TRAINING Q & A - Small Town Gym

Q: I just moved to a really small place in the U.S. It seems like a corner store, a movie theatre and a lot of farmland are all this place is going to offer me while I'm working as an engineer on contract for a year. There is a gym in town, but it's a joke - it's all machines and a few dumbbells. Do you think it's possible to keep what you have of your physique, with very little to work with?

A: Yes! It's a great question, too, because it's often cited as one of the biggest excuses, when really, the real culprit is that people aren't willing to work with what they've got, so they don't and then blame it on a lack of resources. What a cop out. Would it be better to find yourself in Gold's Gym in Venice everyday? Sure. But you aren't there, you're in Mo-Fo, Iowa, or wherever, and you have what you have. Don't think you can't get anything off machines, you can. You will also find that you can really get more out of workouts than you may be used to getting, at even lower weights, because you'll invariably focus more on strict form - what else have you got there?

Form is everything, so it'll probably be a good visit back to your "old school" roots. But the machines today, if this gym has fairly decent ones, are pretty well engineered. They aren't like the machines of the 70's. They are ergonomically correct today, so the right angles are there, it's up to you to put the workload onto the muscle using these angles. But we always think it's great to have to get creative with workouts on occasion too, so we think that you'll start doing donkey calves with someone on your back, you'll start to do more chins with weights strapped to your waist, and dips with a plate on your midsection, and all of those things you haven't done in so long because equipment was handed to you on a silver platter. If you have a good set of cables, you'll have stations for triceps, back, biceps, chest and shoulders. If you have a good few basic machines, such as even an archaic t-bar row, or a good calf machine, and some benches, dumbbells, and plates, what's lacking? Let us know how you're doing. We bet if you write back in 6 months, you'll have some great stories. Now buckle down and eat like a monster and do everything by instinct. You probably won't want to leave.