New Wheaton gym helps keep cops in top shape

Don’t talk to police sergeant P.J. Youker about the stereotypes that surround his profession.

He hears them. He acknowledges them. And five mornings per week, he breaks through the notion that police officers spend their down time scarfing down doughnuts at local eateries.

“The days of the old cop eating a doughnut, sitting at a coffee shop are absolutely over,” he said. “Those are definitely old images, and you’re going to see a lot more of cops working out harder.”

Youker and three colleagues at his department, which officials said could not be named to preserve the officers’ safety, train five mornings per week at Wheaton Barbell and Fitness.

The 10-month-old gym is the site of intense workouts. Rather than being stocked with treadmills and fitness machines, owner Jeff Armstrong filled it with barbells, heavy ropes, a large truck tire and, of course, sledgehammers.

Youker said the gym’s workouts offer a variety that helps him while on the job.

“You have to be able to have that instant power,” he said. “Law enforcement, in general, you have to go from that zero to 60 miles an hour in that millisecond. This is the type of workout you have to do.”

The workouts are multiple, high-intensity rotations of several exercises that you do not find at most gyms. When Youker and fellow police officer Ted Fanning walk in every weekday morning, Armstrong writes down the routine on a dry erase board as the officers stretch.

One morning, they rotated through three stations — push up to pull up, hammer weight lift and sledgehammer — for 15 minutes. Even before they completed their first rotation, Youker and Fanning were heaving pretty heavily.

“It’s not fun when you have to go 15 minutes and you look up at the clock and you still have 12 minutes left,” Fanning said. “It’s kind of difficult, but it’s a challenge. That’s what part of this is. It’s (not) just physical, it’s mental. If you can put yourself through this mentally, physically you’ll succeed.”

In May, Fanning gave the new gym a shot when he was picked to receive a free month at the new facility. He soon took his colleagues along and the group of four now attends regularly.

Fanning said he is now in better shape than he has ever been, including during his time at the police academy.

The small, one-room facility opened in a strip mall in February. Armstrong said the workouts help people go through their day because they work muscles that static machines might not work.

“It’s a place to inflict my interpretation of fitness on other people,” Armstrong said. “Our idea of fitness is, we don’t have any machines. We don’t use machines, we make machines (by) making everyone more efficient and better prepared to tackle the challenges of everyday life.”

Armstrong said the unorthodox style of the exercises certainly helps the law enforcement officers, but added that people of any fitness level would benefit from them.

And Youker said they keep things fresh and keep the workouts from being boring.

“When you go to a normal gym, you get stuck in a rut,” Youker said. “But Jeff constantly changes the workout to keep you guessing.”