College is a wonderful place. It’s the transitional phase between being nestled securely at home close to your mother’s teat and being thrust out into the real world, which I can assure you, is an awful place once you truly appreciate your time in college. Although college is prototypically shown as being the haven for drunken debauchery, deviant sexual escapades, and occasionally learning, it can also be a breeding ground for getting stronger.

You might be thinking to yourself right now while imagining your college weight room, “How the hell am I going to get stronger here of all places?” The answer isn’t a short one, and it is completely dependent on your attitude, how hard you work, and what your goals are. In order to help you achieve what it is you seek to accomplish, I have laid out some rules and best practices for the college lifter.

#1 Find a gym

If you can find a gym like Westside, Big Iron, or Tampa Barbell near you, consider yourself the luckiest man in the world and piss on Lou Gehrig’s grave. This is out of the picture for 98 percent of college lifters because finding a powerlifting-friendly gym within 25 miles of you is almost always unheard of. What options does this leave? A commercial gym is one option, but if you are like 93 percent of those 98 percent who don’t live near a powerlifting gym while in college, you barely have enough money to get your text books much less pay $39 a month for treadmills and tanning. What does this leave? Your school’s “fitness center” or “recreation building.” This can prove not to be such a bad thing. Just keep reading.

Another option, although frowned upon by campus administration and others, is to simply use the athletic facilities. I have bartered with custodians, helped trainers, and seduced female administrators in order to get access to football weight rooms, and it was well worth it. Your school’s athletic weight room might not have a monorack or a Monster Mondo hack squat, but it usually will have better equipment than your campus recreation weight room.

#2 Get on a schedule

Your classes don’t begin when you want, and if you have tried to write a paper an hour before it’s due, you know that your brain doesn’t always function on command. Your body does better on a schedule. This works to your advantage in college, especially in a college weight room. You know what time your classes start and finish and you know what time your weight room gets busy. Plan your workouts around class and around “rush hour” in order to avoid waiting behind someone doing jumping jacks in the squat rack (it has happened.) Getting on a schedule will let you know how much time you have to train. It will also make your training more effective because you know every moment that you’re in the gym counts.

#3 Become thrifty

You want all the equipment and accessories that you need to make your lifting easier and more effective. You also want to eat lunch and maybe have some cash to pick up some Natty Light and possibly a book off the “recommended” reading list for class. This is where being thrifty can make or break your training.

If you need gear, scour the usual forums. Visit Go Heavy/Outlaws/Fortified Iron to find gently used items and then get them tailored (very cheap to do.) If you need boards and changing light bulbs is hard for you, go to Home Depot or Lowes and have them cut them to the right length for you. All you need then is nails. Bands are a different story, and you will almost always have to pay full price for them. Luckily, EliteFTS.com usually has a 25 percent off sale on these, making it cheap and easy to pick up the bands you need. Always buy supplements online because in-store prices are ridiculous.

#4 Get motivated

The college years are the ones where you will feel the most youthful. Even at 22-years-old and two years out of college, I feel like I’m broken down. Knowing that you will never be as youthful and energetic again, do what Robin Williams said—“Carpe the weights.” There are so many articles published either on EliteFTS or other sites about how best to get motivated for lifting. Really attempt to put this into practice. Think about each lift and each repetition and how pushing through it will make you a better, strong(er) lifter.

Do whatever it is that motivates you to get into the gym and utilize your time wisely. Maybe it means lifting before class or maybe it means lifting after class. Maybe it means that you will lift while listening to Taylor Swift. Whatever gets you motivated to train to your full potential is perfect for you. Fuck everyone else.

#5 Know your limitations

The lack of equipment in a gym, the lack of funds in your bank account, and the lack of time will almost always seep their way into your training at some point. Knowing how you are limited is very important and should not necessarily mean that you can’t accomplish your goals. I have never worked out in a gym that has a reverse hyperextension machine. Very few gyms that I have worked out in have had a monolift, a glute ham raise, a competition bench, or even a rack with a place to attach my bands. None of this has meant that I throw my training plan away and devote myself to step aerobics and jazzercise. It just means that you find other exercises and other ways of doing something to get by. Necessity is the mother of all invention, and strength is the biggest necessity.

I acknowledge that these five rules/steps/tokens of advice have been fairly broad. They are intended to be. I have trained for bodybuilding, powerlifting, mixed martial arts, competition kickboxing, capoeira, basketball, football, golf, and a host of other activities. Although not professional at any of the aforementioned activities, I have seen the culture of dedication that accompanies each. Without a plan for how to attempt any of these activities and the training that accompanies them, you are destined to fail. Make the best of your college years. Make them your starting point for strength.

Elite Fitness Systems strives to be a recognized leader in the strength training industry by providing the highest quality strength training products and services while providing the highest level of customer service in the industry. For the best training equipment, information, and accessories, visit us at www.EliteFTS.com.