Thanksgiving Hours

Thanksgiving is just two weeks away.

Here’s the GAIN schedule:

Thursday 11/23 (Thanksgiving): 8:30am Community Workout

Friday 11/24: Closed

To reserve a spot for the community workout, look for “Events,” under the schedule page  on the Members app and you’ll see it. You can also CLICK HERE and send the link to your family and friends. You can register for someone else too.

See you in the gym!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Foundation of Easy Days

I saw this quote the other day on Instagram:

“PRs are built on the foundation of easy days.”

It really resonated with me, and I hope you can relate to it too, because not every single session you come to the gym needs to be a heroic effort.

Most of the stuff we do in the gym will feel pretty easy. Progress can feel so slow.

Every session doesn’t have to end with you laying on the floor, or feeling sore muscles. All that stuff is made up, that soreness and sweat levels are indicators of effectiveness.

Most of the time, you need to go in and check the box.

Move around, elevate your heart rate, expose your body to some ranges of motion and move on with your day.

Over a long enough time period, most of the sessions feel pretty easy.

That isn’t a bad thing, it’s training.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

The Lindy Effect, Barbells and Good Old Fashioned Strength and Conditioning

Have you ever heard of the Lindy effect? It’s a strange concept to grasp, but basically it goes something like this; the longer something has been around, the longer it’s going to be around.

From Wikipedia:

The Lindy effect (also known as Lindy's Law) is a theorized phenomenon by which the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things, like a technology or an idea, is proportional to their current age. Thus, the Lindy effect proposes the longer a period something has survived to exist or be used in the present, the longer its remaining life expectancy. Longevity implies a resistance to change, obsolescence or competition and greater odds of continued existence into the future.

I have two Strength & Health magazines from the 1930’s. You may have seen them, they’re hanging in the bathroom at the gym. While there are some silly headlines like “Cigarettes, do they give you a lift?” There’s equal headlines that hold up to what we know today. “Facts in Progressive Training,” reads like an intro to a strength and conditioning textbook. My favorite part, however, lies on the back cover. It’s an advertisement from York Barbell Company (still around today). 

The advertisement claims: The strongest men, the best built men of EVERY nation are barbell and dumbbell built. Underneath the headline it reads, “The barbell and dumbbell system of training by graduated, progressive methods are the accepted methods of building real strength and muscle, the world over. 

That advertisement was published in 1935. Since then, at least, we’ve known that the strength and conditioning principles work. Barbells and dumbbells, when following a progressive, thoughtful program  will make you strong, promote healthy muscle growth and stave off injuries. Why is it then, each and every year we create another thing or method or piece of equipment to get us fit? 

Consider for a second that fitness fad is a common phrase we’ve all heard. There’s always a new and novel idea around how to get fit, and my point is that stuff is often more about entertainment than real, long-term beneficial training for your health. Why do we keep trying to reinvent the wheel? To keep our minds engaged and hope that we can distract ourselves all the way to achieving our goals. 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there is no shortcut. The sooner we realize there isn’t an easy way or that the next flashy thing isn’t better than an old rusty barbell and a few hours in the gym each week, the healthier, more fit and happier we’ll all be. Real strength training has stood the test of time, and when considering the Lindy effect, it’s obvious it’ll continue to be around far longer than any fitness fads.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

53 Laps

Give Coach T a fist bump when you see him today.

He wanted to retest his half marathon a year after completing his first. A worthy pursuit, to see how a year of consistent running would pay off.

To make it interesting, and to provide a unique challenge, he decided to take on the distance around a 400m track. A 53 lap pursuit.

To make it fun, his family came to the track to join him on laps, toss him a water bottles, count laps and to provide camaraderie. The boys and I went to by chase him around too.

Needless to say, it was awesome. More fun and memorable than any old half marathon could have been.

Taylor, way to come up with your own challenge and take it on in a fun and unique way.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Nearly Half of Two Decades

November 4rd has been a special day for me since 2014.

It wasn’t the day I started my business. I hadn’t gotten a paycheck since September 30th, and registered the name and such with the state that month as well.

But November 4th was the day it all felt real, it’s the day I celebrate the fact that I went for it.

I remember 25 year old me climbing into my truck, and taking this photo of my new keys with an iPhone 5 after writing a big number on a check. I felt sick to my stomach, excited, and eager to get started. I was, to sound a little cliche, fulfilling my dreams of opening a gym.

I sat there, thinking about how I would be driving here a lot. I sent the photo to a couple friends before posting it on Twitter.

Looking back it seems like a crazy, reckless decision, one I would try to talk people out of. But I was confident, or at least, I had the illusion of confidence. I was naive and inexperienced, but committed to show up every day and give it my all.

When you open a business, people like to tell you statistics they know, like 90 percent small businesses fail within the first year. Then 90 percent of those businesses fail within 2 years, and most of those fail with 5 years, and most of those don’t make it to 10 years. So it goes.

Well here were are, heading into year 10.

What really makes GAIN special is the people. In closing today, I want to thank anyone who’s been a client over the years. When I look at the member board, I’m so proud of how many of you there are committed to the process and stacking up years and years of training of with us.

There’s other people too, Hannah, of course, for supporting me through the 16 hours days, the stress and uncertainty. Alex and Taylor, I am so thankful that two people who are as passionate about training, getting better and living this unconventional coach-life as me, found their way in and believed in my ideas and what I wanted to build.

Here’s to many more years to come.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Getting Strong is Easy, Being Consistent is Hard

Building strength is easy. Staying strong is even easier.

It’s hard to stick with your training and be consistent over the long haul.

It’s hard to showing up when you don’t feel like it.

It’s hard to get right back to it after a vacation.

It’s hard to prioritize when new things come up.

It’s hard to be excited about doing the basics over and over.

Having a gym like GAIN is a refuge to your fitness habit. You always do something appropriate for you. We modify as needed based on how you’re feeling, and it’s one of the only places you’ll go that everyone has a single goal that unites them; improve themselves in some way through physical fitness.

What to do is easy. Continuing to do it is the real challenge.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Easy Strength Breakdown by the Numbers

I finished my Easy Strength program yesterday.

Here’s a look of some of the numbers.

40 squat workouts in 59 days.

Filmed every session but one, the third day.

7 total rest days.

12 non squat workouts; kettlebells or bodyweight only, or running.

Longest squat streak: 12 days

Most consecutive days without squats: 4

Runs: 3 (5k, 2.5 miles, 10k)

Lightest set: 135

Heaviest set: 325 x 2 reps (92.5% of my PR from December 2021)

Total Squats: actually not that many, 400 “work reps” and I did minimal warming up, few with the barbell, few at 135. So maybe 500 total? Not that many considering in the workout “Murph,” you do 300 squat reps.

Total Pounds moved: 93,610 pounds

Average weight squatted: 234.025 pounds

Takeaways:

If you want to get better at something you just need to do the thing. But there’s a fine line with doing too much, which I think I flirted with for most of this challenge. I made the weights too heavy about the 25th workout mark, and even though they felt easy in the moment, and my legs weren’t getting sore, I carried on and it all caught up to me 7-10 days later when I had to take 4 days off from squatting. I just didn’t feel recovered, and my positions felt sloppy. If I were to do it again, I would have spent more time with 225 in the beginning, rather than more so at the end. Overall, a great practice, a compelling challenge, and a true lesson that strength is a skill. More thoughts soon.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Gym Lingo: Iso Hold

Here’s one that trips up many people on their program, iso hold. It’s short for isometric. Which is short for isometric contraction.

An isometric contraction is muscle contraction in which the length of the muscle does not change. A firing of the muscles where no joints move, rather the muscles keep everything in place.

In simple terms, sitting in chair with your best posture is essentially isometrically contracting lots of things.

Holding a plank is an isometric contraction (especially if you do it right).

An isometric contraction is present on any sort of pause squat or bench press as well.

Other common iso holds we use at GAIN are split squat iso holds, anti-rotation press iso holds, bottom of push up holds, wall sits, and if you were around for some Zoom workouts, bat wings.

Iso holds get you stronger in specific ranges of motion, they’re helpful for building strength and rigidity, and one of those things we could all use a little more of. Not to mention, a great way to train around an injury.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Things I Hope You Learned During the Daily Habit Challenge

• Progress not perfection. Trying to be perfect with everything leads to spinning your wheels, or never even trying. I hope you realized it doesn’t matter if you missed a day or screwed up your plan, what matters is staying in the game, continuing to play, even when the circumstances aren’t ideal.

• Doing it every day can be unsustainable, but a nice kickstart. Boot camp for a habit, if you will. If you want to continue on with your nightly stretching routine, but 7 days per week seems unsustainable, adjust accordingly heading into November.

• Small things add up. If you read 5 minutes every day in October, that would be 2 and a half hours of reading, without even having to try that hard. Imagine the same reading schedule for a year; over 30 hours.

• There is no hiding from consistency. People think they’re much more consistent than they actually are. “No, I eat healthy all the time…” Enter the weekend and 6 alcoholic beverages, 4 hours of less sleep, and a diet void of micronutrients. You’re not consistent if you follow a 5 days on 2 days off plan with your nutrition.

• There are no shortcuts.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Friday Thoughts #9

• I don’t know how long this has been going on, but I know it’s been a while, maybe forever. Taylor and I were creating a shared photo album on our phones the other day, and after a while he says, say that word again, “alBLUM,” I reply, “dude, there’s only one L in that word.”

• One of my favorite activities is looking back through my training logs and seeing what I was doing one, or two or three years ago. A practice I had dialed in when I was younger, then stopped doing all together for several years. I started tracking my workouts again in December 2020, and it’s so valuable to be able to peak back and see exactly what I was doing.

• Don’t give up! Overcoming the resistance you meet in these final days is exactly what will make your habit strong. It will also build reps of a transferable skill, discipline.

• With the warm fall weather this weekend, get outside and go for a walk. It’s one of the absolute best things you can do for your health.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Training Ramblings; The Road to 300/400/500, PRs, Muscle Mass and Russian Proverbs

I’m closing in on the end of the strength program I’m on. It’s called Easy Strength, from Pavel Tsatsouline and Dan John.

For 40 workouts in a row, you pick up to 4 movements, a squat, hinge, push and pull. And do each of them, never changing the exercises, for 10 reps. And the 10 reps should feel extremely easy. The goal is to increase the max by improving the foundation.

For even more simplicity, I chose only 1 exercise, the back squat.  Since it’s easy, you up the frequency of your training sessions, instead of back squatting once a week, I have been hitting the lift 4-6 days a week since September 5th.

When I started, the squats didn’t feel great. Part of the motivation for this project was dealing with hip and lower back issues from heavy squats earlier this year. I hoped that, through upping a my exposure, I would overcome any movement deficiencies. I was treating squats like my sport, hitting it every day, and working on the skills and technique.

About the halfway mark, I got too aggressive with the weights. I after the second week, I made a big jump in weight, it felt easy after all. What I didn’t account for was how my body would handle that weight 7 or 8 squat sessions later. I was beat up and instead of feeling easier, it was getting harder. I started taking more rest days, only squatting 4 or 5 times a week rather than 6 or 7, and lowered my daily weight back to 225 from 275.

I started to feel more recovered, and my squats started feeling much snappier. Desire to train increased as well. I started doing some more barbell lifts this past week, seeing how things are feeling. My bench press, power clean and deadlift are feeling crazy strong. I benched 225 for 10 reps, doubling my best, at the classic challenge.

I’ve gotten some runs in too, and despite being neglected for the past 10 or so weeks, since my ultra mountain run in August, my aerobic system is holding up well. Any conditioning besides those few runs have been kettlebell circuits, usually with a 53 pounder for 10-20 minutes.

After rounding out the 40 workouts, I’ll test for a new “training max.” Meaning, I won’t go for an all out max, but will try to leave a little in the tank. I’ll then use percentages of that number to create squat workouts for another month or two, until l feel ready to hit a powerlifting total; the accumulation, in pounds, of a one rep max squat, bench press and deadlift.

I last did this in December 2021, hitting 350 back squat, 250 bench press and 455 deadlift. All PRs at the time, (pulled 500 sumo, this was conventional), and I’ve since beat those bench and deadlift marks at 265 and 490.

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A post shared by Justin Miner (@gain_endurance)

An important note with all these PRs and big weights, is that while I’m no doubt feeling stronger than ever, I’m also heavier than ever.  For years my walking around weight was 200 pounds. When I started running, I dropped a lot of weight and slowly gained it back, settling around 195 in 2020. Since then, I’ve been running less and less each year and lifting more and more. I adjusted my diet to eat more protein, and for the past two years have been walking around at 220-225. I don’t feel too heavy, but I’m less lean, maybe a fair trade for so much added strength. I felt weak when I was mostly running. Now, I still feel nimble tip-toeing down mountains and can crank out 15 pull ups.

As the old Russian strength coach proverb goes (probably), mass moves mass.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Time Traveling

Everyone knows that jet lag is the real deal.

Traveling across time zones wreaks havoc and can leave you feeling weird for days or even weeks.

At the seminar this past weekend, one speaker made an analogy that, for a lot of people, Monday morning is like jet lag.

Staying up late on the weekend, sleeping in more to make up for the staying up late, and eating a diet of fun weekend things and alcohol can make it feel like you’ve travelled across time zones when the alarm clock goes off on Monday morning.

Just like getting stronger and more fit in the gym is all about doing the fundamentals, really well, over and over and over again. Creating a healthy lifestyle outside of the gym works the same way. You’ve got to do the basics, get enough sleep, properly fuel your body and move throughout the day.

I’m not encouraging you to give up fun. But if you time travel 52 weeks out of the year, I know one thing for sure, it’ll slow your in-gym progress way down.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Habit Check In - Late in the Game

Day 24! Can you believe it? No time to let off the gas though, there’s still a week left to build and maintain your new habit.

As you know, if you’ve messed up and skipped a day or two here and there, no one cares. You won’t get a worse grade on the test, in fact, no one is grading you except yourself.

We’re at the point where people tend to give up. Even if the habit has been a breeze for you so far, the perseverance required this late in the game is difficult to summon.

The October 1st motivation has dried up and been forgotten about, now you must rely on the systems you’ve set up and the discipline you’ve built.

Don’t let off the gas now, keep it up for another week!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

10 years for 3 minutes

The next days after a seminar are always exciting. The coaches and I had a great trip to Milford Conneticut to the Northeast Coaches Summit.

While I’ve got a lot of things on my mind, one that I couldn’t wait to share here was from national level gymnast and coach, Dave Durante.

He said he’s been chasing a 10 minute freestanding handstand hold for 10 years, and just recently completed the goal. I know that’s crazy in and of itself, but actually it gets even crazier, and speaks everything about consistency, long term focus and small gains.

When he started training for it, he was at 7 minutes. Already at 7 minutes! He was 70 percent there and the final 30 percent took 10 years.

Stick with it. As a mentor of mine once said, there are no shortcuts, just hard work.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Friday Thoughts #8

Welcome to this week’s edition of my random thoughts to end the week. Today, I have for you, some of the best posts I’ve seen on Instagram this week. Enjoy!

This story about a weightlifter in the 2009 Beijing Olympics.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Zack Telander (@coach_zt)

This guys page, I can’t get enough of watching him to pull ups and slow muscle ups.

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A post shared by Fun With Calisthenics (@fun_with_calisthenics_)

3. Apparently today is National Fitness Day, whatever that means. Either way, it was an opportunity for Juliet Starrett to share these 9 bullet point thoughts about health and fitness in general. The Starretts are so reasonable with their approach to health and fitness. They talk big picture and how to make massive change with simple practices and consistency. Be sure to follow.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Juliet Starrett “JStar”, Built To Move Author (@julietstarrett)

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Color Coordinated / Just Lift It

Do you know the reason why all the kettlebells in the gym are color coordinated? It might not be what you think.

When I first started coaching I worked primarily with middle school and high school athletes.

One of my most memorable groups was 8 girls from the varsity soccer team. They had offers or desires to play on at a division 1 school. They needed to get stronger.

At the time, it was the Wild West of kettlebells. You couldn’t buy a full set at Target, websites weren’t selling them, and if you could track down mail-in catalog with a kettlebell order form, you could get some shipped to you for even more of an outrageous price than today.

That meant we got all our kettlebells the old fashioned way. Finding gyms that went out of business, Craigslist, and our favorite, buying the demo kettlebells from a seminar off a truck, like a scene from Goodfellas.

That meant the gym’s kettlebell collection was mismatched, to say the least. They were all different sizes, diameters, colors. Most of them only had the weights on in kilograms, and if it had pounds you had to really look to figure it out.

One day I noticed the athletes were progressing on their goblet squats, but not their trapbar deadlifts and I couldn’t figure it out.

And then it became clear.

Since the kettlebells were a mismatched jumble, I would pass out the kettlebells for the day’s squats to make sure each athlete got the right weight. Since the weights were so mismatched, and hard to figure out exactly how much they weighed, they would just squat what was in front of them.

On the deadlifts, they were loading their own bars, and it’s very obvious how much steel plates weigh, with the white on a dark contrasting background. When they were faced with knowing the heavy weights, it made them nervous, even though they were exceptional athletes.

When I pieced this together, I did two things.

I headed to the hardware store and bought many cans of spray paint. I spent an afternoon color coordinating the kettlebells by weight.

In future sessions, I would just tell the athlete to grab the yellow or blue or green kettlebell for their squats, and it was never met with resistance, just like when I handed them out. I started loading the trapbars for the weekly deadlifts sessions, not telling them how much was not the bar until after a successful lift.

What resulted was an important lesson as a coach.

Sometimes the numbers can be intimidating and stop people in the tracks, they think “I’m not strong enough to lift that,” or “that’s way too much for me, I’ll get hurt.” So the color coordinated kettlebells stuck around, and now, with new clients who have very little experience in the gym, I tell them not to worry about the pounds, but to just think of it as the orange, or blue or yellow, or whatever color kettlebell.

The subtle mindset shift can unlock gains you didn’t even know you were capable of. So maybe, don’t worry about exactly how much it weighs, and just think of it as the purple kettlebell.

So that’s the reason the kettlebells, and everything else in the gym, is color coordinated. And, of course, to keep them organized.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Your Next Position is Your Best Position

Someone gave me a cop of The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook last week. It’s full of different techniques to self-mobilize your soft tissue, something we do at the gym everyday with foam rollers, lacrosse balls and the like. It’s an old book, so it’s a little dated, but there are some valuable takeaways nonetheless.

I was flipping through last night and this passage caught my eye:

“Staying in any position too long, even a comfortable position, is hazardous to muscles. A static position favors the formation of trigger points because it hampers circulation. Muscles need a certain amount of contracting and relaxing to stay healthy. Many jobs are static by nature, particularly anything done sitting at a desk. Unfortunately, sedentary or inactive work gives you the impression that your work is easy, that you’re not straining anything. On the contrary, you might be well under a great deal of subtle physical stain and not recognize it.”

Remember, posture is just a word or what position you’re in, and your best position is your next position, because the more you can move, the better. Avoid static positions and try to move frequently. Take breaks and instead of searching for the most perfect set up, try a variety of positions throughout the day to expose your tissues to many different stimulus.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

No Evening Classes - Friday October 20th

This Friday afternoon, the GAIN coaches and I are headed to Milford, Connecticut for a seminar.

As such, we’ll be closing the gym down early.

There are no 4:00pm, or 5:30pm classes, but the rest of the day we’ll be following out regular schedule. See you in the gym!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Halfway by the Numbers

Today marks October 16th, we have crested the hallway point of the daily habit challenge.

At the start of October, I urged all of you to zoom out, and gain some perspective on how your habit can compound, and how the little things add up each day over time.

If you’ve been diligent, let’s say breathing for 5 minutes per day, what do the numbers look like halfway through?

5 minutes per day x 15 days completed = 75 minutes of breathing!

Can you believe that? One hour and fifteen minutes of just focusing on your breathing! And it only took 5 minutes.

Let’s dive a little deeper. Several of you have reading goals.

Swap out the 5 minutes of breathing for 5 minutes of reading.

75 minutes of reading! But wait, there were those 4 nights that you were into the book, and you ended up reading for 20 minutes. We can add 4x15 minutes (additional time) to the 75 minutes for a grand total of 135 minutes of reading.

Now, according to this, the average person reads 300 words per minute, or 1500 words in 5 minutes.

With the original total of 75 minutes, you would have read 22,500 words. With the additional 60 minutes of reading spread through the habit challenge, without even trying, you could take the total to 40,500 - almost doubling the amount you consumed.

Hopefully you’re starting to see how these small efforts add up over time. The halfway point is a big milestone, but you’ve got a long way to go, keep it up!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Friday Thoughts #7

• Join us tonight at Liars Bench for a GAIN Community Event. We’ll be hanging out starting at 5pm. Hope to see you there!

• Daily Habit Challenge: second weekend coming up. Plan ahead and stick with it. You’re basically halfway there, hopefully it’s getting easier and easier.

• Easy Strength Update: As I approach the final 10 workouts of the 40 session program, the frequency was starting to add up. As my “everyday” weight climbed, eventually, the time I need to recover did as well. I’ll see the program through the end, and in the spirit of it, I’m focusing on keeping the weights easier this week. I’ve taken about a week off from ring dips. Doing daily 2x5 sets was wearing on me. I felt really strong, and did an easy, slow tempo set loaded with a 20 pound weight vest. After that, I decided the daily volume was too much and I’d rather do the ring dips once or twice and week with a little more time between sessions. I’ve replace some of that time with more tempo pull ups. Really focusing on a hollow position or, when I’m feeling a little more fresh, an L sit eccentric.

• Check out this Get Up breakdown with some common faults.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain