McDole's Gym

We’ve reached roughly the mid­point of the Xplode Foot­ball Off-Season Strength and Con­di­tion­ing pro­gram and we’re over­due for an update.

To begin we’ve made a notice­able change, which is our new loca­tion at 181 Strad­brook Ave. A 10,000 sq foot facil­ity with over 6000 sq feet ded­i­cated to train­ing space… a tad larger than the 1200 we made work for us last year. Within the space is fresh turf going a total of 65 feet and any return­ing ath­lete can tell you it’s our tough­est turf we’ve worked on yet.

Another “big” change some of you may have noticed is the addi­tion of for­mer Win­nipeg Blue Bomber offen­sive line­man Matt Sheri­dan. Matt came to us in the win­ter and offered to help us in any way we could pos­si­bly use him. With years of train­ing and foot­ball under his belt it didn’t take long for us to ask Matt to help us run Xplode this year. Matt as worked under some very good strength coaches in the past, as well as along­side other impres­sive ath­letes. One of Matt’s biggest strength is his abil­ity to relate and trans­fer knowl­edge to our young ath­letes. He can often be found tak­ing time between sets, between work­outs and after hours talk­ing to our ath­letes answer­ing ques­tions about train­ing, play­ing in the pros and who knows what else.

Another addi­tion for the Xplode team this off sea­son is our speed coach and res­i­dent moti­va­tional speaker Justin Phinisee. Justin was a four year starter for the Uni­ver­sity of Ore­gon Ducks and made var­i­ous stops in the NFL, includ­ing St. Louis, Dal­las, and Kansas City.

Last off sea­son Justin was referred to Xplode foot­ball by the Cal­gary Stam­ped­ers and began train­ing with us reg­u­larly. Before long he was show­ing up early for work­outs, and stay­ing long after they were over; but it’s not like Justin was sim­ply loi­ter­ing, instead he took it upon him­self to help instruct our younger ath­letes and be an extra set of eyes for us… with­out us ever ask­ing him to. He’s a nat­ural coach and not only does Phinisee bring a wealth of knowl­edge in the gym, espe­cially with Olympic lifts and speed train­ing, but he’s always open to ques­tions about his own career and will­ing to help our Xplode ath­letes who are look­ing to mar­ket them­selves down south.

So now, with the warm weather and dry fields we’re mov­ing one of our work­outs out­doors to inten­sify our speed train­ing and strongman/conditioning. As well we’ve just started another heavy strength build­ing phase and will be test­ing the guys’ bench press again in a few weeks, and we’ll be post­ing those results com­pared to the last two tests. Stay tuned not only for more Xplode updates, but updates on our other pro­grams as well as our ren­o­vated site com­ing soon.

So, another year has come and McDole is another year older thanks to Father Time, the one man McDole can’t make wait and con­vince he’ll “be there in 5″. And although he car­ries his age well, the times are start­ing to show:

He may not know or dress in the lat­est fash­ions anymore…

He might even be get­ting to the age when your bow­els say its time, you drop what you’re doing and go…

Chris has even slowed the lift­ing with age and taken up more cardio…

So even though his goa­tee, the root of his power, is start­ing to show a lit­tle more white…

Chris McDole still has his taste for blood and the urge to move for­ward with his busi­ness and training…

Some­how after start­ing McDole Per­for­mance Sys­tems, expand­ing with Pro(A) and Joint Effort, and now han­dling the move and expan­sion of McDole’s Gym, we’ll see what Chris McDole still has in him as he takes on a much larger space, 2 new part­ners and the pre­vi­ously noted signs of aging. I’m sure the man I look up to as a big brother, and men­tor, will be around for many years to look over all of us and keep us in line.

Boy I’m going to pay for this one…