Who we are and what makes us different

Hello hello Eternians near and far.  I'm back with some more ramblings for you to chew on.  Today I wanted to kind of spin off from a post I wrote a while ago "Stop The Hate".  Basically what I talked about there was not bagging on other peoples form of exercise.  We got some great response on that, and I thank you.  Yes I know I am a horrible writer but I try to at least get my thoughts out.  So, I'm going to spin off of that and talk about what makes Eternia different, and why there isn't anything else around us like us. Yes, yes I'm sure there are others out there.  I feel, and from people that come from all over that train at our facility, we are distinctly different.

What I hear a lot from people is, "oh it's a class"?  People view all class structures the same, and for some reason they love to hate on that.  Like in my previous post, if being in a class helps you get out there and do something I'm all for it.  Whether that be yoga, CF Fit , spin class, running clubs, Zumba, the list goes on you get the point.  Bottom line is a lot of people need help with whatever type of training it is.  It's a whole lot better than people clogging up the weight room not knowing what the hell they are doing.  Nobody in there will help them, they get discouraged and that's it.  These structures work for a lot of people.  This post will dig into why we structure our training sessions as we do in a group structure and how this can help take your training to the next level.

If you have trained before, bodybuilding, powerlifting, weightlifting, fitness, whatever it may be at one point or another you realize that training by yourself is hard.  Whether it's the just being alone, the need for spots and always having to ask somebody to help you out, having that push to help drive you farther than you would, or one of another 100 reasons you figure out pretty soon that a training partner would be awesome.  You go out and track yourself down one. You either drag a friend into your training, you find somebody at the gym and get them to commit, get on craigslist and put an add out, or send your homing pigeon out with a note to try to track you down somebody to train with.  This goes great for a month or so, sometimes longer.  After a bit at some point, training partner either starts flaking on you or just up and can't do it anymore and you are back to trying to find somebody.  This is a vicious cycle.  This is where a structure like ours always gives you a training partner.  You will get to know the people that train at the same time as you and if one person is sick or doesn't make it, guess what?  There are multiple others that will be there.  Boom, training partner dilemma fixed.

Now that we have that out of the way, lets get into the meat and potatoes of this shit.  We train a conjugate program.  With this style of training there is a lot of shit to get put into an hour time slot.  It is doable, but if we were to just let people do it at there own pace, I promise you they would be there for 2 hours.  By structuring the training sessions in one hour blocks, we are able to move a large group of people through a large block of programming in 1 hr.  I will put a days training below this so you can get an idea of what goes on in 1 hour.

Example Dynamic Lower Day

Friday

Dynamic Lower Power Athlete

A) Box squat @ 70% 10x2 wide

B) Conventional dead 3" def 1RM

C) Barbell walking good morning 3x15 each leg

D) Banded KB Swings 2/1.5 pood plus max band 3x20

E) 3x20 supermen

F) Barbell side bends 1x100 each side

G) 3x1 Min max effort stone to shoulder 

    take time as needed between no more then 3 min

Rest 3 Min 

    Row 1000 100 fast 100 slow x2 

F) finisher 1x100 banded hip bridges

Without getting into program design and what the conjugate system is, just looking at that you can see that is a good amount of stuff to get in a 1 hour training session. It gets done.  

Next up on my list of things to talk about is people comparing us to CF.  When I look at that dynamic day layout up there I don't see anything that looks like CF.  We don't do anything by random.  Every single part of a days, weeks, months, training is done with a very specific purpose.  Even the conditioning portion brings in some accessory work assosiated with that days purpose.  It's also building strength at the same time as conditioning. In my mind, the only thing we have in common is that our sessions are structured in 1 hour blocks.  From that point on I feel we are significantly different.  Now, let me say this.  We have nothing against CF and if that is what you love to do,awesome.  Some of us even have a back ground in CF. Through that, and without that, we wouldn't have been able to learn what we have and been able to structure what we have.  So credit due there.  What I am trying to get to with this post is that we are not CF and we feel we offer something completely different.  Different and better haha!  We aren't willing to give up one major component to be decent at broad range of things.  Strength rules, and we believe that whole heartily.  With our program design, we couple a proven system of strength training with classic strength and conditioning, strongman and a little bit of our own magic gold dust.  Yes this program can be used by anybody, the key is having people that can mold it to the individual user.  With this program I can have a 60 year old grandmother of 5 working out next to a 22 year old record holding powerlifter.  Crazy I know. 

 What it comes down to is this.  We feel that what we do at Eternia is different than anything around.  We obviously feel that what we have put together is the best way of training.  We also realize that this is not for everyone and some people may like doing something else.  Guess what? Awesome! What we will not get dragged into is the bashing of other gyms, fitness facilities, studios, and so on.  Everyone feels there way is the best, I get it.  We wouldn't do it if we didn't feel the same way.  But, everyone is different and likes certain things.  But hey you never know, lifting stuff may have never been something you thought you could be into.  Come ask a huge majority of the people training at Eternia that had never touched a barbell before.  Now after training and learning how to... Benching, Squatting and Deadlifting are there new favorite things to do.  Hhhhhhuu, who would known.