אירון גים'

Before I came to Israel, I was an avid yogi, biker, and hiker. Every other month, I would hike El Capitan or Half Dome in Yosemite, California. In between, I mostly got around Los Angeles on my 12-speed Specialized hybrid. When I came to study in Israel and retrain as a teacher, I spent four years sitting in yeshivah and bad chairs (at home or school) slogging away through my religious studies and graduate work. I came out with a few advanced degrees, but my body was wrecked. I had given myself scoliosis and a noticeable hunch, and my clothes hung on my body like on a wire-frame hanger. At the advice of my family doctor, I went to Misha at Iron Gym in Jerusalem to see if he could help. Originally from the country of Georgia, Misha climbed to the rank of Major in his twenty years of service in the Russian army, with a specialization in putting broken soldiers back together. He did the same with me. With a handful of years on שליחות / shlichut to the States in between, I have been training at Iron Gym since 2014. Misha’s team consists of a doctor and a number of physical trainers who build each gym-goer a program that is based on their personal goals and the staff’s professional assessment. They then track your progress and adjust the weight and types of exercises they assign, based on your growth and changing needs and desires. Combined and individually, I have found the staff at Iron Gym to boast a wealth of physiological, nutritional, and internal medical knowledge, training, and experience that dwarfs what most doctors and nearly all nutritionists seem to know and can advise on. I have found Misha and these trainers always willing to explain the underlying physics and biochemical reasons for their guidance, often citing current research and medical textbooks. Often, in the middle of a training session, I am offered refinements in how I could better lift a weight in order to avoid harming myself and better focus on a given constellation of muscles. At previous gyms, I would always eventually harm myself and then have to spend weeks or longer healing and avoiding certain lifts and muscle groups before I could go back to my former regimen. This is common enough, but resulted in a lot of lost time and ground, and was simply frustrating. At this gym, I don’t remember having suffered a serious physical setback. I just continue to get stronger and closer to my goals.