I AM A CELLAR DWELLER

I am a cellar dweller. And while some people may take that to mean I am a hideous looking troll that stalks billy goats with a club, really all it means is that normally, I don’t go to the gym to work out – I train in my basement and garage.

That’s right I do almost all my training right on my own property. If I didn’t post videos on the internet, almost nobody in the world would know I train because I pay no memberships and don’t go into town to get my workout in.

To me, this is the way to go. I can use all the chalk I want, turn up the music as loud as I want, drop the weights if I want, and shoot snot rockets whenever I want. (I actually go outside to shoot the snot rockets)

Watch the Killer Video: Click here ==>

I love training in solitude so much that I built a two car garage onto my house and have never had my vehicle in the garage on my side. As soon as the garage was ready, I built a platform out of plywood with my dad, put rubber stall mats down and moved my equipment out the first chance I could.

But occasionally, I must admit I do like to go train at other places and lift with other friends. In fact, just this weekend, I traveled up to Coach Joe Hashey’s new gym, Strength and Performance Headquarters in Endwell, NY.

Here’s the footage that I got from the session (I missed the squats). We trained for a couple hours but I just wasn’t able to get everything I wanted to because we were jumping back and forth and moving all around.

Joe unleashed a new product last week. The sale price went up Friday, but during the workout he said he would hook the Diesel Readers up with a deal. When I hear back from him, I will let you know.

You might be wondering why I would want to travel somewhere just to work out, since I love training alone so much. Well, there’s a ton of reasons to go elsewhere from time to time to get a workout in and if you train in your own home gym, here’s a few of those reasons to consider training somewhere else from time to time.

1. Access to New Equipment

Sometimes due to space and financial limitations, you might not be able to have all the equipment you’d like to have in your gym. If you travel to a buddy’s place, they may in fact have this equipment. For example, if you don’t have a squat cage or squat stands at home, try to line up a workout with a friend who does have those on your lower body day. That way you’ll maximize your time investment in traveling.

2. Raise the Bar

When lifting alone, some people get somewhat complacent and end up holding their development and progress back because they aren’t pushing themselves. By training with someone every now and again, especially somebody who is stronger than you, it can light that fire in you again. If you schedule routine visits with that person, you can also set goals in your training to push yourself so that when you meet up with that person every 4 to 6 weeks, or whatever the case may be, you will be ready to go head to head.

A prime example of this is training for the Axle Deadlift with Eli. Eli doesn’t dedicate a lot of time to Grip training, but he does very well on the Double-Overhand (both hands pronated) Axle Deadlift. Getting my ass handed to me by Eli keeps me focused on my thick bar work. The same can be said for Log Press. The dude is an animal and knowing how strong he has gotten over the years keeps me pushing hard on my overhead work days.

3. Spotters / Form Coaching

I have a bad habit of losing my arch in the squat and deadlift and sometimes I forget to set up the camera to watch my form on the squat and deadlift so I can view my technique later on . Also, having extra people around provides me with a spotter. For instance, when training alone at my garage, I have to make sure I have pins set up and I usually stick with sets of 3 instead of going for a monster PR in the Bench, because without a spotter, if I don’t get the weight, I’m gonna be trapped under the bar. I stay a bit on the lighter side when training alone, but I don’t shy too far away from my PR, so that I am ready to push hard when I meet up for a group training session.

4. Meet New People

One of the great things about getting together with other Gripsters and Strongmen is that I get to meet new people. This weekend when I trained with Joe, Tim Mosolino was also there. Tim is a strength coach from the Boston area who works with NFL athletes prepping for the combine and just got into strongman in the last few months. This dude was huge and it really pushed me to keep my squat form tight and keep chugging away on the Yoke Walk. Tim actually is the 4th or 5th person I have ever met with bigger hands than me! I’d love to see what he could do with the Inch Dumbbell!

5. Share Your Knowledge

After training for many years, hopefully you’ve learned a lot about training and can help other people with their form and technique when you meet up with them. This can be very beneficial for that other person, so make sure you take the opportunity to help them out if you can. Tim and I talked a lot about Strongman competitions, technique, and strategy. I won a lot of the contests I took part in when I was still competing not necessarily because I was stronger than the other dudes, but because I could strategize better. Tim’s not only strong, but he’s also willing to ask questions and learn, so it was nice to talk to him and help him out. I think he’s going to be very good once he gets some more experience under his belt and more time in competitions.

6. Two (or Three or Four) Heads Are Better Than One

Some lifts, like the Squat, are very technical and you can’t always figure out what to do in order to dial in your technique. Sure, you can take video of yourself training, post it on the net, and get suggestions on how to improve your form. While that works out great (it’s helping me out tremendously in my Muscle-Up training) sometimes the best option is to have someone there with you in real time going through the cues as you go through the movement.

7. Absence Makes the Heart Grow Stronger

Sometimes, traveling to another gym makes you enjoy your gym even more. I know when I was still training in my basement back before the garage was built, I would feel somewhat claustrophobic with the low ceilings and limited space. It was always cool to be able to go to a gym where I could actually do log press. But when you come back from those trips, it’s also nice to get back into familiar surroundings where you know where everything is and where you only have to walk a few steps to get to the next station.

8. Knock the Mental Rust Off

If you never interact with people and talk about training, you get rusty, mentally! If you are never challenged, your “training mentality” can turn to mush. By getting out every so often, it keeps your mind fresh and keeps you thinking and developing mentally as well as physically.

9. Hours of Awesome Footage

I know that when I go and train with other people, it is going to be several hours long. You want to make the most of the trip so you want to try out all the equipment that is there that you don’t have. You jump from one lift to another and before you know it, 3 or 4 hours has gone by! Good stuff.

10. Bigger Space = More Room to Play

If you’re training in the cellar or in the garage, you may be limited on space. Now for me, I am able to take some of my equipment outside and train. I can load my farmer’s walk handles up, carry them outside the garage, and go up and down the driveway with them or out through the lawn. But if it’s cold out or if you live in a city right next to another house, you may not have that option, so the next best choice may be to hook up with a group and train with them. That’s what we did this weekend at Joe’s. We were able to load the yoke up and take it for a hike inside his building without having to worry about neighbors, space limitations, mud, or cold weather.

11. Get a Break from the Routine

You may not realize it but training in the same spot all the time can cause you to stagnate as well. It’s never a dull moment when I get together with Smitty, Brad, Eli,and Brian. When we’re not lifting our asses off, then we’re talking training or busting on Eli’s weird neck rash. If anybody is reading this that lives in the rain forest, if you know of any naturally occurring antidotes to a bumpy neck rash that looks like snow-capped pencil erasers, please let us know.

12. Awesome Memories

If you take your camera with you, you can come away from these traveling training sessions with some great footage that you’ll be able to go back and look at for years down the road. After a while, you might forget some of the big numbers and feats you hit on these sessions, so it’s nice to be able to pop an old tape in the camera or open up some old files on your computer and see what you were doing a few months or even a few years ago. Maybe it was the time you lifted your first Atlas stone, or when you hit a big PR with a bunch of friends cheering you on. My buddy, Brad Martin is the best at getting behind you and getting you pumped up. Sometimes it doesn’t register when I am pumping up for a lift, but when I go back through the footage later on, I do hear it and it makes me want to go work out again!

Hey, there you go. If you’re a cellar dweller like I am, there’s 12 of the reasons I like to bust the hell out of my garage and lift somewhere else for a change.

I’ll let everyone know when I hear back from Joe on the special Diesel price for his newly released product.

Articles You Might Also Like:

• Bands for Triceps – Awesome Workout Add-in
• Home Made Strength
• Hammering Horseshoes DVD is Live!
• MISSION COMPLETE: Basics of Grip Training and Strongmanism Seminar
• Epic Upper Body Workout – Build a Big Back, Chest, Shoulders, Arms

Tags: cellar dweller, grip training, group training, home gym, home gym training, how to build your own equipment, strength training, training alone, training alone vs training with partners, training at home vs. training at a gym, training on the road, training partners

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 at 9:39 pm and is filed under athletic strength training lift odd objects, create your own garage gym, how to build pinch strength, how to improve grip strength, how to tear cards, old strongman feats of strength, strength training videos diesel tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.