Old-School Iron

I recently found a very “new” gym, located in the heart of our nation’s capital; Helsinki.
Or, more to the point, new for me.

This gym, aptly named Punttis (”Gym” in colloquial Finnish), has been around for a long time, as evidenced by their machines. Some of them look as if they’re from the late 70’s, early 80’s. But: this is as old-school as you can get.
The walls are covered in inspirational posters, the mirrors have a text on them saying “keep your mittens off the mirrors!” (Näpit irti peileistä!)
Everything works great, the cables are actually ropes (yeah, beat that!) and give really good and smooth resistance on any movement you care to do on any cable apparatus. There are plates up to 50kgs each (wrought iron), the dumbells go up to 130kgs (286 lbs!!), there are all the grippers on the market there (Captains of Crush too), and some other freaky equipment I’ve just seen in shows at Fitness Expos.
Very impressed I was.

And the location? Why, under a church, of course!
This church is something unique in Finland, built almost entirely of dry-laid stone (no mortar used between the stones)! It’s referred to as Rock Church in English, known only as Temppeliaukion Kirkko in Finnish, which loosely translated means The Church of the Temple Plaza.

And it gets cooler in my opinion because of it’s… um, well, location in another respect as well.
It’s situated in a WWII bomb shelter built in 1943. I actually refer to this place as the “Bunker of Fitness under the Anti-Devil Bunker”, as churches are called here.

It’s sort of odd, you enter through a metal door leading underground next to some steps, then walk a good 20 meters (I think maybe a hundred feet or something), through four or so blast doors to get to a small, narrow staircase of concrete. One floor down and you’re in a quaint gym reception area.
The gym is basically a one-man operation, owned and run as it is by Pentti Lahtinen, who is in absolutely terrific shape for his age. I mean, the man looks like he’s approaching his 60’s, but he is actually approaching his 70th!! He’s got bigger arms than me, for crying out loud! And I bet he’s stronger too. Dammit, I need to train harder!

But yeah, I think Mr. Lahtinen and his Gym are the embodiment of healthy and sound old-school fitness practices. He’s even got a plaque on the wall from the Finnish Antidoping Agency for his efforts in keeping the Gym clean of any doping. This fact is also mentioned in the gym rules. No Roids. Fine by me..!

Another thing that makes this place so cool is the fact it’s 24h. But not like usual these days with some keycard or something, but you get an actual key to the place when you join. And the price is very right for Finnish standards anyways; just 35€ a month! When your card is running out, no sweat: just make a payment onto the bank-account. Easy.

Enjoy the pics! Click to view. They’re rather large, so be patient… I thought I’d let you have a better look and not make them smaller.

The Dumbell rack
The free weights area
The free weights area from another angle
An overview of the Gym from the front desk

This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 5:03 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.