I’m sorry that I’ve been silent. As the owner of SF Iron, I’ve been struggling to find the words that would be helpful and appropriate. The fact is, there’s nothing I can say that will undo generations of racial injustice, but it feels important to say something. Systemic racism still exists in this country. Growing up, the implication in school was that, while widespread racism “used to exist”, it didn’t anymore and there were “only a few racists left”. Never was there any talk of how the foundations of a country built on slavery evolved a system that worked against BIPOC. - We cannot passively undo generations of conditioning. The work must be internal and active. Those of us who benefit from this system, and are attempting to re-educate ourselves and confront deep seeded biases are going to be uncomfortable. But that’s it — we’ll simply be uncomfortable. We won’t feel the threat of death for ourselves or our loved ones because of the color of our skin and we won’t have to endure prejudices that have been baked into the psyche of our social consciousness. - I will continue to read, challenge my internal narratives, and donate to the various funds supporting the #blacklivesmatter cause. As a gym, we have opportunities to be better neighbors and allies. We’re located below an affordable housing apartment complex that has mostly black tenants and we’ll be reaching out to the building management to see what we can do to help. - As a small business in SF, we’re committed to looking inwards at ways we can better support and be allies to the black community.

❤️

When starting a new habit, one of the first hurdles many of us face is getting stuck in the question of “is this the right way to do this thing?”. It’s important to remember that perfect is the enemy of good and at this point, finding some sense of normalcy with training is likely to provide a significant benefit on our physical and mental health, even if that training is suboptimal. If you’re struggling with sustaining your new habit of training at home, there are lots of things you can try, but we’ll leave you with a couple. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ * Stack your habits ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ If you already have a routine in the morning, afternoon, or evening, try stacking your training habit in an already established habit or set of habits. This can reduce the energy it takes to get started. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ * Change your environment ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ It’s hard to create a new habit when your environment is created for something else, like working or relaxing. If you’re able to, get outside for your training or section off a small area of your living space that can become your “workout room”. Changing your environment can help you mentally “switch gears” into training mode. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ We get it. This isn’t easy and there are a lot of obstacles in our way right now. Life is in a very strange place and maybe training isn’t at the top of your priorities. That’s fine if it isn’t. Even if it’s lower down, we still encourage you to create some sort of consistent movement practice. Physical activity is very easy to let go of, but it has a significant impact on your health. While we can’t work with people in-person, we’re still available to write programs and coach remotely, so if you think that you might like some extra support and accountability, we’re here for you.

Just a little check-in to let y'all know we're still here! The shelter in place may prevent us from working with clients in-person, but we're still working remotely building programs for people based on what equipment they have available. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ How are your home workouts going?

Happy Friday!! If you’re looking for a place to train this weekend, we’re open from 9am-4pm on Saturday and 9am-3pm on Sunday. Hope to see y’all in the gym! Photo by: @sjsiebert

We made a few equipment upgrades, y’all! The two new big additions to SF Iron are a brand new belt squat ✨ and a full dumbbell set ranging from 5lbs to 100lbs. We’ve got a few more upgrades on the way this year. Keep an eye out! Photos by: @sjsiebert

Last week we had our annual community outing @barebottle. It happened to fall on the same day as Santa Con AND one of the rainiest days of the year, but even still, so many people came out to celebrate with us! We couldn't be more proud of the community that we're building. We've got some more events in the works so keep an eye out for the next one!

@matt_sfiron is seen here squeezing the "slack" out of the bar. When we teach the deadlift, one of the most important steps is taking our time to pull the bar in a vertical line. We do this by pulling up on the bar slow enough to maintain balance until the bar breaks off of the floor. If the weight on the bar is heavy enough (as shown in this photo), you can see the slack in the barbell's system being pulled out as the bar bends until we create a single human-barbell system! - Photo by the talented: @sjsiebert