If you’ve read my previous posts, you have seen the progression from my spare bedroom to s3. The office and warehouses for s3 and s4 stayed the same.
We had to get out of s3 because the propane heat bill was no joke. Between the rent, heat and the grass cutting, it was very poor research on my part.
There was a lumbar yard that was right next to our warehouse. It was all the same strip. They wanted to downsize, so we met with the landlord about taking 8,000 more square feet and worked out the details on who would pay for the walls, electric, heat, lights, etc. It was open storage, but we only needed a weight room in which we could toss a heater and a door that would lock.
We ironed this out very fairly and easily and agreed to extra years on our rental agreement. We would not have bathrooms or water, but it wasn’t a commercial gym; it was private, as it always has been. While we were in the same location, there were actually four buildings.
When the door was hung, the building owner stuck s4 on the door because it was the fourth storage unit in the strip. This is when we started to embrace the name.
We moved over the picture wall from the old gym and placed it above our painted wall logo. We painted the squatter dude on the other wall and strong(Er) on the floor. The exact same flag we used for our National Powerlifting meets and every gym we were in before was hung on another wall.
After we moved in, we had a ton of space and picked up our seminar pace and donated everything we made from them to Make-A-Wish Foundation. We generated close to 300k over six or seven seminars (before we began to lose money on them). We're very proud of the elitefts staff and team for that!
After it was all set up, Jim Wendler looked at me and said, "You know, in a couple years we won’t be able to walk through here because of all the equipment you will pack in it." My reply was something like, "Not this time."
A few years later there was no way to walk through without cracking your shin on something.
I believe it was the fall of 09 when we moved the gym there and stayed until 2017.
That will be the story of s5.
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