Osteoblasters Update
by Thom Van Vleck
A digital bulletin board on the campus of A.T. Still University advertises the upcoming Still Magazine. Our campus lifting club is featured and we made the cover no less!
I’ve share information before about the lifting club I started on campus. We continue to grow and make progress. We hold one or two workouts every day except Sunday. We are one the youngest, yet largest, club on campus. We provide supervision to over 200 workouts every week! While I am the staff adviser the growth and leadership have come from within the club. To be honest, I feel like I’m showing my age!
Thom Van Vleck presenting a check to the Osteoblasters for volunteering at the Kirksville Scottish Games
When I first started this club I envisioned old school workouts. We would be doing lots of benches, squats, deadlifts….maybe some snatches and clean & jerks….the stuff I cut my teeth on 35 years ago. What has evolved is a group dynamic focused more on bodyweight exercises, lots of reps, fast paced, and less weight. Similar to the “Crossfit” stuff you see growing ever popular. I’m perfectly fine with that because it is leading to a new generation learning how to do snatches and clean and jerks and getting fit in the process.
The latest addition the club, a wall mounted lifting rack with chin up bars and roman rings.
Recently we were able to add a new addition, a wall mounted rack in the gym. This will allow us to do more squats, presses and jerks out of the rack, along with the rings and chin up capabilities. There are probably a hundred more uses that will come out of this addition and my hope is that if we get a lot of use out of it the Campus Center will be open to buying more equipment! They have been very generous so far and that has helped tremendously.
I am looking forward to 2015 and seeing where things go with the club. I hope perhaps we can host a lifting meet of some sort (maybe a USAWA meet). I know we will help more people achieve a greater level of fitness and I’m sure the club will do more community projects that will promote fitness. I has been a real pleasure working with these young people and the fact they are all on their way to becoming doctors or dentists makes it all the better!