“Bonecrusher”‘s Facebook

To everyone else who is a spectator, let me explain what’s going on:

Panther CrossFit was started last year by a group of guys who wanted to workout together. They used to workout in the facilities provided by the university. The university had some black “bumper” plates, rubber plates created for the sole purpose that they may be “safely dropped … See Morefrom above head height and as such are made from solid rubber” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbell).

Well, the details get murky here, but from what we understand, some faculty members were uncomfortable when we would perform CrossFit or even heavy olympic lifting, lifting that often requires weight to be dropped from above head, as it made too much noise in the general fitness gym. That’s understandable. The gym is a public area and, although to some (including myself) a quiet gym is an oxymoron, gym user’s opinions should be respected.

So they ended up moving the weightlifting platform (which was very generously donated to us) into a basement type of room that we were told was called “The Dirt Pit.” It was called this with good reason: the floor is covered with inches of dirt and who knows what else. (picture here: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_z-SN_O5JTtg/SvbWWPx_5eI/AAAAAAAADhQ/7AyguYMvyFg/s1600-h/11549_731076395023_14231035_41829796_6137814_n.jpg)

It seems the room was used as a “spare parts” storage facility. There were two problems with that room: 1.) The dust could aggravate some of our club member’s asthma (as one of our members with asthma quickly chimed in about), and 2.) The university wasn’t able to do any construction work because of “high levels of radon” in the room. Needless to say, we were not too optimistic about lifting here.

So we continued to workout at Trees because, quite frankly, we were not welcome anywhere else on campus. We attempted to work out at “The Pete,” another building on Pitt’s campus, but when doing deadlifts, a workout in which you grab the bar from the ground and lift it upward to just above knee and then set it down, was making too much noise. Whether this was from the intense nature of CrossFit workouts or whether we were being irresponsible with the weights (we weren’t, I promise you this) is irrelevant at this point, as we were threatened with forced removal from the gym by campus police. We never went back to the Pete.

We were then moved to a room in a building called “Bellefield.” The room, which we lovingly entitled “The Belle,” was situated on the third floor of the building above an aerobic/dance studio. When performing something like a deadlift (see above), the entire room below us would shake, dust would fall from the ceiling, and a very loud and definite “BOOM” could be heard. Mind you, these test deadlifts were done with relatively light weights compared to normal deadlift loads. The movement was controlled and slow. There was still a loud noise and much shaking in the room below.

It quickly became apparent that we could not work out when there were classes below the room because, once again, we’d be upsetting a large group of people, something we all wished to avoid. This was easier said than done, as there were growing pains adhering to the class schedule; some instructors came in early (15 minutes or so) while a workout was still taking place, some of our members would mistakenly go at a time when there was class OR would go when class wasn’t in session but half way through a workout, a class would enter. This was a mistake on our part and we owned up to it several times. Yes, several: we made this mistake multiple times. However, the most we could do was put up the schedule for classes on our club’s website (blog) and hope everyone in the club checked it before going.

We started to get smarter about when we’d go to the gym. But, sometime recently this summer, the ceiling in the dance room below us cracked, and, pieces of it fell (see picture here: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_sPqGkfZ-6V0/TBbYk0ZjcGI/AAAAAAAAAXc/PeS8y-ZgDA8/s1600/ceiling.jpg). Uh oh…

Whether the cracking was from us ENTIRELY or from (at least partially) a “problem with the pipes” as Zach mentioned above is, once again, not important. The part that’s important is it happened and we are being pointed towards as the wrong doers. As of now, we are attempting to do some damage control and trying to maintain a way for us to continue CrossFitting while still students at Pitt.