Social Workout

Workout

Brooklyn Barbell Club

In the heart of Williamsburg, a mere two blocks from the epicenter of Brooklyn hipster mayhem that is the Bedford L station, in a neighborhood whose residents are typically known more for binge drinking and anorexia than for any kind of athletic aptitude, is the Brooklyn Barbell Club and Crossfit Virtuosity Gym -- to my knowledge the only gym in Brooklyn equipped for power- and olympic lifting.

It apparently was established sometime after the last time I was googling for powerlifting gyms in New York City, so it was off my radar for a few months before I recently discovered it while I was, ironically, trying to find the location of a powerlifting gym in Queens I had heard about.

Unfortunately it's not set up like a regular gym -- there are only two hours of open gym a week (Sunday from 11-1).  The rest of the time is dedicated to classes.  That's not that unfortunate, though, as without supervision I would surely hurt myself badly trying to do olympic lifting.  That said, it is far from my home, and a three-month weight lifting class (which are really coached independent workouts) runs $600-900.  But they also allow drop-ins for $20 (which, if I'm doing my math right, may be cheaper than the per-class fee), so I decided to check them out tonight.

Tonight's class was Starting Strength, and is a three month strength training program built around incremental increases on five core movements: squat, dead lift, bench press, overhead (strict) press, and power clean.  It believe that it is based on the philosophy of strength coach Mark Rippetoe, with whom Keith, the coach of the class, has worked in the past.  

In a lot of ways it was similar to the popular StrongLifts 5x5 internet self-coached program, which I believe is also based somewhat (probably more loosely) on Rippetoe.  I've done the StrongLifts program in the past and already know that I'll get bored with it.  I like a little more chaos in my lifting routine -- if I don't feel like incrementing one day, I won't increment, but if I feel like I can go up 20 pounds instead of 5, I'll go up 20 pounds instead of 5.  But the other guys who had been in the program for a while all appeared to be progressing very well, particularly on squats, so there's probably something to it.  

It was very helpful to have someone correcting my form and giving me pointers.  Tonight's routine included Squats, Bench Press, and Power Cleans, and I learned some very useful things about my squat and power clean form.  

For those readers who have been paying close attention to my posts from today, you may be wondering how the squats and bench presses went after all of the body weight squats and push ups I did earlier in the day.  I'll tell you: they went painfully.  But I can count the squats I did toward my squat total, and I was able to squeeze in two sets of pull ups between bench presses, so I'm 25% done there.

So I'm thinking that I'll go back -- to check out the olympic lifting class, which will be helpful since olympic lifts are much more technical and I'm sure that I'm not doing any of those correctly; to check out the open gym on Sunday; maybe to check out some of the cross fit classes, which are a little cheaper than the weightlifting classes; and maybe to check out the starting strength class again on a dead lift/strict press day so I can get some pointers about those as well.  But I was originally considering something with them as my DIY feat, and now I'm thinking that isn't very realistic due to the distance and cost involved.  But we'll see; I still haven't figured out what my DIY will be.