If you’ve always wanted to own a business or start a gym, just “build it and
they will come.”
Just like Kevin Costner’s character in Field of Dreams, Les Whitley
and Dave Ray had a vision - only theirs was a gym instead of a baseball diamond.
“The whole idea and concept came from our life’s passion – something we know
we’ll never perfect – so in a sense, the pursuit of perfection is our lifelong
dream,” Dave said. “We hope to continue to change people’s lives and wake up
every day doing something we love. We learn something new about it everyday.”
“I can’t envision doing anything different,” Les said. “I’m fortunate to have
this as my job.”
Les, Dave and one of their clients, Michael Cartwright, started Fit-Rx in
Brentwood, Tennessee.
“Brentwood is an affluent area, and there are many corporate headquarters all
within three miles of our gym,” Les said. “This makes it very convenient for our
clients. Plus we couldn’t run through 500 clients a day, so we needed ones that
could afford to pay for higher-end training.”
The Client
Fit-Rx attracts mostly 40 year-old executive males who are former college or
high school athletes. They’ve had success in their business lives, but want to
improve the quality of their lives by adding physical training back into the
mix. Most want to lose weight, excel in athletic performance, or increase their
strength and conditioning.
The athletic performance training is strength-based and is high
school/college only with a very select group of athletes. Fit-Rx also trains
professional athletes - primarily baseball - but their average clients “just
want to look good naked.”
“Most of the clients that come to us aren’t intimidated by deadlifts or
squats. Some may not do them very well, but…” joked Dave. “When we start
training them, we hear a lot of comments like ‘this is how I used to train in
high school.’”
The Equipment
Fit-Rx contains all
EFS equipment. After asking Les and Dave why, I got a
solid answer.
“We went with the best, if it’s good enough for Frey, Dave and Jim, our
clients will be fine!” Les said.
Les and Dave decided that because of all the work that was put into their
gym, they wanted quality. And to them, EFS made the best equipment.
“We always look for quality and attention to detail. The rack can accommodate
someone that is short or tall.”
Les and Dave came to an EFS Fellowship meeting and had a chance to use some
of the equipment. It didn’t take a lot of persuasion to get them to decide to
purchase their equipment at EFS.
“The detail on the equipment just blew us away and we appreciate those little
details every day,” Dave said. “It’s good to know our clients can drop equipment
and it will still hold up over time.”
At Fit-Rx the favorite equipment appears to be the
Prowler
and the rack.
“I think anyone that owns a Prowler will tell you that they become famous
very quickly,” Les said. “Our clients warn new ones about the Prowler, but they
love them and always have great stories about the Prowler flu to share.”
The Research
“We pull information from a variety of sources, and seek out who we feel is
the best in the industry in each niche,” Dave said. “It's our job to learn every
day so we can take that information back to our clients.”
Les and Dave take their job as seriously as possible and do as much research
as they can. Instead of watching Family Guy, they spend their Sunday
nights watching guys squat on YouTube.
Here are their favorites at EFS: Jim and Dave for strength information, Alywn
Cosgrove for fat loss, Justin Harris and Shelby Starnes for all of their
nutritional information and Joe DeFranco is one of their best resources for
sport specific training and programming.
Their core beliefs are in strength, conditioning, nutrition,
mobility/flexibility, and corrective exercise. These are the topics they spend
the most time researching. How much they study those areas depends on the needs
of their clients. However, they feel these areas cover everything a client that
wants to look good naked needs.
The Gym
The gym has a 3200 square-foot training area and 20 yards of turf. For the
main equipment, it contains two
Elite Collegiate racks and
benches, and four
Elite GHR’s. Fit-RX also has trap bars,
fat bars,
kettlebells,
dumbells, rowing
machines, a Tred Sled, three
Prowlers, and
medicine balls. Their primary
offerings are small group (executive packages), ideal body program (everything
they offer all in one package) and performance training.
TheFuture
Les and Dave have many dreams for the future. What limits them the most is
space.
As far as equipment that would be able to fit in the facility, Les and Dave
want to add a safety squat bar, reverse hyper and another rack or two. They also
hope to host seminars and conferences.
Another big project is Michael’s idea of opening an in-patient treatment
facility within the next two years. The facility will help people deal with
obesity.
Michael was in the drug and alcohol treatment industry for over 15 years and
wants to use that model to help others deal with weight and body composition
issues. In this instance, the alcohol and drug treatment model would keep
overweight people in a controlled environment. The environment empowers and
encourages a healthy lifestyle change.
Many people come in the gym for an hour and then they aren’t seen again until
23 hours later when they come in for their next training session.
Those who participate in the program will live in an off-site area for a
couple of months where they will be taught training methodologies, how to
program their own diet and training, and how to successfully change their
lifestyle. They will still come into Fit-Rx for their training. This will help
them drop weight, and hopefully they will continue to utilize the habits they’ve
learned in their everyday life.
The Reward
“When you have clients that thank us for what we do, it makes everything
worth it,” Les said.
“Neither of us were good enough to play professional sports, so we live
through others,” Dave said.
Bios:
David Ray, M.S., is co-owner of Fit-Rx, located in Brentwood,
Tennessee. He played baseball at Lyon College, where he also served as an
assistant coach post-graduation. He has been in the health/fitness industry for
over 8 years. Contact Dave at dray3176@hotmail.com.
Les Whitley, CSCS, is co-owner of Fit-Rx located in Brentwood, Tennessee.
He is a former competitive powerlifter, strongman competitor and sponsored
Scottish Highland Games Competitor. He has been in the health/fitness industry
for over 16 years. Contact Les at Leswhitley3@hotmail.com.
Elite Fitness Systems strives to be a recognized leader in the strength
training industry by providing the highest quality strength training products
and services while providing the highest level of customer service in the
industry. For the best training equipment, information, and accessories, visit
us at www.EliteFTS.com.
