When I first became a personal trainer, I was constantly looking for the most "hardcore" workouts. A workout was useless to me unless it left me in a sweaty mess on the floor. Everything was maximum intensity. There was no "taking it easy" in the gym. I was always pushing the weights higher, doing more [...]
Recently we've decided to do some remodeling around the gym. One of our latest projects is rearranging our "locker room" area, which serves as a place for clients to leave their gym bags during training, their workout programs when they're not at the gym, and of course a pair of dedicated gym shoes. Naturally things [...]
A few years back, there was a big push to train everyone "like an athlete." The sentiment of such a statement is great...sometimes "exercise" is boring, but training can be a lot more fun. There is definitely a split in the mindset of these two activities. We think of athletes as super-heroes or superstars, and when [...]
Like most gyms, we have rules. Unlike other gyms like planet fitness that we won't name, we don't have silly rules like "no jugs of water." Instead our rules are created to do three things: Make sure you get the best results possible Make sure you stay safe Make sure you enjoy your experience in [...]
Fitness and gym memberships are on the rise, and this is a great thing! However many people aren't getting the most out of their gym memberships. Here are 10 tips to get the most out of your Arkitect Fitness membership, and if you don't train with us, many of these will still apply to whichever [...]
There's a small trend in fitness, usually seen in CrossFit gyms, where someone performing a deadlift may simply drop the bar from the top of the lift. Usually this is done on either a max effort rep, or at the end of a high rep set. We teach our clients and our athletes to keep [...]
I've known Ben for over 10 years. We met through a mutual acquaintance at a Jason C. Brown Kettlebell Athletics certification, and ever since then we've been buddies. It's easy to see why, we're both no-nonsense coaches that stick to the fundamentals of strength training, but more importantly, science. On top of that, we've both [...]
In his 2011 book "Everything is Obvious, Once You Know the Answer" author and sociologist Duncan Watts takes a close look at the things we consider to be "common sense" and analyzes how we can make better predictions of outcomes. The title reinforces the old adage "hindsight is 20/20." We've all likely had moments in [...]
UPDATE: Several Things Have changed in the year in a half since I posted this article. Edits have been added in bold text. This is a case study of myself, and I'm not special. Growing up I was over weight. My nickname in elementary school was "The Pillsbury Dough Boy." In high school I [...]
Squat depth is controversial. It's been a hotly debated topic since I started lifting weights in 1998. How deep is deep enough? Is there such a thing as too deep? Is squatting deep bad for your knees? If you don't squat deep enough does it "count"? There are so many questions and often times they [...]
