My name is Cali and I live with my husband on the Gold Coast. I like to save, restore, and customise preloved fitness gear.
I have collected entire carloads of exercise equipment. During this process I discovered just how often weight plates & barbells were heading to the scrap metal yard or worse yet, to the dump!
I couldn't allow these perfectly good barbells to be crushed, compacted and recast into something like a kitchen sink, a pair of scissors or a paper clip!
I decided to fix that and salvage the weights, rescue the dumbbells, free the barbells, spare the power racks and save GYM from the landfill.
I have trained at many gyms, calisthenics parks & personal training studios around Australia and Asia over the past 15 years. I kept up my fitness routine while staying in hotels, apartment buildings, airports & even cruise ships.
I got to see what it was like to train in countries like Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia & Malaysia. Completing sessions at some of Asia's best and worst sports centres, universities, schools, parks & campgrounds.
I visited Thailand’s most exclusive sports training facility and some of the worst slum like gym studios Phuket had to offer. I’ve been hunted by a pack of wild dogs while training at an outside GYM & had the experience of running on treadmills while the GYM owners cooked a very smoke-filled meal right beside me.
I had the pleasure of using equipment that was so old you'd wonder how it was functional when it was new. I even discovered an abandoned roof top street workout training area at an old beat-up Thailand GYM.
I’ve trained with loads of fitness equipment over the years rotating through many different styles. I've tried body weight vests, bands, ropes, barbells, curl bars, fitness mats and bought one of the very first portable pull up racks.
I have tested out old school Gym equipment and the latest. The real deal and the fakes. The overpriced and the underrated. From power racks, cable systems, bodyweight training gear, home GYM set ups and endured some of the best and the worst fitness spots on earth.
Over the years I have developed an idea of which fitness equipment should be saved and which gimmicks should continue with their final destination to the garbage dump!