Category: gym news

By Dave Chesser
Last summer I had the chance to attend sifu Ed Wong’s level 1 Urban Survival System certification and I really enjoyed the experience. I started martial arts at the age of 15 and came to Taiwan to study traditional Chinese martial arts and even after all those years of practice, sifu Ed’s material was some of the best I’ve seen. Here’s what made it special.
1. The goal was learning to survive a fight, not win a sport match or a form competition. Some of the martial arts I’ve done didn’t really address violence in any way even though they thought they did. In fact, we sometimes ignored that it existed. The USS seminar starts with the fact that you will have to be extremely aggressive to survive getting assaulted on the street and focuses on that instead of exotic, obsolete weapons or laying on the ground in guard position.

HCS from Tyson Stanley on Vimeo.

2. The techniques were all realistic. The 100 forms I learned in traditional arts won’t help you defend yourself. The material we got at level 1 contained no fluff, no fantasy moves that could only be pulled off in movies. The material is actually very simple because as Ed explained, complex moves don’t work when you’re pumped full of adrenaline and struggling with an attacker. Because the moves are simple, most anyone that trains them can do them. I came home after the seminar and taught the techniques to my 9 year old son and he could execute the moves well within two days of learning them.

3. Aggression was the key. This was something completely missing from my martial arts experience. Peace, love, and universal harmony sounds great but when someone is trying to cut you with a knife on the MRT, then you need aggression to survive the assault. That mindset needs to be developed, it doesn’t come naturally for most people.
4. Anaerobic fitness was a key component of the training. The same kind of fitness developed by hard kettlebell and bodyweight circuits played a key role in the training. As Ed explained, you have to go all out for :15 to maybe 3:00 in order to get away from an attacker. Add in weapons like knives and multiple opponents and you’ll see very quickly that having anaerobic power is absolutely necessary to pull off the techniques. Just having the techniques by themselves isn’t enough without having the fitness to pull them off. Again, this was the clearest connection I had ever heard between the type of fitness we do at the gym and training for fighting.
5. The intensive format really appealed to me. I’ve taken and enjoyed regular martial arts classes for years. But getting a full system that you can practice at home or at the gym in a weekend appealed to me because I’m too busy with family and work to take regular classes. Get the full system in a weekend and then go practice on your own or with friends instead of having to attend classes for months.

If any of the above sounds appealing to you then consider joining us for the level 1 and level 2 cert that we’ll have with Ed in April. We’re only taking 14 people for each because we want you to have lots of exposure to Ed and to clearly see what he does. That’s a lot smaller and more intimate than a lot of local seminars.

We are honored to be hosting this seminar and I hope to see some of you there.

So I see lots of people are upset over a new gym chain showing a female trainer pushing her boobs into a gymgoers face while he’s doing the pec deck machine. (sorry but I can’t publicly name the gym)

First of all, people from the gym are saying she’s not a trainer. Then why is she wearing the gym’s shirt? Why is she and a lot of other cute little girls wearing the official gym shirt featured on their Facebook page? Do any real trainers even work there? Why aren’t any videos or pictures of them being displayed? Is it a brothel or a gym? I can’t tell.

I see comments about this video from mainland China like, “Is this how gyms in Taiwan do things?” Let me tell you, China is a big place and lots of bad stuff goes on there. Before anyone over there starts saying bad stuff about the Taiwan fitness industry, they need to first look in the mirror and look at what their colleagues are doing pretty much everywhere. It’s widely known that most trainers in the mainland use the job just to pick up women and sometimes men. So clean your own house before you comment on ours.

Finally, what do people expect? How many so-called professional female trainers put up pictures of themselves in their panties? Maybe the girl in the video has bigger breasts than them so they’re upset. The biggest gym in Taiwan also covers its walls and DM with lesbian pornography and hands it out on the streets. Didn’t they set the standard?

I agree this gym chain should be criticized and I’m glad to see people upset. But if trainers want to be seen as professionals, then let’s drop the porn pics and set a higher standard.

Our gym exists to host our tribe. We all agree on our core fitness values: strength training, high intensity training, high protein. Those are the values of the Formosa Fitness tribe. If you want to join us, then you should agree with those. If not, we are not the place for you.

Having such a clear statement about what you stand for, and what you don’t, is rare these days. Most people don’t like such strong statements, another reason we aren’t for most people. It’s especially unpopular to draw lines between people and say we want this group, but not this other group. That’s “discrimination” and we all know that’s a dirty word these days.

Well we discriminate every single day. Do you eat food that fell on the sidewalk? Why not? Are you a bigot? The food didn’t ask to get dropped there, did it? How about eating at a restaurant where the cook doesn’t wash his hands? Who are we say that certain behaviors by people are more desirable than others? Isn’t that discrimination? Of course, it is. We discriminate everyday but we often don’t have the guts to call it that.

Formosa Fitness is a small gym. I’m okay with saying that. We don’t have the space to cater to everyone. Like what you see here? This is what we do:

We got one new guy a while back that complained on a local message board that we should give him 3 liters of free water every time he comes in. Why? Because he demanded it, that’s why. And if you demand something, you should always get it, correct? Well that’s what a lot of people think. He also complained that it was too hot — downstairs, where it is consistently cool. I just paid NT37,000 for the electricity bill in September BTW. We come to the gym to workout, not get comfortable. I told this gentlemen that we charge significantly less than the local 7-11 for bottled water and do this as a courtesy to gymgoers, but he persisted with his demands two more times. The last time, I told him we would not be giving him free water and if he didn’t like it, he could go work out somewhere else. As the chief, it’s my job to police the tribe. If we let people like that in, then those of us that want to train hard will find it impossible to do so.

This is the kind of thing most people don’t understand. Many of the local gyms give away water and towels because they RIP PEOPLE OFF so their profit margin is much higher. We don’t rip people off so our profits are much lower. Second, NOTHING IS FREE! Someone is paying for that! If my costs as the gym owner go up, then guess what? I’m passing that cost on to the gymgoer. No, I will NOT eat into our meager profit margins to cater to people too lazy to bring their own water from home or buy our reasonable priced water at the gym. Third, we don’t want the kind of people that demand “free stuff” in order to work out.

At the big local gorilla gym, men blow dry their testicles in the locker rooms.
People play on their cell phones on the equipment rather than train hard.
They join the gym just to play in the dirty jacuzzi. “Play” has many definitions, too.
There is a disco ball in the “weight room” at the fancy pants gym down the street.
And people get flashed in the showers.
THAT is the local gym culture that gives away “free stuff.” Is that what you want? Because that is the very opposite of what we do. We are against all that.

If I chose to go down that path for the business, we would go out of business! There would be nothing special about us in any way. We would have people laying all over the equipment picking their noses. We would have to have 20 treadmills for people to walk on while watching TV because that’s what “free stuff” people demand. We don’t have space for that and we are not that kind of gym.

We are a niche gym and our niche is strength, high intensity cardio training, and training with integrity.
The most important two minutes you’ll ever spend regarding fitness is right here. Watch this:
[youtube=http://youtu.be/j8JS3kqUTqM?t-A&start=105]
THAT is what we are about! BTW, Gym Jones are the folks that trained the cast of “300” and “Man of Steel,” etc.

We are not trying to be everything to everyone. We are not the Wal-Mart of fitness. So understand that we welcome everyone to join us, but if you do then you must agree to follow our culture and live by our fitness values. Hope to see you at the gym.

Guys and gals,
I’m proud to announce that we’re helping to expand the whey protein options available in Taiwan. We’re now the sole distributor for Eat Me supplements from New Zealand. Starting today, we’re selling Premium Protein (whey concentrate) and their Lean Shake (whey isolate). Both are non-GMO and the whey comes from grass-fed sources. The whey is produced, mixed and packaged right in New Zealand and then shipped to us. So it hasn’t been sitting on a shelf somewhere for months and this was as direct from the source as we could get.
I want to emphasize that this isn’t the cheapest whey you can possibly get. We are going for the highest quality at the best price and I think we’ve succeeded. For example, the actual whey content of the concentrate for most flavors is 98%. The bare minimum of flavoring and sweetener is used and there are only 5-6 ingredients rather than 15-20. But you’re paying for protein anyway, right? So the sweetness is much less than typical American brands. If a stronger flavor is desired, the whey can be consumed with milk.

And these are not blends, which some companies use to maximize profit. 100% of the protein in the bag is from concentrate in the Premium or from isolate in the Lean Shake. Some companies are using cheaper glutamine and other aminos to spike the protein levels artificially but we aren’t doing anything like that.

We have samples available at a low cost at the gym so come on down and try it out if this sounds interesting to you. We also ship around Taiwan for minimal cost. Thanks!