www.conditioningcentre.com

Last weekend I had planned to go and see my parents in Manchester for a reasonably straightforward family weekend. That was until Friday morning when I got an excited text from Tom about a new underground style gym that had just opened in Stockport. He had seen an article written by Sean (one of the owners) on eliteFTS (http://articles.elitefts.com/training-articles/ones-ambition/) that day and text me immediately. We decided it was a no brainer that we had to go and visit the place to see how they were doing. A short phone call later and we were booked in to see Sean and Zoran the next day.

We rolled up a little earlier than expected to see exactly what we hoped for: a factory unit door open wide, loud music and guys training hard throwing med balls and dragging sleds in the sun. It was basically everything I had wanted it to be straight away. Inside the 3000 sq ft gym they had a large rubber matted area, a prowler run, 2 squat cages, a bollock load of weight, tyres, hammers, ropes and much more.

Sean and Zoran were both in there running a session for a mixed group of beginner and more advanced athletes. Some were pounding the bag, others pushing the prowler and others rope climbing; exactly what I had expected.

Once the guys finished training we had chance to have a chat with Sean and Zoran about their motivations, training and how they actually managed to set the place up. We also did a little bit of training to get a feel for the place being used as intended. The feel was good, a total lack of frills meant the goal was to work hard and get better, if not the factory doors were open and you would be encouraged to walk through them. The lads were incredibly hospitable, being that basically two randoms from Liverpool and Bournemouth had rocked up and expected to train for free and pick their brains for 2 hours; they couldn’t have been nicer or more honest about how it all came about. They were frustrated with working in gyms based on entertaining people so they don’t actually have to do any hard work that they decided to take the leap and start their own place where you had no option but to improve.

The overriding message they could give was to “just go and do it”, plan it and don’t be afraid to be cheeky, especially with salesmen, but at the end of the day you can spend forever planning a place that will cost hundreds of thousands but you will never get it started. The best thing is to be realistic, get what you actually cannot do without, get going and just make it work. The right people can run a great programme making serious athletes with nothing.

I am very pleased to see people like Sean and Zoran taking the leap and setting up a place like Strength and Performance to give people the choice to avoid the commercial gyms and to find a place where you can work hard and make noise without being asked to stop scaring the old ladies in the BOSU class.

For more information on Strength and Performance check out the website: www.strengthandperformance.co.uk.