Question your fitness philosophy

When you follow something for a long time, you think you understand it. You meet the people, you do the course, you ask the questions, you try to understand and you go away to do the practice. You think you’re doing it, or the closest that you can come to it. That might be true. It might not. When the whole thing turns about face and dives down an ego plated rabbit hole you have to wonder if what you structured yourself on was flawed, if your paths actually diverged a while ago without really realising it, or if the whole damn thing was just something to be cut away anyway.

Gym Jones. Mark Twight. Words and names that for a long time were pretty synonymous. Mark’s ideas about training and becoming more capable outside on the mountain were sharpened, distilled and fed into this entity that was Gym Jones. As an outdoors kind of person that hadn’t really seen the value of the gym I was entranced by the concept of increased performance and increased horsepower through hard and focussed work in the gym… and that it would go hand in hand with working at the thing that I loved doing- namely hillrunning.

Having bought and devoured “extreme alpinism” in the early 2000s, I had been attempting to follow the “Twight way” of doing things (if such a thing existed) for a number of years. It sounds a little cliched, but in the way Mark was looking at things, there really were no rules, except to question what you think you know- to keep progressing.

Look. Listen. Execute. Learn. Repeat.

The focus was that gymwork was simply a means to help you get better in your chosen sphere. This partnered with the understanding that- just as Bruce Lee wrote- by far the biggest limitation is not the physical- but the mental.

Yes, there was the whole “300” thing which made Gym Jones a household name in certain circles- mainly the “bros” network, and those that wanted washboard stomachs. When Mark finally came to the UK to do a seminar, I jumped at the chance to be there. Luckily it was just a short bike ride from where I lived, so I paid my money and went.
Nigh on everyone there was a gym goer- barely without exception. Anyone who was someone in the fitness industry was determined to get a piece of the 300 action. Then there was me, and a dude called Ben who was a climber, we were totally psyched to see and talk with Mark…

Through the weekend there was a tiny inkling of a doubt that everything we were doing, everything we worked on was for the benefit of people in the gym. There was not a lot of chatter about strength for power or for ability, but rather, simply for strengths sake. I put this aside as there was a LOT that I learned-  about how to question and think and get better -  so the inkling of thought disappeared and I immersed myself in getting better for my sport. Practice. Fail. Learn. Repeat.

The next time I saw Mark was a number of years later when a further seminar in the UK was planned. By now I was living up north, running a lot in the hills, I had a new job as a Physiotherapist and so it was a bit of a chore to get to London. However- I did.

This time round it was different. Yes, Mark was there, but it seemed like there was a further change in the emphasis from the original concepts. The first seminar was admittedly a massive Gym based orgy of bashing around- but if you could push the conversation towards fitness for “outdoor endeavour” then you might get some look in.

By this seminar, it was almost as if the phrase “the gym is not and never will be an end state” had never been uttered.
Everything that was looked at and mentioned was about performance in the gym. To me it was becoming a physical deadend. Ego’s were out, there was a lot of gym based “smashing it”. Having said that, there was still something to take away. Quiet and thoughtful conversations could be had, ideas about training that could be extrapolated to help hill fitness and strength in the mountains when you really need it. It was a good time, and was the last time I saw Mark.

I continued to train, I continued to run. A few pretty hard races came and went, and my indoor training continued to be informed by the older principles. There was, of course, much more work that could have been done, but at least I was not turning into a “running only” guy- just as much as I wasn’t turning into a “gym guy”. My training was done solo, just as runs and races are done solo. No ifs. No buts. No excuses. No-one to impress and no-one to distract.

2015 rolled around and we entered the Bryce Canyon Ultra- we were going to be in Salt Lake City for a couple of days- where Gym Jones was based. To say I was pretty psyched to have an excuse to head to the gym that I had been following for so long was an understatement. No, I wasn’t following the day to day stuff closely- they didn’t need to know what some random guy in the UK was up to, and the work that was going on there seemed a little detached from what I was doing-  but I got in touch and was cordially invited to train there on the final days of my trip. Amazing.

I also asked if there was anyone that might be able to advise me on a couple of places to run in the hills around Salt Lake. Apparently not. Wait. What?
Gym Jones- the centre for people that train hard to get better at doing things outdoors, and there was no-one who could advise me on a hill to run up?
Odd.


So I ran the race, did quite well and we found ourselves back in SLC. On the appointed day and time we went to the address and found the gym. I was a bit jittery- wow, actually here!
I was greeted by others in the gym and soon enough we were doing warm ups and other bits and pieces- as you’d expect, and then a full team based effort. Something about pulling a chain on a rope and sprinting etc. Our team lost.


There was a test, that seemed tailored to me. It was. I “achieved” the standard of getting a Gym Jones tshirt. Long coveted. It should have been an amazing moment, yet it felt empty.
Speaking to Lynne later on she said “they cheated, you know”.

I… What?

"They cheated. When you did the team vs team thing, the other team cheated. They did far less than you guys."

Things started to add up. I’d totally drunk the Kool Aid.

From my perspective the idea of Gym Jones was to work hard. No cheating. No cheat reps. No pretending. No getting out of doing the hard, hard work. Anything less than 100% honesty and integrity and you might as well not be there. It reflected back to “extreme alpinism”. If you cheat in training and end up in the shit on a mountain, there is only one outcome. Nature doesn’t forgive laziness or cheating in training. Cheat at training, cheat yourself. It suited my work ethic, it suited the way my mind and my training worked.

Yet, to be in *the* place- *the* gym and know there were shortcuts being taken shook me.
Not shook me to the core, you understand- yet that, along with other niggles I noticed, things were beginning to stack up.

In my limited interaction, I put GJ on a pedestal as a shining light, a beacon of excellence hardwork and commitment. In those first days, maybe it was, but as time goes on, even the brightest sword can become tarnished.
Cheat reps. Easily attained t-shirt. Focus on the gym. Massive disinterest in stuff in the hills. Driven by ego. This was not a place I was comfortable being, and was not the place I imagined it would be.

At the end I asked the question:- "When is Mark getting back?" The answer was an embarrassed shuffle and a chat in the corner. “Uh, Mark was getting a bit abrasive”. U-huh. Well that’s kind of his thing… right? “People were getting tired of being on the website- kinda Cat2 and Cat1 racers getting called out for not trying hard enough, being told they were a bit shit, when in fact they’re faster than him”.... And I was thinking….

Uh- is that it? I mean, that’s kind of the deal. Isn’t this place about trying to be better, not being satisfied? Always asking what could be better and being aware that even if you *think* you’ve made it, there is always something to sharpen...there is always *something else* to burn.

I was listening to complete bullshit.

So I listened. Nodded. Turned and left. Bitter taste in my mouth.

What to do?

We went home, I kept the t-shirt- it doesn’t get used much, it’s a reminder of a hard truth of when what you believe in gets taken over, commercialised and turned into bullshit.


What does get used is the old, original text from the very first symposium. It sits alongside the Tao of Jeet Kun Do and a couple of other texts on my shelf. No, it is not the ultimate training document. No, it does not tell me how to do everything, but it reminds me that it is better to think, to question, to wonder and to rebel against that which seems to be gospel. Do I question it? Hell yes. What is a document there for but to be questioned?

Now what?

I don’t look at the website anymore. I don’t read anything about it. Mark has his own podcast and I listen to that instead. I don’t really interact as I just don’t feel...I dunno, is the word “worthy”? Who knows.

Listen. Learn. Be as skeptical as possible. Hold yourself up to the mirror and be honest about what you see. No audience to pander to. Only one thing to be responsible to- the highest judge there is, nature.