When I came to Sydney in January 1971 I had to get a job and found one teaching PE in high school. Killarney Heights High in Northern Sydney. In August 71 I opened The Sydney Morning Herald and told Roz I was going to buy a gym. Well, one was for sale so I went out to have a look. I brought a 60% interest in the West Ryde Barbell Club for $1000. Had to borrow the money from a finance company and they put my Mr C trophy up as part of the collateral. In 6 months paid another $1000 for the rest of the gym. Changed the name to Vince's Gym. Worked teaching and then went to the gym every night. No holiday for 10 years! In 1980 I quit teaching as it was too stressful. Early in 1981 I started a gym equipment business and bought a mig welder, bandsaw, lathe, radial drill and other machines and tools and started designing and building gym equipment. I had a partner for 6 months but he pulled out so I was on my own. I hired a guy who knew more than me about making gym equipment and in the meantime had to learn fabrication and engineering. Read a few text books or at least looked at some from time to time. Engineering is relatively easy for me and I can now design a new piece of equipment and get it almost spot on the first time. Usually it takes several prototypes to get it right.
The reason I started making equipment is because people in the gym would both bore and annoy me. The way everyone thinks they know all about exercise and training when in fact most know either bugger all or very little. Steel will do what you make it do and you can always correct mistakes. People are not as malleable.
I regret not continuing with my studies and earning a PhD. I would have enjoyed lecturing at a university. Perhaps staff should have encouraged me to do the philosophy of PE way back in the sixties. Or even exercise science. I am hardly interested in business admin. I did earn a patent for my biceps supinator. I was pleased because the head of an engineering department at Sydney University couldn't solve the problem of having two degrees of freedom in an exercise machine with two weight stacks. Even Arthur Jones couldn't solve this problem. He was the one that alerted me to the desirability of having resistance for supination and rotation for the biceps. On my machine you can do that independently or simultaneously. I have no doubt that my machine is one of the most complicated pulley machines ever installed in gym on this planet.
