Some expressions get so overused that they start to get on your
nerves after a while.“Old School” is one of these expressions
that is overused and under-defined.
What is Old School? I
hear that term and I think about Old School gyms and Old School
people. What makes a gym or a person Old School?
What I first picture
when hearing the term Old School in reference to gyms, I think of the
1970s and 1980s. If you are in your 50s or older, you remember
those gyms. There were not many gyms back then. There weren’t all
these chain gyms around like there are now. I remember when I read
about the first Gold’s Gym coming to Maryland, I couldn’t believe
it. Gold’s Gym? Here in little old Maryland?
Most owners of these
Old School places were not in it to make money, but just to have a
place to train with their buddies. Typically, there would be a bell
on the front door announcing someone entering. No air conditioning,
no heat. A grumpy old dude or woman on steroids with a receding
hairline and deep voice would be manning the front desk with
Tupperware always in front of him, or a thermos full of protein
shake mixed with full cream. There would be a water fountain with the
coldest water around, with a sign on the wall behind it reading,
“Don’t spit in the water fountain.” There was no such thing as
bottled water, you just used the water fountain. Nobody even thought
of bringing a drink with you. It’s strange, though – I never
remember anyone being dehydrated or cramping.
The gym would smell of
liniment, sweat, and testosterone. There would be power racks with
numbers hand-painted on them. The dumbbells would pinch your fingers
if you didn’t hold them quite right because the weld would be
cracking some. A pile of old magazines would be stacked on a shelf
somewhere: Strength and Health, Muscle Builder/Power,
some Playboys sprinkled in, a
National Geographic or two. The members would train with the
basics because that’s all there was to do. There’d be benches,
stair-step squat racks, a leg extension, and a leg curl. Maybe there
would be a plate-loaded lat machine or two.
Where I grew up in
Maryland we had a few gyms. The aforementioned Gold’s, and then
there was Dynamo Gym in Berwyn Heights. It was Dynamo Gym/Scuba. I’m
not sure if there were tanks in there to swim in, or if they just
sold scuba equipment. The gym was in the basement of the shop.
Hardcore. I’d go upstairs when I was in high school to buy muscle
and lifting magazines (there were muscle magazines and scuba
magazines upstairs for sale). It was the only place in the county
that sold Powerlifting USA and Iron Man magazine, and
it received its shipment of Muscle and Fitness before anyone
else.
I ventured into the
basement to watch the lifters one day. I was a kid, maybe 12 years
old. What I can remember was lots of chalk and Olympic weightlifters.
I had never seen that before except for the fat strong Russian guy in
the Olympics. I started talking to a man who was performing snatches.
He asked me what kind of program I was currently doing. We had a
student teacher at our school at the time who had us on a program. I
told them, “3 weeks of 8s, 3 weeks of 5s, 3 weeks of 3s.”
He yelled to another guy in the gym, “They do sets of 8!” The
other guy shook his head.
I had no idea what was
wrong with 8s, I just listened and watched. He told me that we should
be doing the Olympic lifts. He didn’t have very big arms so I
didn’t think he knew what he was talking about. Looking back, I
wish I had listened to him.
I trained at the new
Gold’s a few times and ended up working there in the 1990s. The
Gold’s back then was quite different from today. It was an Old
School house that was made into a gym. There were very few cardio
machines that I can remember. I recall only a lone exercise bike in
the corner. It had a few machines but it was mostly free weights. It
had a posing room, I remember that. I saw the Barbarian Brothers
doing rack deadlifts with a bunch of plates, and I went to see Tom
Platz in a seminar there when I was still in high school.
I trained at a couple
of Old School gyms when I lived in North Carolina and Florida. One
was in Shelby, North Carolina in the basement of a sandwich place. It
was the Iron Bar Gym. The bars were old, with the knurling almost
gone on them. The ceiling was low. If you were over, let’s say 6’2″,
you had to duck. Don was a good dude who was in his early 60s back
in ’92 when I trained there. The gym cost 10 bucks a month. Don was
a great dude, always happy. He was like an old biker, with a big old
beard and tattoos long before everyone had them. The gym was a little
depressing, actually, real dark and dismal. It was like a large
bedroom or something. It was definitely Old School, though. The
equipment was usable, rusty, and creaky.
The Power Pit in Cocoa,
Florida was Old School. It was owned by some local cops, I think.
Carpeted floors, no air conditioning in Florida. Guys wore “Better
Lifting Through Chemistry” shirts. Hot as hell. Benches with the
skinny uprights. I’d be all jacked up on trucker speed and caffeine
and sweating my balls off. But I had great training sessions there
with my training partner, Bill the Wrestler.
The gym that I belong
to now in South Jersey is Old School – Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, New
Jersey. You guys know the gym, the guys who never closed during the
Scamdemic. It’s run by solid guys, salt of the earth. Old Marines
and patriotic men and women train there. When you walk in, all the
military branches and all first responders are represented with flags
hanging, and there is also a big flag that reads “Fuck Murphy”
which addresses the state’s governor who tried to shut the gym down
and is still making the owner’s life a living hell.
The gym is two floors
and has everything you need to get in any kind of training session
that you want to. There are plenty of weights and different bars,
platforms and rubber plates and machines and big dumbbells and Atlas
Stones. Upstairs is some cardio stuff and a matted area with heavy
bags and an area for jiu-jitsu or boxing or Muay Thai. It keeps the
Old School theme alive.
There are still some
gyms like that around, in fact there are people opening gyms that
fashion themselves after those old gyms, and that’s good to see.
Real lifters will always need a place where they don’t have to worry
about dropping a deadlift once in a while or using chalk or offending
someone with a grunt or two.
What makes a lifter Old
School? Attire for one. It runs the gamut for Old School, but a
common theme is that Old School lifters go for comfort, not for looks
or, god forbid, likes on social media. Some typical Old School
attire: Jeans and work boots, cut-off sweatshirts with white athletic
tape on the wrists, old ratty sweatpants or shorts, tank tops,
oversized V-neck white t-shirts, construction boots or Chuck
Taylors.
But Old School is more
than the gym or the clothes you wear, it’s an attitude. Training
for someone who is Old School is something that must get done.
Their training is simple, just the basics plus curls and grip work
and hitting the heavy bag. Old School lifters get their training in
no matter what, never missing a session. It’s making your way to the
gym in inclement weather or when it’s a holiday. He still goes to
the party, but the Old School lifter gets his training in first. He
may have a gym bag, but it doesn’t have anything on it like stickers
that read “Savage” or “Be a Wolf, Not a Sheep,” or anything
cheesy like that. It could be a black garbage bag, it doesn’t
matter. He doesn’t need anything special to train except the bars
and plates.
I have to laugh when my
sons have to have headphones to train. An Old School lifter doesn’t
care about the music. In the old days, the music consisted of a boom
box over in the corner blasting out Iron Maiden, or if the gym had a
speaker system, it was the local rock station. Old School lifters
train everywhere; in their basement, in the garage, or the local hole
in the wall gym – it doesn’t matter to them. They don’t worry
about social media or taking selfies or bringing a tripod to the gym.
That’s all blasphemy to an Old School lifter.
Old School is still out
there, both in attitude and gyms. It may be hard to find with the
smokescreen of the “look at me” generation so prevalent today,
but it’s out there. Just look for a jacked guy in jeans and combat
boots heading into a hole-in-the-wall gym in a run-down strip mall.
