Atlas’s Gym Culture

-Matthew Cavalier

If you’re someone who is looking for a gym for your own training, then it’s important to know that gym culture is very important. The culture will often dictate whether or not you will enjoy your training environment. If you’re in a gym that has a positive and thriving gym culture, you are much more likely to reach your goals and plow through them. Here at the Atlas Strength Shop, we take pride in our own gym culture.

Everyone who has joined Atlas was looking for something a little different than what you might find in a commercial gym. Sure, big box gyms have a lot of upside to them, but they definitely lack a sense of community. At Atlas, we do our best to bring people together. One of the best ways  we do that is through our Strongman Saturday. Saturdays are reserved for comradery. It’s a day when a lot of our members will get together and train. Throughout the week, we’re all pretty busy living our lives and taking care of our responsibilities. Strongman Saturday gives us the chance to be social with each other. Not only that, it gives us a chance to pick each other’s brains, especially when competition preparations are happening. The less experienced and younger members can spend time with the more seasoned members, and get some constructive feedback on what they’re doing. It’s also a great day for newcomers to come to test the waters. There’s usually quite a few experienced members there to help them out. We will also see out of town people who have heard of us and want to come check us out. Either they want to train in our gym, or we have something that will help them prepare for their next competition. We also support each other for local competitions. If you’re a member of Atlas and you’re competing in a competition, you can usually bank on someone being there to support you. Everyone at Atlas just wants to be better. We’re doing the best we can to get stronger and be better athletes. If you have those same goals, then Atlas is a great place to be.

Atlas is also great because of its energy and enthusiasm towards training and competition. We don’t like the soft and quiet atmosphere. We like the air to be electric and the room to be noisy. The stereo is almost always blaring, and the weights and barbells are clanging. Chalk is being used generously, and the grunts are loud. We’re here to move some heavy ass weight, and the only way to do that is with intensity. Why should we not be excited about doing something we want to do? It’s fun to hang out with your buddies and lift weights, so why not be excited about it? We’re also really good at sharing our knowledge. We all remember what it was like to be a beginner in the gym, and it was pretty intimidating. We aim to make sure that anyone who comes to visit us, whether a newbie or an experienced old trimer, can enjoy our passion and enthusiasm for what we do.

Something else that is unique about Atlas, is that we don’t necessarily cater to one specific niche in strength training. We welcome strongmen/strongwomen, powerlifters, crossfitters, highland games athletes and olympic weightlifters. We’re basically a bunch of nerds for strength sports, and if you have something unique to show us, we want to see it. The best part is, we probably have all of the equipment necessary for you already on hand. With a large selection of barbells, specialty bars, strongman implements and other all kinds of strength building equipment, we have a toy for just about everyone.

Everyone who’s a part of the Atlas Strength Shop is here because they want to be a part of something special. Anyone can sign up at a corporate gym, pop on their headphones and workout, but we want to be more than that. We take pride in our community, and we want to grow it even more. We’ve seen a lot of growth over the last year or so, and it makes me excited to see where we’ll be in the future.