Lifting Weights

By Bob Gariano

There are plenty of places to lift weights. Some gyms are designed for people who are sadly and dutifully going about their doctors’ orders to lose weight in order to improve their blood chemistry numbers. Some glitzy recreation centers attract women with a little too much perfume and men with carefully matched work out clothes who are looking to connect. It is hard to sweat in such an environment.

Some recreation centers are run simply for the benefit of the owners. These places employ a staff of sales people who are obviously on commission and hoping to sell new memberships. The owners of those establishments soon find out that owning a good gym is never very profitable.

Serious Lifting

Then there are the places that attract the people who really want to lift. The huge gym in the Hilton Hotel just outside the Los Angeles International Airport is such a place. I was there one evening and lifted with two people that I met extemporaneously. One was a ripped and muscular young woman who played varsity volleyball at USC and the other was a man recently released from Mule Creek. A forty five pound plate is egalitarian. It weighs the same for a businessman, a scholar athlete, or a recovering felon. Inside that gym we were all gender and background neutral. We spotted each other while doing heavy bench presses. It was a great workout.

There are lots of similar gyms around if you know where to find them. There was a big gym in Detroit at Eight Mile Road and Livernois that catered to serious weight trainers. They even welded up some of their own equipment in a shed in the back. There is a YMCA gym on the near north side of Pittsburgh and another one where the football players work out on the University of Arizona campus in Tucson. All of these gyms are similar in that they are committed to serious weight lifting and body building.

Lake Forest Fitness Center

We have a great weight training facility here in Lake Forest, the Lake Forest Fitness Center right behind the Deerpath Middle School complex. The Lake Forest Fitness Center is dedicated to the health and well being of the citizens of Lake Forest, but it has gone well beyond that charter. The difference is the superb staff and the people who go there to work out. The staff at Lake Forest Fitness Center is friendly and expert, but they never impose on the visitors. The people who work out at the Center are committed and purposeful. They know that they are there for a serious workout.

The Lake Forest Fitness Center includes 4500 square feet under roof. There is an area dedicated to weight training, big enough for eight or ten people to work out without getting in each other’s way. There are also racquet ball and squash courts, dance studios, a complete cardio area with first class Precor equipment adjacent to the weights, and a spotlessly clean locker and shower facility. In summer months, the fields outside the Fitness Center offer plenty of room for a post workout run. All of this comes together for less than one third the dues charged by less effective facilities in the area. It would be a good deal even if they charged the same.

Scout Workout

Last week, when I was well into my workout, I observed three young men working out together. Two were wearing their Scouts football tee shirts and the third, obviously the older brother, home from college for the summer, was in his Iowa shirt. The three were super setting legs and back, doing set after set of leg presses on the hip sled and then circulating over to the overhead bar for chins.

Greek and Roman men thought that the leg muscles were most indicative of masculinity. The Sartorius muscle of the leg even lends its name to the manner of dress for men of style and distinction. The hip sled is a large machine that works these big muscles of the legs, including the quadriceps and gluteus maximus muscles. These are the muscles that provide power in almost every athletic move from driving a golf ball to moving a defensive tackle off the line of scrimmage. The lifter sits in the machine, eliminating any compression to the vertebrae, and pushes the sled upwards by extending the legs. If the sled is driven to tip toe extension, even the soleus muscles of the calves are involved.

The sled is loaded with the necessary number of plates, dangling at each end like manhole covers. The big machine at the Fitness Center can hold eight forty five pound plates on each side, which would bring its fully loaded weight to 720 lbs. Not a lot of people need more than that, but there are places to add a couple of extra plates for those that do.

Ten reps equals a set and these young guys were into their fifth or sixth set. As their workout progressed, the three began to fall into the rhythm of the workout. The lifter has to breathe deeply when using the hip sled and the combination of aerobic and strength exercise creates a feeling that the old time weight lifters called a pump. It makes a weight lifter feel like they own the place and that was where the three young men were that day. I could see their ear to ear grins from across the gym. After a summer of such workouts, I would hate to be the opposing players, when these young athletes take to the football field. More important, I could see the young athletes were enjoying the workout experience, sharing in a way that alcohol, video games, or other artificial means never could offer.

Members and Staff

There were some other people working out that day, most of them regulars, all very polite and professional. One thirty something lady impresses with her efficiency and commitment, mixing flexibility moves with a tough weight training regimen. Her stretching exercises look like yoga. I tried them once to see if I could duplicate some of the moves. It was like trying to bend a bag of cement in half.

Another Fitness Center member is a teenage woman who was new to weight lifting this spring and has been working diligently with one of the trainers. I have seen her go from being a pudgy kid at the beginning of the summer to being a self assured young athlete. I think that she is hooked on weight training and will return to school this fall a different person.

The real bottom line for the Lake Forest Fitness Center is the superb staff. Just like most great hotels, the facilities and real estate do not differentiate. Instead, it is the people who work there who provide just the right combination of friendly encouragement and professional help when needed. There is no sales pitch, no chrome machines without the dignity of people using them, no coffee bar for après exercise mixing. The Lake Forest Fitness Center is just a great gym designed and operated for serious training and run by people who know how to keep it going in that right direction.

Bob Gariano is President of RGA, an executive search firm that recruits senior executives and board members for public and private companies. Bob can be reached at rgariano@robertgariano.com