About GarageDadFitness

Balancing work and life is complicated enough. Trying to stay healthy and fit can be a daunting task, especially when you aren’t travelling to a local gym. Hopefully, the information on my site will aid in not only building out the version of a home gym that will work with your space and budget, but also provide free workouts and advice that work within your gym and time.

My Story

I’m fortunate in that for the majority of my life, I was involved in sports. I discovered CrossFit after college in 2008, beginning with doing the workouts on their website in a local gym, watching videos on my new Blackberry. Eventually I begin working out at an affiliate, then part time coaching, then a short foray into full time coaching. All of this was easy to navigate with an understanding girlfriend, fiancé, then wife.

The big change came in February 2015. As any dad will tell you, it’s by far the most rewarding experience there is, and it’s a full time job. You willingly sacrifice a lot of your time to this endeavor, sometimes unwillingly as well.

I fell into that category. Late nights at the gym were over. Spending an entire weekend day working out, over. With my wife’s work schedule, I did the pickup at the end of the day, and it would be the two of us alone for 2-3 hours. By that time, if I hadn’t worked out yet, I sure as hell wasn’t at all.

I was fortunate to have my own home and a garage filled with junk. I begin to assemble a home gym, piece by piece. I had done programming for years: I wasn’t short on ideas of what to do, but the logistics, lack of equipment, lack of focus, and lack of that magic word again, time, made it frustrating and counterproductive.

I finally came to some realizations:
1. The way I trained before was gone
2. I wasn’t willing to make the sacrifices to my family to make #1 come back
3. I had to be OK with my new way of training

I finally came to some realizations:
1. The way I trained before was gone
2. I wasn’t willing to make the sacrifices to my family to make #1 come back
3. I had to be OK with my new way of training

I began to focus on what I COULD get done, based on time domains, equipment, space and that day’s energy, and started creating workouts that were still constantly varying, high/medium/low intensity, functional and effective. I borrow ideas. I scale. Sometimes, I call audibles halfway through. I keep track of what I have done, what I’d like to do, and what I need to do. I haven’t invented anything new, I just made something that works for me.

Venice Beach, CA