Miller builds Garage Strength from scratch
Dane Miller builds Garage Strength business from scratch and trains superior athletes
Not all 938 square feet were available to Dane Miller. About half of it belonged to a canoe, some bikes and his dad’s lawn mower.
The rest became a space for Miller to draw the rough outline of his dream.
There was a squat rack that was rescued from scrap and given to him in 10th grade. One platform. One bench. A rope that hung from end to end for pullups and a mismatched assortment of dumbbells.
The only heating source was a potbelly stove that wasn’t sealed and didn’t provide much heat.
All Miller had to offer potential clients, besides these amenities, was his reputation as one of Berks County’s greatest shot put throwers and an endless reservoir of enthusiasm.
“Do you really want to be a champion?” he said. “Because it’s gonna be cold. You’re gonna get rained on. There’s gonna be five different leaks in the roof.”
These were the humble beginnings of Garage Strength, the training facility that has sculpted and refined superior athletes from all around.
A few were willing to take the leap of faith back in the fall of 2008, when Miller started out in his parents’ garage.
They didn’t have much money to offer. They had a small part of their home in Ontelaunee Township.
“You showed up and if there were more than five people in that garage at one time, you were stepping over each other to get your workout done,” Fleetwood grad Morgan Shigo said. “There were no frills.”
After a while, Miller knew he needed more room. So he asked his dad for the rest of the 938 square feet. He was allowed to have it on one condition: He had to build a bigger shed for the lawn mower, the canoe and everything else.
With the help of one of his friends, he did.
Miller was working as an in-school suspension monitor at Schuylkill Valley, his alma mater. He gave himself three years. If he couldn’t make the same amount of money training aspiring throwers, he’d quit. He made it in about 14 months.
Not everyone who showed up at the garage was impressed.
“A lot of people would come
out and it’s like, ‘Why am I going to train with this guy?’ “Miller said. “It was like a ‘Rocky’ situation.”
••• Miller was a PIAA champion in the shot put, one of the best discus throwers in the nation and an All-State defensive lineman. His shot put record of 62-6.25 has stood since 2002.
When he started his training facility, he said he did everything wrong in terms of making money. All he was concerned about was becoming a better coach.
Once his business started to outgrow the garage, Miller moved to a barn down the street. He was there for a few years before settling at the current location on Allentown Pike in Fleetwood.
What Miller was chasing more than anything was a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that can only come with the perfect throw. He wanted to share it with others.
“That’s a contagious feeling,” Miller said. “I want to give it to everybody. Every person that walks in my door, I look at them like, ‘They can be the next state champ.’ “
Every year at the PIAA Track and Field Championships, the scene is filled with throwers who have worked out with Miller. Many are Berks natives. Others, such as state record-holder Payden Montana, traveled to Garage Strength from as far away as Berwick.
Even today, as the dream has flourished and the facility has become state-ofthe-art, much of the appeal is the chance to work with Miller.
“He’s basically like a father figure to everyone he has trained,” Shigo said. “(At) other places there are 15 different instructors and you might get a different one every time you go in. When you go in there, you’re gonna see Dane. It definitely builds a sense of trust.”
Athletes believe Miller is personally invested in their success. Because he is. He’s going to chirp at them. He’s going to ride them. Whatever it takes to squeeze out every drop of potential.
Garage Strength has turned into its own community, a place where athletes from different schools congregate and push themselves toward a common purpose.
They motivate each other. They root for each other. They trash talk with each other.
“One of the cool things that happens at Garage Strength is it allows athletes from different schools to build more of a camaraderie and almost create a team in and of themselves,” said Trevor Stutzman, a Kutztown High grad who was one of Miller’s first clients and now works there as a coach. “They see the hard work that other teams are doing and it’s like, ‘I can’t let them work harder than me.’ “
Although the idea was focused on throwers in the beginning, the gym now welcomes star football players and wrestlers, world champion weightlifters and more. There are programs for anyone who wants to get stronger and work toward a particular goal.
Those days when it was difficult to cram five people into the garage are long gone. There are hundreds of visitors today.
“It was just word of mouth,” Shigo said. “Everybody in the county kept going to him. It kind of caught fire really quick.”
••• There are black banners that decorate the walls of the Fleetwood building. So many that they’re running out of room. They provide reminders of all the accomplished athletes who have passed through before.
Getting one of those banners isn’t easy. One must be a PIAA champion or All-State in a team sport. An NCAA champion or All-American. Or a world championship finalist.
Kutztown grad Lucas Warning was a middling thrower in high school who blossomed into an All-American at Lehigh through his work at Garage Strength. He’s on the wall.
“He had tears in his eyes because we put up a plastic vinyl banner,” Miller said. “That’s what it means. That’s stuff they value. It’s hard for somebody on the outside to value because they’re not in that culture.”
Gov. Mifflin running back Nick Singleton, one of the top football recruits in the nation, has worked out with Miller for years. Even for an athlete who’s getting attention from famous college coaches, a spot on the wall matters.
After Singleton was named All-State, Miller said the sophomore took a picture with his banner.
“Not a lot of kids in the rest of the country have a place like that they can go to,” Wilson senior Olivia Moyer said. “I honestly don’t think I’d be throwing the marks I’m throwing now if it wasn’t for them. They’ve done so much for me. I’ve met some of my best friends in that place.”
Miller’s passion is irrepressible and it flows into everything he does. He loves to talk about his athletes and will drop the occasional expletive into his long, energetic sentences.
While he has recently become more business savvy, his motivation was never wealth. He wants others to wear gold medals.
In Miller’s mind, there are two hypothetical paths his life could take. He could train 100 Olympians and have $5 to his name or he could train one Olympian and have $1 million.
“I’m taking the first one,” Miller said. “I don’t give a ... . I’m gonna have more stories and I’m gonna have a legacy.”