Schools & Athletic Departments
Buy it in the right order.
An equipment budget gets spent once and the room lives with it for 10 years. Coach Marty Martens has coached in high school weight rooms for 36 years. Tell him what your room looks like and he will tell you what he would put in it.
Before you spend anything
Start with what is already on your floor.
A lot of rooms already hold more than the program is using. Equipment gets bought by one coach, used for a season, and pushed against a wall when that coach leaves. What the room is missing is usually a plan for what is already in it.
So the first answer is usually free. Coach Martens will tell you what you can run with the space and the equipment you have right now, before he recommends buying a single thing. What is left after that is a much shorter list, and it is worth spending on.
How this works
Send him the room
There is no catalog here and nothing to sign up for. You describe the room, he tells you what he would do with it. These are the four things he will ask about, so you can have them ready.
Your space
Square footage, ceiling height, where the doors are, and what is already on the floor. The room decides most of the answer before anything gets bought.
Your programming
What you are running now, and how many athletes come through in an hour. Coach Martens does not recommend a piece of equipment he could not program for a full room.
Your needs
What is broken, what is missing, and what is sitting against a wall unused. Most rooms already hold more than the program is getting out of them.
Your budget
What is there this year, and what might be there next year. He asks last, because the order you buy in matters more than the total.
No clinic required
The equipment question stands on its own. Ask it without committing to anything else, and Coach Martens will still answer it.
Questions
What schools ask
Do we have to book the clinic to ask about equipment?
No. The equipment question stands on its own. Send him the room and he will tell you what he would put in it, whether or not you ever book anything else.
What if the budget is almost nothing this year?
Then you start with bands and medicine balls and you use what is already on your floor. Coach Martens built the system around equipment a school can afford, and he will tell you what you can run right now before he recommends buying anything.
How do you know what fits our space?
Because the room decides most of it. Square footage, ceiling height, how many athletes come through per hour, and where the doors are. Send him those and the equipment list gets a lot shorter and a lot more specific.
Can you help us phase this over a few budget years?
That is usually the right way to do it. Most schools cannot outfit a room in one purchase order, so the order you buy in matters more than the total. He will tell you what goes in first and what can wait.
Tell him what you are working with
Square footage, what is on the floor now, how many athletes come through in an hour, and what the budget looks like. He will tell you what he would buy and what order he would buy it in.