Origin Story

Like most gyms, Gus’s Barbell Club was founded to carry on the tradition of ancient Greek philosophy.

I kid, but it’s kind of true. Not to bury the lede: I, Gus, founded a gym because I realized that no one gym can serve every person’s needs but every person deserves a gym that suits them.

I came to the realization when I was at my CrossFit Level One Seminar and their definition of fitness (“work capacity across broad time and modal domains”) was presented as truth. But the truth is that definition is not useful to many people who have wildly different goals for their training. The definition isn’t agreed upon by everyone even among those who sympathize with the spirit of it. And it’s definitely now part of a brand not just a training methodology.

I had a fascination with differing schools of philosophy and developing an individual “philosophy of life” since reading A Guide to the Good Life: The Anicent Art of Stoic Joy by William Irvine near the end of my college education. The comparison between CrossFit and any other method — not just the CF copycats but think back all the way to Arthur Jones’ Nautilus circuit, Richard Simmons’ Sweatin’ to the Oldies, or Müller’s 15-minute “My System” he made up for out-of-season rowers — reminded me of the debates between the schools of philosophy. Acolytes of any one school stood to benefit from considering another’s lectures, then taking those ideas and either adopting, adapting, or refuting them. Even if I didn’t wholly accept the CrossFit doctrines, I gained so much out of the experience.

A proper gym is just as much a way of life as it is a workout, just as the ancient Greek schools were.

We can save the long details of my specific training life for its own post, but let me summarize with this: I have always been a total nerd, unathletic, thought I knew everything worthwhile, and avoided anything I didn’t know (like the weight room.) That person needed some amazing coaches to create buy-in for physical culture. But when I did buy-in, my life only got better.

I want to ease that process for other people. There are plenty of people like me, who want a gym like mine, and I’ll make their life better. I know coaching is the best tool available to get someone from zero to one, so I based the gym around coaching. I’ve found the barbell to be the very best tool to build a foundation, so we started with barbells, a squat rack, and a bench on my back patio. And now we have a private studio with that efficient setup ready to get anyone stronger and healthier.

In the spirit of ancient Greece, let’s finish with a quote from Socrates:

No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.