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The quality goes in before the name goes on

There have been fewer happier moments in my life than watching our logo get painted on the door yesterday. The day I became Christian, the day we got married, and the days my kids were born were all more powerful but yesterday wasn’t bad. I just stood there as they painted the logo and thought back to all the struggles that took place behind the scenes to get to where we are today.

The new place is a frenzy of activity. Workers are all over the place putting in new walls, lights, etc. We have an April 1st deadline and thanks to the powers above, it looks like we’re gonna meet that deadline. Seriously, things I thought we’d have to wait months on suddenly became doable in no time. Serious concerns turned out to be surmountable. Just shows you need to have faith. 🙂

This will be the upstairs reception area and ….ahem….”cardio theater.” Yes, I’m getting some cardio machines but not like you think. Just say “no” to treadmills and ellipticals.

Here’s the downstairs hallway where the lockers, changing rooms, and my office will go. Weight room is next!!

This is the weight room and group class area. We will push Prowlers here. Oh yes, there will be Prowlers. What are Prowlers?

They’re weight sleds that you push for conditioning and strength training together. I hear it’s one tough workout. Wanna try it out? You know where to go!

I know people are concerned about bathrooms and showers so know that we have you covered. We now have two full bathrooms with showers for your convenience.

So there you have it. The first look at our Formosa Fitness 3.0. We have other surprises in store but we’ll let you find out those in time. I think we’ve made it clear by now that we’re the complete opposite of the normal fitness scene so you can always expect us to do the unexpected.

PLEASE stop by and visit when we open in April. We’d LOVE to show you around! See you soon!

Formosa Fitness Barbell Club coming soon!

The Formosa Fitness Barbell Club is coming soon!

This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. The club is basically anyone that works out in the gym that wants to maximize their squat, bench, deadlift, snatch, overhead press, power clean, etc. You join by buying the t-shirt (available at a reasonable price to cover the cost) and you’ll put your name on a special board just for the club. On this board, we’ll list everyone’s name and their lifts. We can motivate each other and compete against one another. It’s gonna be awesome!!!

Where we’re going with this is eventually as we build up the club, we’re gonna have lifting seminars so we can build our technique. Then lifting competitions. That’s right — we’re gonna have comps!!

I’m so stoked to be bringing this in since no one else is doing it. And you’ll have it exclusively at Formosa Fitness. Come join the club!!

Training log

3/02 50 chins
3/03
OHP 5x8x47.5kg
bench 5×92.5, 100, 105kg
40:00 airdyne
40:00 weighted hike 16kg

Great advice on how to do more pullups below. I’m proud to say that with one exception, all my clients can do pullups, even females!

New Deadlift PR! By a lot!

am
one hour foam rolling and stretching
DL
5×50, 70, 90
3×110, 120
1×140, 160, 172.5 (new PR), 182.5kg!!!

pm
20kg Kb 200 swings
60:00 exercise bike.

Felt like breaking a record today. Warmup took forever and 110kg felt heavy. It always does, why? Anyway, went for it. 172.5 was 2.5 higher than my last 1RM but it felt easy. I wanted to do 180kg but that was 396lbs. and if I was gonna do it, i wanted it to be over 400lbs. So 2×1.25kg plates made it 401.5lbs/182.5kg. Went much better than expected. Was a little delirious at the end.

After the PR, I realized I don’t yet know that I’m doing. I don’t really understand how to lift heavy yet. This lift today felt completely different than anything I’ve ever done. I felt tighter than ever and for once nothing felt strained afterwards. Somehow this lift felt like a first for me. Hopefully first of many to come.

What can you expect from the new gym?

Time to start giving you guys a taste of things to come. Strength training in Taiwan has been ignored for far too long. The major component that is missing from everyone’s program, regardless of the goal, is strength training. At Formosa Fitness, we’ve made strength training a part of our program but we’re about to own the category!

Take a look at our new power racks that I custom designed (yes, little ole me). I specified the exact dimensions used and got the exact accessories that I thought we needed for serious strength training in Taiwan. As far as I know, no other gym in Asia has these!

We will be the first to have them and when you work out with us, you’ll be the first to use them. How great is that?

And what weights will you be using? The same old weights as everyone else, right? Is that how we do things at Formosa Fitness? I think not. 🙂

Ten Olympic bars rated at 1500lbs. each (NOT the cheap stuff that bends easy, don’t you deserve the best?) and 6 sets of Olympic bumpers WITH fractional plates! Again, NOT available anywhere else in Taiwan, exclusively with us. And the fractional plates were a special order on my part. They go down to .5kg so you can make progress even when the lifts get heavy. It’s the little details like this that I do myself for people that can tell the difference. We put a lot of thought into what we do and we hope you like it!

So why are we offering this stuff? Because Taiwan deserves to have a serious fitness facility. I’m tired of the “bunny fitness” we have here. The pink dumbbell/aerobics stuff needs to die. We need a place that is dedicated to one thing and one thing only — getting you in the best shape of your life! That’s our goal — not selling memberships, not telling you we have a special price but only if you sign today, not using hookers in ads, not selling you the APPEARANCE of fitness then giving you a BS night club type place to workout in.

We’re very excited (can’t you tell?) to be bringing you this stuff and we’ve spent more sleepness nights that we can count getting it ready. But when it’s done, it will be a worldclass facility for sure.

And guess what? There’s more……but we’ll save that for next time. 🙂