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YA H O O 7. C O M . A U / M E N S H E A L T H
M E N ’ S H E A L T H M AY 2 0 11
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I HAVE NO IDEA how much longer I’ll have to endure this pain. I’m so
disoriented that I can’t even remember where the vomit bucket is. And I
have a feeling I might need it. I’m no stranger to pushing myself out of my
comfort zone – I compete in powerlifting and have completed 100-kilometre
ultra-marathons – but on my 36th switch from a chin-up (chin over the bar) to
a push-up (chin to the floor), I’m struggling to dig deep. How many more
times can I pick myself up from the floor? My lats and arms are on
fire from the rowing and rope-lash components I’ve already completed. My
throat’s burning as I struggle to get enough air into my lungs . . . people I
don’t even know are shouting at me . . . where the hell is that bucket?
The floor on which I’m currently close to collapse belongs
to The Mill – not Australia’s most polished gym, but probably
it’s toughest. Tucked away off the Stirling Highway in North
Fremantle’s industrial zone, it’s not so much a health centre
as a factory floor where a work team will crush, grind and
process you into a complete fitness machine that not even
Chuck Norris would dare ride. Rather than mirrors – which
only serve to encourage ego – it’s up to your fellow “Millers”
to yell at you when your technique falters. There are no
televisions, either, because if you can spare that tiny part of
your brain’s attention required to concentrate on Lady Gaga’s
latest video, then you’re not working hard enough. Windows?
An extravagant distraction.
Fancy it ain’t, but that hasn’t stopped a long queue of
hopefuls forming for memberships. Soldiers, professional
fighters and athletes from all around the country are also
beating a path to The Mill’s metal garage door.
“Getting the job
done” at The Mill
with truck-tyre
relays, chalkedup tallies
and gung-ho
circuit workouts.
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MEMBERSHIP IS A PRIVILEGE
If this all sounds a bit militaristic, it’s because The Mill
– motto: “You Work, You Reap” – is the brainchild of SAS
soldiers from Perth’s Campbell Barracks who wanted to share
with us civilians their experience of the all-round fitness
they relied upon for survival. They don’t share with just
any civilians, though. Like the SAS, they reserve the right
to enforce strict requirements in order to maintain a high
standard and the desired attitude within the walls of The Mill.
YA H O O 7. C O M . A U / M E N S H E A L T H
“At the start of 2010, we did a count and only about
five per cent of people who enquired about training here
got through and became members,” says Nick, the gym’s
manager, who guards his last name because of continuing
connections to the SAS.
“About 90 per cent are weeded out at initial contact,”
he explains. “All those emails from guys who say that
summer is coming and they want to be able to see all their
abs – they’re the first to go. They’ve obviously never even
read our website.”
For applicants who get past the initial, gruff contact,
there’s the physical entry test. Its content is not advertised
and is variable anyway (for my test, see page 74). Participants
also have no idea that there’s an assumption that they’ll
finish in an allotted time limit. Of those who fail, or those
who have been identified as having the right attitude but
not the physical training, there is the option to be trained
up to prospectively become members. They will undergo six
weeks of initiation training to ensure that they can complete
all the exercises with correct form and have the base fitness
necessary so that they require minimum supervision and
do not slow down other members when they join the GAC
(general athletic conditioning) sessions.
Members can train at The Mill any time the gym is open
– a whiteboard on the wall tells them what they should do
that day – but they are also encouraged to book in for the
three weekly GAC sessions.
EVEN WHEN SOMEONE UPCHUCKS THEIR BREKKY, IT’S “YOU GET THAT ON THE BIG JOBS”
On this particular Friday at 6am, the GAC is filled with
10 people; nearly all have been training with The Mill for
between 12 and 18 months. The men have similar builds:
lean (most follow principles of the Paleo Diet, which shuns
processed foods and sugars in favour of natural and whole
foods) with stringy, athletic legs; thick upper backs and
chests; hard, slightly rounded shoulders; and heavy arms.
The two women have taut bodies a Hacky Sack would
bounce off of.
THE MILLERS WORK IN TEAMS
The roller door of The Mill’s loading-dock entry has been
opened to reveal the workspace, 180 square metres overseen
by “the foremen” in the upstairs office area. One side
is lined with chin-up bars, gymnastic bars and hanging
vertical chains. At the far end there is a row of “ergo” rowing
machines. Another wall has combat ropes attached to it:
huge, rough, heavy things as thick as your forearm. Other
equipment is stowed around the edges of the space: barbells
and weight plates, medicine balls, punching bags and sand
bags, and a couple of basic exercise bikes. That leaves a
large central arena for training and yelling at one another.
After a warm-up consisting of rowing alternated with
running an outdoor 200-metre road circuit, the session
starts to a blast of fit-inducing death metal likely to make
your ears bleed – designed, it seems, to panic the central
nervous system more than encourage a sing-a-long.
Although this is a trainer-led group session delivering
a program outlined on the whiteboard, it goes against
the whole grain of the traditional follow-the-leader-style
of gym group classes. At The Mill, the group is divided
into two teams, which change every session, with the
aim of creating a competitive environment that promotes
communication, respect and the humility that comes from
shared pain.
The session starts with one person from each team
doing as many 50-kilogram barbell clean and jerks (30kg
for the women; the only concession they get all session)
as they can in the time it takes a team-mate to row 500m.
By the third changeover, there are lots of wounded-bull
roars coming from the barbell department and, rather
than resting, the other team-mates are yelling in their
faces. Totals for metres rowed and “correct form” cleans
performed are hastily scribbled in chalk on the rubber-mat
floor. By the time this brutally demanding 12 minutes is
over, the down-on-hands-and-knees crash position is the
preferred recovery pose.
A similar pairing system works to alternate push-ups
with chin-ups performed with a full, arching swing (the
“kip”) that efficiently brings speed and momentum to the
movement and elevates the chest to the bar.
There’s a lot of talk about “getting the job done” and
“finishing the job”. Even when someone upchucks their
brekky, it’s “You get that on the big jobs”. The workout is
both a task to be completed in a set time and a duty to do
the right thing by your team-mates. Slacking off is not an
option – every single performance is later recorded on a
chart with your name that stays on the wall of the gym.
The next torture is a truck-tyre relay in which the
team members must flip a tyre, then jump into it and
out again, then go back round behind it, flip it again and
continue until they travel to the end of the gym floor and
back. Again, the point of difference from a normal
gym is the way that the resting team-mates interact;
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FITNESS TRAINING IS RARELY DONE IN A FATIGUED STATE, BUT THEN, REAL-LIFE CRISES
rather than walking off and having a drink or checking
the TV for the morning news during their short rest break,
they’re running up beside their mates and giving them the
full screaming gee-up. Amazingly, despite all the yelling
and straining, no-one is swearing – and there’s good reason
for that.
“We have a no-swearing policy because we require
clients to remain in control and maintain mental
discipline,” says Nick. “So if we think a client is making
excessive noise, we’ll go out and punish them. We’re trying
to promote an attitude where people are still thinking even
though they are really tired. When you’re under duress as
a special forces soldier, you still need to be able to think
clearly to get the job done.”
Finally, the cool-down is as indicated on the board: “light
walking as a group, stretching, general moving . . . and
heckling”. A big bloke named Carl takes the safe route and
starts on himself: “A friend paid me a compliment the other
day. He said, ‘You are strong like bull, smart like truck’.
He’s Russian.”
Group members have an obvious bond, since the drop-off
rate so common in other gyms is almost nonexistent here.
They talk about “earning their spot”, being “protective of
the group”. Like the SAS, there’s a sense of duty and family.
“If you come in here, your attitude has to change,” says
Carl. “You put it all on the line and never give up. Once that
attitude is in place, you start to bring that to other aspects
of your life and you’re bound to do well.”
“Yeah, if my kids are naughty, I make them do 10 burpees,”
nods another member, mock-seriously. At least I think
it’s mock-seriously. He continues: “At work, everyone gets
dragged to the bottom guy’s level, only doing what he does
because they don’t want to work any harder. Here everyone
tries their best and strives to be at the top guy’s level.”
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At the same time, group members are adamant that there
are no bigheads here, and a large part of the reason is that
no one person can be the best at every aspect of The Mill’s
training; some guys might be stronger, others are fitter and
everyone has their weakness.
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU DO, IT’S THE WAY YOU DO IT
The principles behind The Mill are not new. The key lies in
the way they are employed and the training environment they
create and protect. The training itself is similar to that used
by military forces and first-response teams throughout the
world – all of which seek to combine a focus on high-intensity
exercise, power production and weight manipulation. These,
in turn, share many movements and a training structure
that is similar to CrossFit, while Nick openly admits taking
inspiration from legendary American trainer Mark Twight,
the man who helped David Wenham muscle up spectacularly
for his role in 300. In fact, for a while, The Mill was the only
gym in the world getting referrals from Twight’s training
mecca, Gym Jones, in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The exercise principles used at The Mill may go against
the grain of traditional sports-exercise programming, but
traditional sports and body-building programs don’t help
bring an SAS soldier home or keep a first-response team
member safe. General fitness and sports training are rarely
done in a fatigued state, but then, real-life crises rarely offer a
structured rest period or consistent repetitions (“Forget about
the snipers, just run that rocket-propelled grenade up the hill
– stop after 30m, rest for 90 seconds, then go another 30”).
Many sports and gyms will tell you that different types of
energy systems are mutually exclusive, meaning only one is
active at a time. Their advice, for example, is to not do too
much endurance work because it will affect your strength,
or don’t go overboard with strength work because it’ll affect
RARELY OFFER A STRUCTURED REST PERIOD
your speed and so on. Research often backs up that equation:
training for endurance while training for strength (and
vice-versa) can, to a limited degree, affect potential gains in
each. But the vast majority of sports do not exclusively use
one energy system. Likewise, lactate-threshold training is not
critical for strength training, yet first-response teams often
need to lift and apply force when they’re fatigued – that’s life.
A common response from The Millers is that they never
know what they are going to get each time they come in
and they never get used to the training. This is a deliberate
ploy to flip something called “general adaptation syndrome”
on its head. The crux of this is that the human body can
adapt to any source of sub-lethal physical, psychological or
chemical stress, allowing the body to tolerate incrementally
larger similar stresses. This is the basis of much specialised
sports training, yet if you want to have all-round general
fitness, strength and endurance, the element of surprise is
everything, both to the body and the mind.
By confusing this natural adaptation process and training
clients to be ready for anything across all energy systems,
The Millers have been able to achieve some remarkable
first-time feats from “non-specialised” training – some have
run marathons, others have completed 150-kilometre kayak
races, long-distance mountain-bike races and multi-sport
adventure races.
Look closer, though, and The Mill’s seemingly
unstructured training program is a lot less random than it
may first appear.
“We train in 12-week cycles, so we have power/strength,
muscular endurance, power/endurance under 90 minutes,”
says Nick. “We still like to keep everything else maintained
while we are concentrating on the one thing, though – so
if we’re training power and strength in that three months,
we’ll intersperse that with power/endurance and muscular
endurance work. Right now, we’re in a phase where we’re
building everything up again, so today was a mishmash, but
still not deviating too much away from the base cycle.”
GRINDING OUT FIGHTERS
The nature of The Mill’s group training and the feeling
of duty promoted between workout partners has obvious
benefits for developing team mentality, so it’s no surprise
that this gym already hosts training camps for the AFL’s
Fremantle Dockers at the start and end of the year.
However, the biggest group taking to The Mill are fighters.
Habby Heske, who trains mixed martial arts (MMA)
fighters and other martial artists at Perth’s Mach 1 Fitness,
has three fighters sponsored and conditioned by The Mill.
“Traditionally, the conditioning work for fighters is your
roadwork, your pad work and sparring, day in, day out,” says
Heske. “You get used to the same tempo and the same thing
every week, so the good thing about The Mill’s type of
cross-training is that no two days are the same.
“In MMA, you can get into positions where people just
mentally crack because they come from the old regimen
of training where they don’t have a wide range of coping
strategies. At The Mill, it’s different – they have to deal
with so many unexpected, physically tough situations that
it makes them much stronger mentally in these positions.
This is especially important in MMA, where you can get
trapped in a position and you have to work out how to get
out while you are getting pummelled.”
For the fighters, the training is tailored to their sport,
with more emphasis on isometric resistance training and
high-intensity bursts of 15 seconds or more.
That afternoon, I watch an Ironman athlete train with top
MMA fighter Gustavo Falciroli. The two sports would
seem diametrically opposed, but both men were there
“You Work,
You Reap”: strict
adherence to
form, torturing
your team-mates
and putting
everything on
the line are
all part of a
crushing workout
at The Mill.
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to throw off their body’s general adaptation to their sport’s
normal movements and shock their body into developing
more speed and power and a higher lactate threshold.
It starts with the two guys alternating on descending sets
(from 10 reps to one) of front-squat power presses (a front
squat that goes straight into an overhead press at the top
of the movement). Next, one rows while the other stands
still, sweating rivers as he holds two 16kg kettlebells out in
front of his chest, before they change over. Finally, there’s
the “medicine ball payback” – one guy sits on the floor
with his feet and legs raised while the other guy throws a
medicine ball at him from different distances and angles
and at different speeds. The payback part comes when they
change roles. If the trainer thinks they’re being too nice to
each other, he punishes both of them.
Next, local kickboxing sensation Wes “The Decapitator”
Capper comes in. Without another training partner, trainer
Nick 2 (yes, also with the SAS, and his mother won’t let us
use another first name) steps in to do the session with him.
It’s part of the ethos of The Mill – the trainers are humble,
yet must lead by example – and Nick 2 trains like he’s on a
quest for a cardiac arrest.
Together, the two tattooed warriors start with a crawling
“spider” exercise across the floor, followed by descending
sets of front-squat shoulder presses, and an exercise where
they place a kickboxing bag on the ground and do push-ups
next to it, then side-jump over the bag and do push-ups
again. They go outside and one guy sprints the 200m road
circuit while the other holds the heavy kickboxing bag off
Check your ego
the ground, then they change over without a rest. They
at The Mill’s
finish with short exercise-bike sprints of approximately
door, there’s not
20 seconds on (sprints are measured in kilojoules burnt),
a mirror in sight.
20 seconds off, for 10 cycles. All this takes a little over
40 minutes.
“Sometimes Nick will put me through
BREAK AND ENTRY
a session that is only 16 minutes and I
feel like I’m going to die, while other
ones will go for one hour,” says Wes,
The Mill’s entry test is not like your average gym’s initial fitness assessment. For a start,
post-collapse. “When you just do a
most gyms don’t point out the vomit bucket before showing you your exercises. The test,
shitload of kicking and punching,
which varies but always aims to exhaust your whole body, is not all about whether you
there’s only so much your power can
complete the circuit four times in the allotted time (20 minutes in Dominic’s case). The most
develop. I’ve only got skinny little legs,
important thing trainers look for is how much you are willing to keep picking yourself up
but I can definitely kick harder since
and pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone. Here’s the test Dominic underwent
I’ve been here. I’ve never done so many
squats in my entire life.
EXERCISE DESCRIPTION
COMMENTS
“In training we often go 15 seconds
500m row
Rowing on ergo rower.
You must row as fast as you can.
hard, then 15 seconds off, which really
Elevates heart rate to maximum.
relates to the way I like to fight. Now I
Rope
lash
x
10
Holding
thick
combat
rope
in
both
Much more exhausting than it
have a higher and more frequent rate
hands, jump up and then lash the
looks. Taxes the whole of the core,
of attack and intensity because I have
rope down into the floor so that
legs and back.
the feeling for what 15 seconds of full
the rope travels in a wave 20m
intensity is like.”
across the floor until it hits the
In the end, the fighters are not the
wall. If the rope stops before then,
only athletes who could benefit from
the lash doesn’t count.
The Mill’s ideas; they just got here first.
Chin-ups
Sets descend from 25 to 20 to 15 to
My downfall. I had no idea how
“When I came here, everyone
alternated with
10. Grip the bar any way you want,
to do the kip, the big dolphin-like
thought running a marathon was the
push-ups
but your chin must go over the
hip swing that helps use speed
pinnacle of fitness,” says Carl. “No.
bar, otherwise they don’t count.
and momentum to get you up.
The marathon runners aren’t fit. The
“Kipping” is allowed. Push-ups
Such is life – you must learn to
weightlifters aren’t fit. That onedone with hands under shoulders,
be efficient.
dimensional idea of fitness, strength or
chin to floor.
endurance is very old world.”
At The Mill, you can have it all. They
Complete the circuit FOUR times.
might just have to crush you first.
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YA H O O 7. C O M . A U / M E N S H E A L T H