Category: gym news

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. 🙂

It’s official: we’re expanding. We signed the lease last Friday and ordered the bulk of the new equipment last night. A few more equipment purchases and a heck of a lot of work over the next two months and we’re good to go.

We’re expanding for many reasons. One, my personal training journey has expanded. I no longer just do kettlebells. I train them in a larger context of barbells, rings, etc. These days I do strength training first and then kettlebells, etc. Before, I combined strength with endurance through kettlebell training because that combo is what they are good at. But after I could press double 32kg I felt it was time to switch to barbells. And now the sky is the limit.

This is also me going deeper back to the roots. Olympic lifting is next on my list to learn and that is the root of kettlebell training. Snatch and clean and jerk aren’t the two main lifts of kettlebells by accident! The training comes from Olympic lifting.

Second, my ideas about the business have expanded. The number one request I get from folks is to have an open gym where people can come in and train on their own. Well, we’re about to open that. The plan is to be open from 7am to 9pm at night M-F with reduced hours on the weekend. We will charge a monthly fee to use the gym and that will make this style of training more open to the public. The idea is to spread a style of training that really gets you FIT.

Personally I can’t wait. The facilities to do this type of training don’t exist anywhere in Taiwan and I’m so proud and honored to be bringing them here. The folks in Taiwan deserve to have an choice and the mainstream fitness industry here isn’t going to do that. We’re pleased to bring you an option you can’t get anywhere else!

Anyway, back to the work and I’ll keep you posted. Lots to do.

Sorry for the lack of posts but we’ve been busy! Our first instructional DVD is almost ready!Here’s a little video preview:

Now that’s you’ve seen an overview of the disk, what does an actual segment of the video look like? Like this:

We cover all the basic kettlebell techniques, give you two warmups, three workouts, a cooldown section and teach you a bunch of stuff about the kettlebell you probably didn’t know!

We’re very excited to be finishing this project since it’s the first of many to come and it’s the first kettlebell instructional DVD EVER in Chinese! Having a potential 1.2 BILLION people as a market isn’t any pressure or anything. No……not at all. Yeah, right!

Please stay tuned for information on how to get your own copy, Chinese only at this time. Look for our next DVD to be the ultimate kettlebell workout DVD! It will have more workouts than any DVD you’ve ever seen! Stay tuned!

I can’t believe that I didn’t mention this here. We scored a bit of a coup with kettlebells  being mentioned in Apple Daily at the end of November. Check out the article and video here.

Hopefully this is just the tip of the iceberg. As we grow, we hope the local media will keep finding us like this and we will make every effort to deserve the attention. Working with folks on their fitness is our passion and we love sharing what we learn with others.

We’re very sensitive about not sitting on our laurels. You MUST be constantly growing or advancing, if not then you’re stagnating or even declining. You have to be very careful about it because it can sneak up on you quickly.

Our goal for this year is to keep growing and bringing the best in fitness to Taiwan. That means taking chances and performing at a higher level than in the past. Like Seth Godin once said, “If failure isn’t an option, then neither is success.” That really struck me because few people are really willing to put it on the line. If you want success, then you really have to go for it and be willing to do what others don’t.

2012 is the year of the dragon, meaning it’s going to be a volatile year. Many opportunities will arise and many will see disappointment. My guess is we’ll all have to try a little harder this year than last, but with effort this will be a banner year. Happy New Year!

You can say a million bad things about me and maybe they are even true but one thing WILL be written on my tombstone — he did his homework. Above is my wishlist of training and nutrition books that came in the mail today. My goal is to read all these by the end of the year. Understand that I have the utmost commitment to providing the best quality training goods and services possible. I spare no expense on my education in order to help YOU achieve your fitness goals. Now, time to hit the books!