President Harry Truman’s White House gym with rings, exercise bike, medicine balls, pulleys, ladders.
Inside this iconic business building in downtown Portland lies a small but relatively well-equipped fitness center that's open to employee membership only. So shhh.... Here's a peek inside.
There are two flat benches (one freestanding, one part of a chestpress rack), a Smith machine, a handful of machines targeting bodyparts, dumbbells, a big clunky Universal, and a nook with about 10 cardio machines (one to three are generally down for repair at any given time), and two thick fold-out mats. Plus a water fountain and two TVs (Sadly, rare is the office employee who can work out without a TV.).
It's not bad, really, for a midday get-away.
The drawback: climate control. It's kept at a stuffy 72 degrees, with no active ventilation.
After my run with the bells, I adopted one of my own to incorporate into my training. The bells are used in full-body dynamic exercises that involve momentum, so I look forward to using mine in warm-ups and cooldowns around Oly weightlifting. ETA I'm enjoying "bell and bag" sessions on days I'm not lifting - alternating kettlebell drills with heavybag pounding. Good stuff!
Also, at LONG LAST, got a pair of 30# dumbbells. I've been waiting for a decent sale for years, and one hit this weekend. (I have a real bone to pick with Joe's, the store formerly known as G.I. Joe's. Their DBs are in a wire bin, so beat up, they look like crap, and the weight amounts themselves are probably thrown off from all the chipping damage. They should be ashamed to have them on their floor. So no, I did not buy these spiffy new ones from them.) At last, I can bridge the gap between 25 and 35 more graciously. Now I can start the next longerm wait to cough up the money for 40s.
Ironworks Gym is the gem of Creswell, Oregon. This is one of my very favorite gyms. Nestled in a rural speck of a town just south of Eugene, in a brilliantly landscaped oasis, this gym houses the old school disciplines - Olympic-style weighlifting, powerlifting - and it has more bodybuilding machines (specific-muscle group training) stuffed into it than a warehouse. They're stuffed into every nook - a Roman chair here, an adductor there. Each space has a distinct character and feel to it, from the slick group exercise fitness room to the chalk-filled, cement-floored weightlifting studio. Expansive windows face an impressive golf course, and that's hugged by miles sand miles of rural Willamette Valley greenery. This gym screams the sucess of an empire built on dreams of dedicated visionaries, and each discipine it houses through meets and classes seems to be staffed by salt-of-the-earth folks, like Tom Hirtz. If you're ever even within a few hours of this gym, don't miss it, anytime of the year.
