Gimnacio California, My Kind of Gym

Bienvenido, loyal reader. Please join Bruce and Mary on a virtual tour of their favorite Meridano gym. As usual, for those of you who prefer to view these posts from the original blog-site (and see a couple of vids I was not able to embed on this site), please click here.

As most of you know, fitness has always been a big part of our lives. Back in the States we actually belonged to two Golds gyms, one where we lived in St. Cloud, MN and one where I worked, in the twin cities. Back then we were mucho mas joven, much, much younger than we are now and we lifted and did cardio nearly every day. Well now I do, do (always love to get a do do in) cardio M-F but we only lift one day a week, these days. So forgoing the five day split of our former lives, we cram everything into one full body workout, every Saturday. And here at California, a bodybuilders’ gym, is where we do it.

Gimnacio California is located at Calle 37, 60 y 62, Centro.

This is the view from the street, you can see the entrance in the far background.

Renan is our man. The drop in fee is 50P, the monthly membership is 300P each and this gym as with all gyms we have dealt with here, does not believe in discounted family memberships. So drop in, is the way to go for us.

Mary is executing the leg raise/hip thrust, a very effective ab exercise.

Here she is doing DB flyes, a nice chest isolation exercise.

Mary always bemoans the amount of weight she can rep on the bench press and I always remind her that back in my training days, I had very few female clients who could hoist just the Olympic bar.

Now it’s my turn to bench. I love this gym, it has everything that we need, machines, free weights, but it strangely has only one flat bench press station. But evidently this exercise is not a high priority down here as I am almost never aced out of my bench press.

I always like to do at least two movements for chest. Here I am on a very nice cable crossover machine.

Mary is doing squats on a modern Smith machine.

Here’s baldy doing pull-ups, still the gold standard in lat movements.

Mary is doing RDLs, Romanian Dead Lifts, one of the best hamstring exercises out there and a prime lower body movement for football players.

Mary on the leg extension machine, she is just hammering her legs today. There is a reason why she has the legs of a teenager.

This gym even has a Butt Blaster machine. This is a great tool for isolating the upper hamstrings and glutes. There is a reason Mary has the…. oops not going there.

I’m doing T-Bar rows, a great mid-back exercise.

I’m on the seated hamstring curl machine. I have finally admitted to myself that I can never do squats or RDLs again, in fact anything that involves hip flexion is out. I had hip surgery (torn labrum) about 10 years ago and I tried once again to get back to squats/RDLs a couple months ago and after a few weeks I thought I was in the clear but then, sure enough, after that last session, my hip flared to the point of making walking difficult. I quit those movements and now everything is fine, I must just simply live my life sin squats and RDLs.

I’m doing shrugs (for traps) at the squat rack station.

We leave the smaller muscles for the end of the workout when our energy is ebbing. Mary is doing biceps cable curls.

Mary is doing triceps press-downs.

They work fine, but the weight stack adjustment system on these machines is just plain odd.

Like all women her age, Mary is concerned about sagging upper arms. So she always really gets after triceps. She is doing bench dips here, one of the best triceps exercises around.

Jorge, the owner of Gimnacio California, speaks excellent English having lived for many years in, you guessed it, California.

On the back wall of the gym is the Wall of Fame, a photo gallery of bodybuilding greats.

Jorge and Arnold and other greats in their younger days on Muscle Beach.

We assembled some of our California gym buds for this congratulatory pic for Joe and Meryah for their wedding. This is Luis, Alex, Daniel (working the desk that day), and Antonio. As you can see, this gym is popular with some pretty serious lifters.

Thanks for visiting gentle reader. Now it is no secret to any serious lifter that it is important to get some protein and carbs into your system in that 60 minute window right after a training session. For that Bruce and Mary always head to to Lulus, their favorite Comida Economica, right around the corner. More on that next week. Hasta luego, amigos!