RIP Training Cessnock first opened on January 11th 2020. We had a big open day on a Saturday morning and we had lots of previous clients that I had coached at other gyms attend along with lots of new members, many of which who had never done CrossFit before or who were excited that an affiliate was finally opening in Cessnock.
I had only stopped coaching at both of the previous gyms I was working at on the 31st of December, just a week and half before the open day. For that 11 days from leaving my two part time jobs to when we first opened the doors to the public I went all in on getting the gym ready for the open day. I could not have done it alone and I had a tonne of help for many of the members of the gyms I had coached at and there’s no chance the gym would have even been ready by February without all of their help.
This story is about that week right before we opened and how it became the busiest week of my life.
If you remember 2020 and haven’t blocked it out of your mind then you probably remember 1 thing. COVID. But we are a couple months off that hitting just yet (that’s another story for another day). If you’re able to see back into the depths of your mind and remember things pre-Covid then you’ll recall that the summer of 2019-2020 was one of the worst bushfire seasons Australia has ever had. At some points it was like the majority of New South Wales was on fire. I was living at home in Greta at the time and we had already been evacuated once back in October. Also at this time I was also active in the Army reserves, which plays a big part in this story.
So a week out from the opening day and we are in full swing getting walls painted, mats down and equipment unpacked and built. We got a lot of this done on the weekend prior with help from all those legends I mentioned above. And then on Sunday afternoon, I got a phone call. Which was pretty rare, especially for a Sunday. The call was from my Army reserves unit saying that we need to pack our gear as soon as possible as may be deployed to help the bush fire effort within a day or two.
Oh no.
The most important week of my working life was coming up and now I might be getting called away? For a mandatory call up? This was something that hadn’t for the reserves in living memory. Like we would hear a lot in the next 18 months (cause of the Rona), this definitely was an “unprecedented event”.
So the next few days became a constant back and forth of going into base, packed dressed and ready to go whilst also trying to get back to the gym to keep getting things set up and ready. One of the most important pieces of the gym, our rig, still had to be installed and it wasn’t even fully ready to be put up! On Wednesday morning, I was again told to come into base, with everything packed, and that I might just have to go to Sydney for the initial briefings then I could be brought back up on Friday. I had a decision to make. I told my chain of command that I could not go. There gym would crumble before it even started if I had to leave for a month or more now. I just couldn’t leave, the timing couldn’t have been worse. This sucked because helping with national disasters was one of the big things that inspired me to join the reserves in the first place after seeing what they did when there was flooding in Queensland years before.
I had what was a pretty hard and scary conversation more than once as I kept getting referred to the next person up the chain. I told them if this meant that I would have to leave army then I would do it, that’s how important starting the gym was to me. Luckily, I had some fantastic people for my superiors and I was able to go, unsure about what the consequences would be in the future. Luckily for me it all turned out quite good and I continued my army time for a couple years afterwards.
So by Thursday I had some relief. I was staying. But the rig still wasn’t ready! We had only just gotten it painted on mounted to the wall a day or 2 before the open day and so naturally the first thing was did was chuck a barbell in the rack to test it out.
Oh no.
The rack was wider than the thin shaft or the barbell. The bar didn’t fit in the damn rack!! This was a mild disaster and almost a meltdown moment as one of the main attractions I had planned for the open day was to have some local athletes who I had coached at other gyms come and do a lifting showcase and the racks were a necessity for squatting and pressing!
So the guy I hired to build the rig had to scramble and we were able to fix the size of the rig but what we had also noticed when first testing it out was that the J-hooks didn’t fit all the way into the holes! Another drama. With no option to return and re-order J-hooks in time we (by we I mean Ethan) grinded down the pegs of the J-hooks so they would fit. If you come to the gym you’ll still see some of these J-hooks that look like a big toe in unit 1.
My memory of the order of all of these events isn’t super clear but what I do remember is that we didn’t get it all done before the open day. Maybe it was the spacing of the rig or potentially the J hooks but I do remember that I change the lifts for the lifting showcase as we couldn’t use the racks. It felt like a big drama at the time but it wasn’t really and everything still went well on the day.
So we finally got the Saturday and it was great day and we then opened for our first group class on Monday at 5am on the 13th of Jan 2020.
I’d forgotten about how hectic that week was for a while but it’s weeks like these that give you perspective to get through the other hard weeks.
