John Greaves III's Blog, page 28

Should I Compete? by John Greaves III

Should I compete?  That’s the question that keeps coming up. You want to but you don’t know if you’re good enough.

You’ve been training for a while and either you or the people around you have noticed.  You move better, things that used to be difficult are now easy for you.  That’s when the hunger, the itch starts. It might begin with someone at work asking you how much you can bench press. You might see a flyer advertising a 5k or even an obstacle race.  Then there are the YouTube and Instagram posts. It seems as if the whole world is competing in something. But is it right for you?  You chose the garage gym lifestyle because you wanted to play by your own rules; who’s to say you have to compete in anything to make your fitness journey legitimate?

And screw those girls from high school anyway. They were all fake. It doesn’t matter if that clown at work doesn’t appreciate how hard you’ve worked to get the bodyfat off and to build strength. His opinion about your training program doesn’t matter because at the end of the day, this is your body, your goals and your life. You don’t need anybody else’s applause to prove that you’ve made it.  Just looking at yourself now compared to those old pictures from last year when you were ashamed to take your shirt off at the pool or you wore that bulky sweater to hide the extra fat from the having the baby, just looking at the new you in the mirror where nobody else is invited is enough.  Just enjoying the looseness in your clothes and smiling to yourself as you realize that you’re about to be able to give away another set of clothes because the sleeves are too tight and the waist on those pants is too loose. That should be enough.

But still when you see yourself in the mirror, more and more the person looking back at you wants to know. And there’s only one way to find out….

 

Click to view slideshow.

 

John Greaves III is a freelance writer in North Georgia. He is the founder of Garage Gym Life and a graduate of The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. John’s diverse athletic and writing background allows him to write about a variety of topics from sports to business. You can find out more about him including how to have him guest post on your blog, write for your magazine or ghostwrite a piece for you by clicking here.

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Weekly Motivation featuring A Homemade Gym In Africa

Training in the garage by yourself is tough. You usually don’t have the camaraderie of other gym members to help push you.  To help out, we combed the web to find videos that will help motivate you to keep striving to be your best.

Today’s video features a home-made gym in Africa.  All of the weights are made from cast off items like, empty cans, dirt and cement. If it sounds like this video will challenge you to let go of your excuses AND be grateful for what you have. It will.

Stay motivated and keep training until people want to post videos of you!

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Sorry Kids; No Picnics Today

My sons and daughters, Today’s a day of reflection for me. It’s not a day to have picnics. I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with Memorial Day picnics. It’s just not that kind of day for me. On this day, your mother and I take our family to Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield and we walk […]

Weekly Motivation featuring The Higa Monster

Training in the garage by yourself is tough. You usually don’t have the camaraderie of other gym members to help push you.  To help out, we combed the web to find videos that will help motivate you to keep striving to be your best. Today’s videos feature Strongman/powerlifter The Higamonster Grant Higa doing two sick push up […]

Garage Gear Guide: Black Widow 2.5 Inch Axle Bar Review by John Greaves III

Garage athletes are often gear addicts. The money we save in gym memberships and drive time often gets sunk into this or that gadget either because they’re on sale or because we think it will save time/increase safety/improve performance/save money.  As my daddy once loves to say, “You can go broke saving money”.  In today’s […]

Spotlight On Oldetime Strongmen by John Greaves III

As a garage athlete, you have a ton of options when it comes to competing.  The Spotlight On series is an introduction to the many competitive outlets available to garage lifters.  On Thursday, April 21st,  I was honored to be asked to perform repetition deadlifts with God’s Warriors Strength Team a group of performing strongmen […]

Weekly Motivation featuring BarStarzz

Training in the garage by yourself is tough. You usually don’t have the camaraderie of other gym members to help push you.  To help out, we combed the web to find videos that will help motivate you to keep striving to be your best. Today’s video features a winter workout from BarStarzz using simple playground […]

Working Out While Training – By John Greaves III

I know that’s a weird title.   Seems like I just said the same thing twice.  But here me out. What I mean is you should be actively involved in problem solving during your training session if you want to be successful long term.  Working out has developed a bit of a bad rap over the […]

Jerred Moon Wants To Build The Garage Gym Athlete

available on Amazon.com

We have some awesome writers and athletes who contribute to Garage Gym Life. But we admit that we don’t know everything. So we scour the web to find the best articles from yesterday and today (we’d get them from the future as well but our DeLorean is in the shop) and bring you the links here. Today’s heads up concerns Jerred Moon a Strength and Conditioning Coach and the creator of End of Three Fitness which specializes in simple, effective barbell-centric fitness. Moon is a former Physical Training Leader and Fitness Program Manager within U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command. He’s been featured in WOD Talk Magazine, Sweat RX Magazine, Life Hacker, The Huffington Post, The Art of Manliness, and more. He currently coaches and programs for hundreds of athletes from military operators to stay-at-home mom’s. You should be impressed but what you really want to know is why are we talking about him right now?

Because he’s written a book called The Garage Gym Athlete (see why it caught my attention?)  The book promises to help with gym set up including when to buy and when to go the DIY route and programming.  Don’t believe me? Check out some of the things covered in the book:

How to rearrange your budget and family objections so the ideal garage gym can come to life
THE best way to build stability (without a crunch in sight!)
Exactly why you should thank the inventor of PVC (especially after you check out Chapter 13!)
A step by step guide to picking a quality barbell (hint: sporting goods get 3 things wrong)
A down in the trenches way to build a power rack (warning: for the bold and brazen, but you’ll love it)

A lot of this is stuff you could find out on your own using the magic of Google (or Bing let’s be fair) but this book seems to have collected everything in one place for you.  You can purchase a copy on Amazon, download a free copy if you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription or purchase a physical copy for $9.99 all by following the link below!

Source: The Garage Gym Athlete

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