Former farmer building weightlifting equipment

MOORHEAD (AP) -- For three decades, Moorhead sugar beet farmer Dave Karlstrom has used his welding skills to build weightlifting equipment.

As a 1970's high school student, physical fitness became his passion, he said.

About six years ago, Karlstrom set out to build a safer method of weight lifting that would produce quicker, stronger athletes.

Today, his Cormax fitness equipment is built by local manufacturers and assembled, marketed and shipped from Cormax facilities in Moorhead.

Three workout machines jump, bench and lift stations enable users to perform ballistic training exercises during which athletes "throw" or explosively push weights into the air to achieve maximum muscle speed.

"At Cormax we don't lift weights, we throw them," says marketing information on his company's Web site.

A hydraulic cylinder safely lowers weights back into position rather than having weight lifters risk injury physically returning them to traditional bench cradles, Karlstrom said.

"It's a novel approach," said Martin Johnson, who taught strength training at Mayville (N.D.) State University until retiring in 2001.

"With Cormax training equipment you are able to do it much more efficiently and much safer," Johnson said.

Four to five days a week, Moorhead High School senior Chris Swenson works out at Karlstrom's Cormax fitness center in Moorhead, performing single-leg jump squats to strengthen his legs for baseball.

"I've never been a big fan of free weights," said Swenson. "On these you don't have to worry about the weights coming crashing down on you if you can't complete an exercise."

Across the room, Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton High School junior Josh Houska trains for the upcoming track season on an Olympic lift station. Last year he ran 10:32 in the 2mile run. "I want to break 10 (minutes) this year," he said.

Houska previously trained with freestanding weights which required him to stop at the top of each exercise, he said. "With this stuff you can explode right through. I see a lot better results," Houska said.

"I want to change the way the whole world trains," said Karlstrom, who started building crude fitness equipment while in high school. Now he's doing it full-time and leaving sugar beet farming to other family members, he said. "I've always been into fitness," said Karlstrom, a 1973 Moorhead High School graduate. He built his first bench press in the workshop on the 106-year-old Karlstrom family farm two miles south of Moorhead. "It wasn't pretty," he said. "It was done with a cutoff saw and a stick welder." The year was 1976. His high school coaches saw and liked his prototypes, Karlstrom said. "I started making equipment for local high schools. I found out I was pretty good at it," he said.

Karlstrom's best friend at Moorhead High School was track and football standout David Grinnaker, who went through a tryout camp with the Pittsburgh Steelers as a free agent in 1977 after graduating from Concordia College.

"I would run and train with him right before he would go off to their mini-camp," Karlstrom said.

"My interest became elite athletes and what they were doing to improve their performance," he said.

In the early 1990s, Karlstrom designed weight equipment for John Frappier, president and founder of Frappier Acceleration Sports Training of Fargo, N.D.

"I was looking for different ways to make our equipment bigger and better," Frappier said. "Dave likes to weld. It worked out."

Karlstrom also designed chiropractic rehabilitation equipment now produced at TriW-G Inc., a Valley City, N.D., company.

"My interest has always been in performance training," Karlstrom said.

The Cormax method involves ballistic athletic training a quick action approach that teaches nerve structures to fire quickly, Johnson said. "It teaches you to move your limbs in a faster fashion."

That's where the hydraulic safety cylinder comes into play, Johnson said.

"You've got to release the weight in order to get full benefit, so the muscle fires through the full range of motion," he said.

Traditional weightlifters must slow down to lower the weight apparatus.