I happened across an ad for a space for sale by owner, right size, right price and I was able to deal directly with the landlord (hallelujah!).  After a couple of visits and some contemplation, an offer was made and the rest is history.  I spent the rest of the summer, fall and into the winter moving equipment, cleaning, painting and setting up the gym.  Which brings us to today and me sitting at my desk writing this blog while looking out my window at the Alaskan or sorry, Michigan winter landscape.
 

 

So what is Gain Line Performance you ask?  Well, in its simplest terms, Gain Line Performance is a strength and conditioning / athletic development / fitness facility located on south end of Grand Rapids, MI.  Our main focus is helping athletes improve their on-field performance through off field training modalities (weight, plyometric, speed, agility, reaction, movement and mobility training).  If you’re not an athlete, but you have aspirations of becoming an overall more awesome human, enjoy the type of training environment on offer and aren’t afraid of hard work, we want you here too.  The end goal is to build not only a gym but a community of likeminded individuals helping one another achieve success. I know it sounds awesome right?  So why aren’t you a member yet? 

Beyond the general business themes, I’m also hoping to use Gain Line as a tool to help further develop the game of rugby in Grand Rapids / West Michigan / Michigan as whole.  Rugby has given me a lot over the years and I would like to help ensure that others are able to enjoy similar experiences, memories and friendships.  I’m still not exactly sure on all of the particulars of how I’m going to achieve this, but to start, Gain Line already serves as a potentially great avenue for rugby athletes and teams of all levels and aspirations to network, build relationships and recruit.  So basically what I am saying is that if you are a ruby athlete near Grand Rapids and you are not training here, you should be!  Get here!  Get it? Got it? Good!  

Looking to the future, I would also love Gain Line Performance to play a part in local rugby skill camps / clinics, high performance camps and a multitude of other things to help grow the game here.  I’m doing my best not to get too far ahead of myself, but I hope my excitement is infectious.
 

In closing I would like to pose a question.  What’s your Gain Line?  In the sport of rugby union, the gain line represents a hypothetical line beyond which the attacking team must progress to gain territory.  Once it has been achieved, the line is reset and the process of moving forward begins anew. 

The pursuit of enhanced athleticism / fitness should be approached much the same.  Once progress is realized, a new target must be sought to ensure the continuation of improvement.  So athlete or not, what’s your gain line?  Are you doing all you can to achieve it?