EquiVita - Week 1

Client Stories
As EquiVita reached a major milestone in celebrating their 10th anniversary, they gathered some important moments from its ten year history that highlights what makes the clients so special. So sit back and enjoy reading through some of these cool stories.

My first position in the fitness industry was working as a strength training instructor for the YMCA. This particular strength training class was different from strength training as I had known it, because the previous instructors had limited the class to using only a room called the Nautilus Room. At that particular YMCA the Nautilus brand of fitness equipment was kept in a separate room away from other equipment and was separated by 2 racquetball courts from the free-weight room.

10 Weeks to 10 Years: Week 1

Week 2

While I see the benefit that machines have to limit stabilization requirements and isolate movements, I felt that the class participants were missing some potential benefits by not using free-weights. My class, however, would not budge from the comfort of the Nautilus room. Not for the first 7 weeks, nor the second. Finally, in the 3^rd 7-week period I was able to convince the class to try some exercises in the weight room. I should point out that this class was all women, and the free-weight room had mostly men, but the class was during the day and was never very busy during class time.

So, there we were: me and my class of about a dozen women aged early 20s to late 60s in a huddle in the free-weight room.

Over time, as the class learned how to use the equipment and proper technique of the exercises they became more comfortable. So comfortable, in fact, that one day during class one of the women went up to a man who had been making lots of noise and leveraging his knees, back and momentum to move the weight on the leg press and said that she could probably move that much weight too if she didn't care about form. I was so proud!

Flash forward a few years and I was working in rehab settings noticing that people who are over the acute phase of care needed the education of how to transition from rehab to fitness. And I don't mean fitness as the industry would have you understand; I mean fitness in the sense of having your body support your lifestyle. For some, this is simple stretching or posture correction and for others it could be a plan to see how much weight they can lift. The goal is only relevant to the individual and for most of the people I met who were going through rehab, they had the first goal of not ever needing it again.

At around this point I realized that people just need education: education to know what to do and the knowledge that provides comfort going to a gym. My business started with the simple intent of providing a tool to gather the information needed from each individual to appropriately design a specific program to improve his/her fitness - fitness as they defined it.

That idea proved successful and here I am preparing to celebrate our 10 year anniversary! Over the course of the next 10 weeks I want to share with you some stories about how we developed from that simple premise to the business we are today. I am very proud of our staff who have worked hard to create this very unique personal service business and of our clients that have consistently proven that a different perspective can be the key to achieving successes that were otherwise unattainable.

I hope you enjoy hearing about the people who make our business and I look forward to hearing your comments.