That chalky basement gym

I trained for the Olympics in a basic basement gym at the Olympic Speed Skating Oval building out of the University of Calgary.

The gym at the Oval was not high-tech. They didn’t have the newest gear or the finest equipment, at least not in the years I trained there, from 2003-2010. It was a high-performance gym, sure, with the bones of anything we needed. But otherwise, it was simple. 

The gym, situated right next to the track, was not shiny or slick. It wasn’t a recruiting mecca, designed to lure in the best athletes, like in American Universities. They had three Olympic lifting platforms, five squat racks, three benches, a full dumbbell rack (all the way up to 150 lbs!) and a few glute-ham machines. Functionally, that was it for us.

It was chalky. It was basic. It was almost Rocky in Rocky IV. And I loved it. 

The gym had what we needed, and that’s all that mattered. The lifting platform wasn’t impressive, but it did the trick. We could come in, do our squats and cleans, get the workout in, and leave. It was all part of a finely tuned machine in the pursuit of excellence. 

And, in the pursuit of excellence, minimalism is a feature, not a bug.

I’m certainly not the only elite athlete to have trained in a relatively simple, low-fi environment. (Look at someone like marathon world record holder and two-time gold medalist Eliud Kipchoge, for example. His training methods and environment remain incredibly simple and involve running on the roads of Kaptagat, Kenya.)

What I loved about training at the Oval was that it forced us to focus on exactly what was important, which was: doing the work. There was no pretense that slick, ultra-modern equipment would make us better. Only we could make ourselves better. 

Even then, part of me recognized a simple truth that has become a driving principle in my life: You gotta do the work. 

All the tools in the world are just tools. 

Ultimately, you are the one holding the tool. You are the one choosing what to do with it.

That goes for anything you want to improve in your life. Whether you want to improve your athletic performance, your leadership skills, your relationships, your mental health, your physical health, your parenting skills, anything you can think of, you gotta do the work.

The good news is that doing the work can be simpler than we think. Some people shy away from taking ownership for personal change—they want to outsource the responsibility, take it off their shoulders and make something else, whether that’s a device or another person, responsible—ownership can actually make things a lot easier. It puts the responsibility for change in our own hands. 

When we realize this simple truth, that only we are responsible for our change, we also realize we don’t need to wait. Change can be relatively simple. Not entirely simple, but relatively so—often more than we think. 

You don’t need to wait until you can afford to renovate your house and build a fancy home gym to start working out. You don’t need to wait until your colleagues or staff members change their attitudes or personalities to enjoy going to work. You don’t need to wait until you sell your company or you retire to start enjoying life. It can be done now. 

For the record, I’m not against fancy gyms or the use of helpful tools. Tools are great, whether they are habits you practice, systems you rely on, medication you take, or your favorite pair of running shoes. The trick, though, is to never confuse the tool with the act of taking accountability and doing the work itself. 

A tool isn’t a replacement for the work and, honestly, I would never want it to be.

- Steve