by Chris Harms
The inception of the Harms Farms Muscle Farm came about out of necessity, really. Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Spring Training was shut down and I found myself on a plane headed back home to Sacramento. Gyms all across the world shut down, but people still needed to train. I still needed to train. Fortunately for us on the Farm, we already had a miniature weight room set up in the garage, so it wasn’t a treasure hunt to collect the necessary pieces. My dad has always kept in good shape, and I’ve benefited from his passion for exercise my entire life, so regrouping at the Farm was just another example of that.
After a couple weeks of mostly barbell training inside, I decided to take advantage of the California sunshine and ventured out into the yard. Dad and I took a well-worn battle rope (he used to have his wrestlers train with it when he was coaching) and spent about 30 minutes “battling” to get the damn thing over the limb of an oak tree out back near the persimmon orchard. The first workout I did was an EMOM 15 consisting of 1 rope climb and 10 dumbbell single arm snatches. That means that for every minute on the minute for fifteen minutes, I would climb up and down the rope and then complete the snatches until the next minute came around. I found myself making loud noises and wondering what the neighbors thought. Oh well. They would get used to it. Over the following weeks, I picked up a sled on Facebook Marketplace for a decent price, ordered some sandbags from my guys at StrongFit, pieced together a yoke using straps and schedule 80 piping (not easy to find), made a loadable pin for swings, and constructed some farmers handles with the help of my dad. The Muscle Farm was slowly coming together...
Now don’t get it twisted, we still teach and train with the barbell and dumbbells regularly, but because we’ve expanded our equipment, we can expand our goals. And the more goals we can go after, the more people we can cater to. So, whether you want to lose some of your unwanted quarantine weight, become the strongest version of yourself, or a little bit of both, the Farm welcomes you!
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