Swat Gym Closes

Swat Gym is where I've trained for the last 4 years. And today I walked out of there for the last time. I won't make this a sorry lament, I'm ready to move on.

It has been subject to poor management in the best of times (the gym hasn't belonged to Bill Kazmaier in years). As a business it never advertised or sought to improve it's building or equipment. Every vinyl covered bench had rips and holes in it. The machines were old and useless. The dumbbells stayed perpetually in the floor. The five and ten pound plates were always skillfully stacked under a mountain of 45's and 25's. I would commonly find a bar loaded to 500+ pounds lying in the floor from someone who was strong enough to deadlift it but they were too weak to unload it (it was usually the trap bar, so you knew they were fruity). I would complete a 4 exercise training session in the time it took most people to bench press (usually, they took 5 phone calls between sets).
The music sucked. In the mornings I squatted, pressed, and deadlifted to a steady diet of Taylor Swift, Kelly Clarkson, and Miley Cyrus.

Bars were bent, light bulbs out, water bottles and cups strewn about. For the most part it was really a reflection of human depravity. I have a few good memories.

I remember talking to Bill Kazmaier as he happened to be in there shortly after Phil Pfister staged (in my opinion) the greatest comeback in all of Strongman history to win the 2006 World's Strongest Man competition. He won four or five straight events, including beating Mariusz on the stones by a hair as the rain came down in Sanya, China. It still gives me chills to think about it. Bill was there, he talked about what a jerk Puzianowski was, how Phil told him this was it, how he really felt like it was his time and then he rattled off a few stories from the competition. I was captivated, and began training for my first contest shortly after that.

I remember some good lifts, I remember plenty of bad ones, failed ones, and ugly ones.

If one more person came up to me and asked me what the bands were for, I guess I was going to strangle them with a pair of mini's.

I remember meeting my dears friends Zack and Kandis. I will always be thankful to Swat for introducing them to Allison and I.

I remember the day the power went out and we all trained in complete silence and darkness, all you heard was clanging plates. They sounded like angelic cymbals. Everyone should train in complete silence every now and then, it clears the head.

I remember laughing alot.

SWAT Gym wasn't so bad I guess... But where I'm going to start training next is a little bit of a surprise...

As we were finishing up today Zack and Tim and I noticed that someone had loaded the two top, vertical pins on the warped old leg press machine slam full of 45's and didn't remove them. I've stripped every bar I've ever used for the last 4 years, and even reorganized plates and dumbbells as I trained. I had had enough. So, leaned up on either side of that leg press were two 100 pound plates. I got one and Tim got the other, we hoisted them up to about eye level and slapped them right on top, face down.

It's been fun SWAT Gym, good luck with the big move tomorrow, before you unload that leg press you might need to grab a crowbar.