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.

If you have been following this weekly series you probably see a theme. Opportunity for growth followed by me struggling to learn and catch-up. This next stage for EquiVita is no different.

10 Weeks to 10 Years: Week 8

Week 9

Week 7

EquiVita has always been hard to define, the place not the name. In fact, we spent the majority of the first few months of our Client Advisory Group meetings trying to zero-in on a definition of how to describe this place. Some people come for traditional fitness reasons, others for the community and still others come to find the guidance and help that they cannot find elsewhere.

For the first 8 years, the commonality for most of our services was individual sessions. With the little experience we had through yoga, tai chi and Fit U programs, it was obvious that there was the potential to add another unique service to our EquiVita list of services: group exercise.

Group exercise is about community, and since EquiVita is about building a community of people who are interested in taking care of their health, it is a good fit. But to make the fit perfect, we needed a larger space that was also separate enough to enable noise without hindering the quiet massage area. As luck would have it, opportunity presented the building next to us.

After much research and planning we built a classroom ideal for group exercise:
The Classroom for Group Exercise has a double padded floating cork floor, providing traction, cushion and stays warmer to touch. It also has higher ceilings, a full wall of cinderblock (for those weighted-ball bounces) and closets to keep all the equipment out of the way.

After researching group exercise offerings at other facilities, we knew that we could do better. We built the right space, now we needed the right structure.

To be better than watching a video, group exercise must have:

1. A skilled, trained and caring instructor,

2. Group size that is large enough to generate social dynamic, and

3. A group small enough to enable the instructor to monitor all participants.

As I mentioned at the start of this article, group exercise was an opportunity in which I had no experience and lots to

learn. Classes require a lot of variables (equipment, software, procedures) that we did not need for one-on-one

sessions as well as new staff to teach these classes.

EquiVita was growing again to better serve our community and I was sure that we would find the way to have this entirely new category of services fit with this new model of health care facility we had created.

Meet one of our clients: T. Wayne
A motivational speaker, professional craftsman and ex-West Virginia University offensive tackle and shot putter, Columbus resident T. Wayne "The Builder" Gatewood was always well-schooled in physical and mental training techniques. But no amount or mode of training could have prepared T. Wayne for 2008, the year he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, or bone cancer.

"The day I knew something was really wrong was the day I bent down to nail down some wood trim and my ribs fractured for no reason," T. Wayne said. "It felt like someone had pulled the skin away from my ribs."

Soon after, T. Wayne's vertebrae began to fracture and he was in a body cast to prevent further damage while receiving chemotherapy treatment and mulling his options with doctors and therapists.

"I'd had compression fractures of five vertebrae in my spine," T. Wayne said. "I'd gone from 6'3" to 5'11". I could feel it happening but I didn't really know it until my daughter one day said, 'Dad, are you shrinking?' I was in bed on my back for most of a month and my body underwent a metamorphosis."

When he was out of the cast and progress had been made in subduing the cancer, he began walking in the hallway of his house, then the driveway, then across the street. Conventional physical therapy ensued at a hospital.

"They just didn't have a lot of information as far as how to treat what was going on," T. Wayne said. "I ask a lot of questions and the more I asked them questions the more I could tell they didn't know the answers. I'd ask, 'How far can I push myself? Can I try to do a push up or anything? Can I lift weights? What can I do to build my body back up?' They had had myeloma patients before, but I don't think they had anything as intense as mine was before. Mine was pretty rough."

A friend of T. Wayne's and an EquiVita client who saw T. Wayne struggling at the hospital recommended T. Wayne see EquiVita founder and Transitional Fitness Trainer Adam Milligan.

"He kept saying, 'You gotta see Adam. You gotta see Adam," T. Wayne said. "Well, they didn't take insurance so the question mark pops up: 'How am I going to pay for it?' So, I kept putting it off and putting it off and then he and his family paid for my initial visit."

During his first visit with Adam, T. Wayne brought his x-rays and recalled Adam's straightforwardness and honesty: "He said, 'I'm not really sure but we're going to try. The first exercises we did were light and then we eventually did stuff with stretch bands to pull my shoulders back because my posture was all out of whack. I did push ups off the bench, lower back stuff, squats; light weights while bending at the torso, one legged squats. What was unique was everything he told me I was gonna feel I felt."

These days, T. Wayne is doing "great." When he isn't giving his "Are You Ready" seize-the-moment speech in Central Ohio schools, he's enjoying time with his family and working out with Adam and at home doing exercises Adam taught him the past couple of years.

"Adam's the guy that when nobody else can get it done and you've tried everything else, he's the guy," T. Wayne said. "Adam's a master to me. He's mastered this whole thing he calls transitional fitness. I even brought the nurse practitioner with me to see Adam so she could see what we were doing. When you know about a revolutionary, you want everyone to know about him, because there's just no guessing with him. He knows so much, and when you had what I had you don't want someone doing any guesswork.

"The people around me, they thought I was a dead man when I was sick. I've come a long way and Adam had a lot to do with it."