I found Rogue Strength & Performance through a prior contact that I had the pleasure of meeting while completing another gym review. She told me that I had to come in and meet Jonathon Pope, Owner and Director of Sports Performance Programming, because as she explained it, “he is just someone that gets it.” I hear that reference very sparingly in my business life so I figured I better take her word for it and check out the facility.
Rogue Strength & Performance offers personal training, small group, and group classes. They work with a variety of different people from stay at home moms to professional athletes (like a minor league pitcher that was present during my times). They also train up to the level of special operations guys, but the common factor is they work with people with the willingness to grow and learn.
Locating the facility is a bit tricky if you are not familiar with Wheat Ridge, CO. It sits off the beaten path but that is one of its charming attributes. You know driving up to the facility that you are going to get a tough “no frills” workout. Upon my first visit at Rogue Strength & Performance, I went through an overall assessment where Jonathon quickly noticed muscle imbalances from prior injuries and worked to correct them through dynamic stretching techniques and aligning my body differently during exercises. It was amazing seeing huge strength differences just from small changes in hip and chest placement and proper breathing techniques. The first workout was a combination of strength work, primarily focusing on chest and back, and then a conditioning circuit. The strength work was very familiar to me, though with some creative variations, but the conditioning circuit tested my new breathing techniques.
The next workout was entirely focused on conditioning circuits. This workout was hard. I can use all the adjectives in the world but reality is this workout pushed me to my limit. Jonathon believes though that those random hard workouts simply don’t work. Most people don’t even know why they are on a specific workout type. Those hard workouts may provide an impression of progress in the short term while producing long term degradations in movement quality and taking you away from the specific adaptations you need for your unique goals. Several months later, you’re bored, in pain and discouraged.
The circuits of our hard workout were about 4-5 minutes of high intensity activity with one minute of rest. We went through the first circuit 4 times and the next circuit 3 times. The movements were simple in nature but were grouped in a way that you tested your mental strength as much as your physical strength. They also were tailored to my imbalances that Jonathon found during my assessment. Overall I left the facility with the satisfaction of hard workouts but also with a new understanding of my weaknesses and some techniques to help fix them.
Rogue Strength & Performance is located off 48th Ave. in Wheat Ridge.