The PEIF

During my undergraduate college years, I spent the summers training at Bianco’s Fitness Center back home and the school year training at the PEIF. The PEIF was Northern Michigan University’s student gym, the Physical Education Instructional Facility. Basically, the PEIF was awesome, and my day was not complete until I got over there at least once, but more often than not I started and ended my day at the PEIF. The PEIF was set up with an upstairs balcony area full of cardio equipment. One side of the cardio area looked into the Olympic-sized pool and diving boards, while the other side looked out over a well-equipped weight room, two basketball courts, and an indoor rock climbing wall. There were racquetball courts down a separate hallway that led to the volleyball team’s modest arena. There was another enclosed hallway that led to the Superior Dome where the football team played. There was open access to the Dome at just about any time of day, and on cold winter mornings I used to go run laps on the concourse that looped around the football field. These facilities were all right on the shore of Lake Superior, so there were a lot of cold winter mornings. I wish I had logged how many hours I spent at the PEIF during my four and a half years in Marquette, because I took full advantage of everything they had to offer. The weight room was pretty solid and featured a few really beefy squat racks, more dumbbells than I ever needed, and a bunch of really good plate-loaded machines.

Big John was my randomly assigned roommate my freshman year at NMU. It turns out, Big John was the Michigan high school superheavyweight powerlifting champion his senior year. At 18, Big John was about 6’1” and weighed 330. He was a certified brick shithouse. Big John had an ass the size of a mid-sized automobile, walked in a way that you could tell his hips and legs were powerful as hell, and sported an upper back and traps that told everyone he was strong. One time, Big John and I were walking across the dorm parking lot on a cold snowy night. This girl was having trouble getting her car out of the spot because of the slippery surface and some asshole kind of blocking her in by parking next to her all crooked. Big John simply walked to the back of this girl’s car, squatted down to secure his arms under the rear end, and lifted the car while walking sideways a few steps until the car had plenty of space to back out of the spot. I just kind of stood there like an idiot wondering what I had just seen. I remember the first time I went to the PEIF with Big John. We were going to do some squats, and Big John had brought an old belt and some of those loose white-with-red-line knee wraps. I think I got up to 225 that night, but Big John just kept stacking on plates. By the time 495 was on the bar, Big John was sitting on a nearby bench wrapping his knees and whispering to himself. This was way different than anything I had seen at my high school, so I was really paying attention. Big John got up to the bar, aggressively got it set on his back, walked it back, and nailed what looked like an easy set of five. He racked the bar and turned right back into his friendly self. It was a sight to behold. I always knew that during sports, my adrenaline would get going and I could be pretty fearless, but for some reason, it had never occurred to me that someone could be that way in the weight room too. Lessons were learned that day. Big John was the teacher, and I was the (kindergarten) student. Big John and I used to call going to lift, “Pick it up. Put it down.” At the end of the day, that’s all it is, but isn’t doing that repeatedly the best damn thing a person could for him or herself? If you don’t believe me, give it a try. Stick with it long enough to feel yourself get stronger, even just a hair. I promise you will be hooked.

My buddy Igor and I used to go over there in the morning before classes started. We’d get up around 6:00 AM, trudge out to one of our vehicles, scrape off the inevitable snow and ice from the windows and doors, and drive to the PEIF. On the way over there we’d blast music in the car to get excited for the coming workout. We entertained ourselves by singing along to “Air Force Ones” by Nelly and “‘Til I Collapse” by Eminem. Of course, I always had to fast forward through the first 30 seconds of “‘Til I Collapse” while explaining to Igor that there was too much fucking around at the beginning of the song. Most mornings I would have the hood up on my sweatshirt with a tuft of curly hair sticking out the front. Igor called this my bonnet and would sit in the passenger seat of my Blazer giggling the whole way. Once we got to the PEIF, we would pull our jackets and sweatpants off and leave them against a wall that ran along the weight room. They had locker rooms, but pretty much everyone just left their stuff in piles along the wall. One time Igor pulled his sweatpants off and it took him a good 10 seconds and getting one shoe back on to realize he had forgotten to put his gym shorts on and was standing out in the open in his underwear. Finally he looked down and said, “Mark, what am I doing?” and quickly slipped back into his sweatpants.

Igor and I didn’t really train together when we were at the PEIF. He would kind of go do his own thing and I would be focused on my body part split. I hate to admit that at this point in my life, I wasn’t squatting or deadlifting at all. Sure I always, “Did legs,” but after a knee surgery in high school and some tendinitis over the summer caused by walking 10+ miles a day at my job, I had convinced myself that squatting wasn’t a great idea. It took me years to realize the error of my ways, but I’ll get to that another time. I worked hard at what I was doing, and the PEIF was a great playground for training. I would hit every body part from every angle I could think of while trying to apply stuff I had read in Muscle and Fitness and other bodybuilding magazines. The squat racks were nice and tall, and I could comfortably do pull-ups even at 6’7”. There were a couple really jacked guys that would train in there. Francois was this black dude who was working on his masters degree in English. He had a really classic bodybuilding physique with a nice v-taper and thick muscle bellies. In my mind, I was doing all the same exercises that Francois was doing, but at 185 pounds, I damn sure didn’t look like Francois.

This one night, a couple years later, a bunch of friends were hanging out in the dorm room Igor and I occupied at the end of the hallway., and these two girls who lived down the hall said they wanted to come to the PEIF with us the next morning. Igor and I were trying to be nice so we said that was fine, but that we were leaving from our room at 6:00 AM. Well, 6:00 AM came the next morning and the girls were nowhere to be found. Now, Igor is a much nicer guy than me, and I wasn’t having this late stuff, so I insisted we leave without them, and we did. The girls came walking into the PEIF at about 6:30 AM giving Igor and me death stares. I told them they were late so we left, but they were pissed. Later that night, I saw them walking down our dorm hallway, and I told them I needed to talk to them. I explained to them that going to the PEIF early in the morning was my time. It was a sacred part of my day when I could quit stressing about school and the other crap I always worried about and just be alone with my thoughts and the process of making my body stronger. Everything melted away when I was in the weight room, struggling to lift a weight and occasionally achieving lifts I had never before managed. Physics exam? Paper coming due? Lesson planning for a math class when I was student teaching? It all melted away when I was in the weight room. Fifteen plus years later and the weight room still has the same effect on me. It is my sanctuary, my temple, and my favorite place in the world. I have found it is impossible to worry about some mundane life event when I have a bar on my back and am fighting through a set of squats. I don’t want to be distracted when I’m in the weight room. I don’t need my phone or someone chatting about silly, everyday bullshit. I just want to get after it for a while and not have to pretend to care about whatever the hell someone is trying to tell me.

Mornings at the PEIF were for lifting, but I often went back in the afternoon/evening to play pick-up basketball. One of my favorite movies growing up was “White Men Can’t Jump.” I loved how in that movie these guys had courts where they could just show up and find a big group of guys with whom they could play ball and compete against. Well, the PEIF was sort of my version of that, except rather than being on a sunny court overlooking the beach in Venice, California, it was in a student gym in the frozen tundra of Marquette, Michigan. Fortunately, the banter and ball busting was top notch and on par with the movie, and everyone had a nickname…Dell, Skeeter, In His Face, Don, KMart, Twiz, Red, Loonsfoot, Hood Rich (not to be confused with Big and Rich), Big Larry, Little Larry, Finn Power, and many more.

There was this half wall that ran along one side of the court where everyone sat while waiting for their turn to play. Somehow, strict rules got established about the winning team staying on the court, calling next, getting your team of five together, calling fouls, and keeping score. There was always an argument, always two people about to fight, and it was never boring. One time this guy got kicked out because he took the ball and punted it into the balcony cardio area and hit some woman running on a treadmill. Later that night, the same guy got arrested for accidentally punching a cop in a melee outside of a bar in downtown Marquette. I’d say he had a pretty solid day. I ended up playing intramural flag football and basketball with some of the guys I met at the PEIF. It could be a real shitshow, but we always had fun. The below picture is my flag football team, The Knockout Kings, from my second or third year at NMU. If you’re wondering why there are belts in the picture, it’s because NMU is an official Olympic training facility, and several boxers lived and trained on campus. After winning the flag football league, they busted out their belts for the team photo. My friend Mike insisted that this picture was photo-shopped because I look sort of out of place standing there in the background. The term, “One is not like the others,” comes to mind. But those guys were a great group and we had a blast.

I also played a ton of racquetball at the PEIF. I got into racquetball when I was home for the summer after my first year of college. My buddy Hammer introduced me to it and I got hooked immediately. In my second year at NMU, I had a racquetball class for a PE credit. It turns out one of the assistant hockey coaches was the instructor and the rest of the class was made up of hockey players. NMU is a small school, but plays Division I hockey. These guys were really good athletes and pretty hilarious to be around. I played the instructor several times and he destroyed me. I stuck with it and got much better over the years, but I never got to play him again once I got mildly competent at the sport.

The PEIF will always have a special place in my heart because I spent so much time there during my formative college years. I made some great friends and had a community of people that I met when I moved away from home for the first time. Naturally, I was closer with some than others, but we all knew each other and had each other’s back in a lot of different situations over the years. Seven years after joining the PEIF for the first time my freshman year, I was wearing the free t-shirt I got when I asked my wife out for the first time. Maybe that shirt gave me the confidence to take a leap that day many years later. It’s been almost a decade since I’ve been back to Marquette and even longer since I’ve been to the PEIF. Maybe I’ll get back there for a lift one of these summers. I’m damn sure not going back there in the winter.