March 23 and a pause for a shout out.

I can just make out the name of Kanye West on the Cup ... ;)

I don't do these shout outs nearly enough, to be frank. It's usually a chance for me to get a workout done and do some writing about things that work and things that I can see being positive.

What could be better than that?

I got to train today at the Wayne Gretsky Centre in Brantford, Ontario. I was there for an event two of my children was participating in and I had a few hours on my hands, so I brought my stuff to get things done. Well, I brought most of my stuff. I had to buy a tee shirt to work out in at the facility. So now I have an XL tee that says "Synchronized Swimming West Region." I looked awesome in it.

In the end, it was a city run centre, so there was lots to appeal to many people. Hockey arenas, lots of gyms and two pools, and at least two weight rooms. The one I went into, pictured on the right, was a haven, at least for a bit.

It had cardio machines, and a free weight section, along with two or three squat racks and weight machines. A nicely tricked out centre, done with public money. It was clean and well kept and safe. A few older people were in the gym, along with one or two meaheads and a few people who needed a safe place to shed a few pounds. Nothing to really turn me off of the place, but I still like working out at my house the best.

I started on one of the three nice Concept II rowing machines, and got at least a kilometer done in the 5 minutes I'd wanted to use to just get warmed up.

Well, let me give you the workout I did:

5 minutes on the rowing machine

then for four rounds:
 8-10 seated bench overhead presses 35lb x 2 db used
lying flies 35 x 2 db used
bench row 35 lb db used
seated knee tucks

then did four rounds of
6-8 deep squats - about 90 lbs on the bar. Nothing special.
10 hanging knee tucks with the odd hanging leg raise to mix things up.

In any case, I liked the place. I had about 50 minutes to get this done, and in that time, had no one cop an attitude or act like an idiot in front of me. It would have been better with a few more squat racks and few less cardio machines, but I was there on a Sunday morning. Perhaps on a Saturday morning, there are a lot more people. Still, a community centre that has staff that cares is always a positive.

I'd go back for sure.