Why I opened a Gym

As our team at Rampage currently works through the process of redesigning our brand from “CrossFit Rampage” to just “Rampage” I thought it’d be a great time to re-share my story of why I opened a gym, for those of you who’ve never heard it.

I know that opening line may have created some curiosity for you, so rather than ignoring the elephant in the room (or on the screen rather), I’ll address it first, then tell you the opening-the-gym-story.

I’m a firm believer in CrossFit as a workout methodology. It’s helped me build a career, and has had a greater impact than any other single thing in my life aside from being born. CrossFit led me to my meeting Molly, my wife. It created the majority of the close friendships I currently have. It allowed me to find something I’m truly passionate about (fitness) while simultaneously creating an additional passion (business). I owe all of my professional career -and much of what my life has become- to CrossFit.
Therefore, we are not deaffilating from the organization. We’re not trying to be something different than we’ve been, and we certainly not trying to be a “wannabe” of a CrossFit gym.

The problem is, CrossFit can be interpreted a hundred different ways (actually, much more than 100). My interpretation of it doesn’t match up with what the public thinks, and it creates friction with potential members who might be a great fit at our gym. The friction comes from the public thinking CrossFit is exclusively “Super high intensity, and heavy weight lifting”, that it’s only for the hardcore exerciser, and also that it’s only Group-based-classes.
I don’t see it as such, and our gym doesn’t deliver a product that matches that.

We don’t want to turn away potential customers who are intimidated by the public perception of CrossFit.
So the solve: remove the word “CrossFit” from our name. The methodology of doing mixed-workouts that include weight training, cardio, and bodyweight movements for a scored result still lives on at Rampage, but only about once or twice per week.
We do a lot of functional strength training, long low intensity aerobic conditioning, and bodybuilding. This is what I firmly believe the every day person needs. Mix that with a little bit of high intensity once or twice per week and you’ve got an excellent longevity based fitness program that delivers real results.

For the new customer, we are Rampage. We offer individual nutrition coaching, we offer Semi-private (2-3 people) Personal Training, we offer Group Fitness classes (see above), we do multi-week specialty courses throughout the year on specific fitness topics, and we host many community events.

For the current member, we’re the same gym you’ve come to know and love. We just won’t have “CrossFit” printed on our shirts and stickers. (Of which, if you’ve been paying attention, we actually started this movement a few years ago, as we started pushing “RMPG” and “Rampage” exclusively on all of our apparel and content).

Now, on to the story of why I opened a gym!

The earliest recollection of entrepreneurship I had was in high school. I was in a class called desktop publishing, where we learned to type and did some basic computer skills. I forget what the actual assignment was, but I recall having to create a business idea for something.
At the time, Fast and Furious was a hit movie. I was all in on the import-racer scene of cars with big rims, small tires, loud exhaust and body kits.
For the assignment, I decided I wanted to open up an after market car parts shop that sold all of the cool accessories the “tuner” would put on their car. Just like the one Brian O’Conner goes into at the beginning of the movie to buy more NOS, IYKYK.

I never went on to open a car accessories shop, but the idea of owning my own business stuck with me. I got really into going to the gym and working out while in my freshman year of high school, and although I quit the basketball team because I couldn’t stand the coach, I continued going to the local 24-hr gym with my mom. As soon as I could drive, I went even more. I recall regularly getting off work at my part time clothing store job at 10pm and going to the gym because I loved working out so much.

When I started college at MTSU, I had no idea what I wanted to major in. As if a 17-18yr old kid really knows what they want to do with the rest of their life. Feeling forced to pick a major, I scanned through the, then paper-list, of all of the majors the school offered. It was overwhelming.
I came across something called Exercise Science. I had no clue what it was, but it had the word exercise in it, and I liked working out, so it had to be a match. Turns out, I ended up loving it. I spent my undergrad, + an additional 2 years of graduate school learning all about how the body responds to exercise.
The unfortunate part about the curriculum, hopefully it’s changed by now, was that it seemed as if everything we learned was in relation to 1 of 2 populations: Either the endurance athlete – Here’s what happens to the heart and lungs after 2 hours of running; or the Cardiac Rehab patient – this is what the heart does when it’s failing because it’s not getting enough oxygen.

We learned very little about exercise and it’s relation to the every day person, beyond the generic ACSM guidelines of getting X amount of physical activity every day. I honestly don’t remember any of the guidelines, as they seemed so arbitrary. So although college was educational, it didn’t guide me towards what I actually wanted to do with a masters in Exercise Science.

As I mentioned earlier, I quit high school basketball, and since, I hadn’t played any more high school or college sports. I still played a lot of sports, including numerous intramural sports, and I enjoyed implementing exercises in my training that felt more like something an athlete would do and not a bodybuilder.
Max effort sprint intervals.
Tire flips and box jumps.
Power cleans (although I had no idea how to do them).
etc.
At the time, I didn’t know about CrossFit, though I was already blending traditional bodybuilding with athletic based movements and really enjoying it.
The first time I ever heard of CrossFit was in one of my college courses when we spent a class discussing different types of training methods: Bodybuilding. Endurance Training. Yoga. Pilates. HIIT. CrossFit. Etc. CrossFit was actually highly frowned upon by everyone in the Exercise Science department. It went against all traditional textbook education on exercise, so naturally the world of academia didn’t like it – because it worked – and it shouldn’t, based on exercise science.

My first CrossFit workout was an invitation from a buddy of mine, Michael F. He asked if I wanted to try a CrossFit workout one day in the schools rec center. I easily agreed, thinking it couldn’t be that bad – as I played basketball 3-4 days per week and lifted weights and ran 5x/week. I was in good shape.

So I thought.

We did, what I think was supposed to be 4 or 5 rounds, of a 400m run, 500m, row and some # of pull ups. Sounded easy enough. Well,…the intensity killed me. I quit after the 3rd round, and was humbled to say the least. Typically one of two things happens after people get their ass kicked for the first time in a workout. Either 1. “That was awful, I’m never doing that again.” Or, 2. “That was awful, I can’t wait to do that again.”
I was #2.

However, I didn’t actually continue doing CrossFit specifically at the time, but I hadn’t given up on the idea.
When I took an internship in Tampa, Fl for 4 months the final semester of undergrad, that’s when I really started getting into it. I was at the gym inside of a Verizon Wireless call center. It was a really small gym, mostly filled with pin-selected-weight-stack machines and cardio equipment. However, there was a big of open space by the dumbbell rack. My boss was big into CrossFit, and she started inviting me to do workouts with her. I couldn’t keep up. She would beat me in every workout leaving me eager to get better.
I continued doing what I could with the limited equipment I had at the call center that summer.
When I moved back to TN, I ended up getting a job at a gym in downtown Nashville while I went to graduate school. The gym looked like your typical 24-hour gym with treadmills, machines, mirrors and a long dumbbell rack with lots of benches. Though there was a set of double doors that went into another room.
This room had ropes hanging from the ceiling, 2 lifting platforms, barbells and stacks of bumper plates, a kettlebell rack, and 2 really long pull up bars mounted lengthwise across the middle of the gym. It looked like heaven.
The gym, Go Performance and Fitness, had a CrossFit affiliate within itself, GoCrossFit. I was in love with my new job. I was a personal trainer, who also lead some small group classes, cleaned the locker rooms and signed people up for memberships.

This next part is my favorite part of the whole story:
Up to this point, I had only ever been to 1 real CrossFit gym. I had dropped in to try a class at CrossFit Murfreesboro. Turns out, the class I dropped into only had 1 other person signed up for it. This guy was an animal. And I kid you not, the workout was FRAN. The most popular, stress-inducing, highest intensity workout in all of CrossFit. I did the workout, and got by ass kicked by a guy named Jeremy. I never joined the gym, as I couldn’t afford it.

When I interviewed for the job at the gym in Nashville, the owner casually offered that I could drop into any of their classes over the next few days if I was interested. They had a CrossFit class that Saturday morning and I was super excited to try another class, this time hopefully with more than 1 person.
I showed up, and although I can’t recall how many people exactly, it was a small group, and I actually did really well at the workout. It was that day I thought to myself,..maybe I could be good at this stuff.
I got the call from the owner of the gym the following week. I got the job!
She told me the main reason…
Although me and a few other candidates were very similar on paper, I was the only one that took her up on the offer to come try out a class. That spoke to her about my level of desire to get the job!

I now had my first big-boy job doing something I actually went to school for. What was best, was now I had access to workout at a CrossFit gym, for free!
I was still into bodybuilding workouts though, so I came up with a brilliant plan that I was certain would be the secret to the ultimate physique and fitness.
I’d go on a 2-week rotating cycle alternating between doing bodybuilding 3x/week and CrosSfit 2x/week for 1 week, then I’d do bodybuilding 2x/week and CrossFit 3x/week the next.

This lasted for 1 cycle.

I loved the CrossFit workouts, the environment, the classes and the people so much that I quickly found myself showing up to do the CrossFit class 5 days every week.

The main part of my job was personal training. I gradually switched from giving my clients typical -as expected- bodybuilding type workouts, to more CrossFit style workouts. I’d have them do more full body functional movements, often on a timer, and I’d record their scores.
This was when I had the ah-ha moment.
If my clients were getting better results doing CrossFit workouts, and I too loved doing it, maybe it should be something I could do on my own. I absolutely loved the idea of training like an athlete, and CrossFit was a program that was designed to allow the every day person who wasn’t actually an athlete, train like one.

At that point in time, the majority of people were either running or doing bodybuilding workouts as their go-to fitness program. If you wanted to train athletes, you had to get into Strength & Conditioning with a sports team. I wasn’t really interested in that. CrossFit created an entirely new avenue to train people like athletes, without the limitation of them actually having to be on a team playing a sport. This realization was the catalyst for me wanting to open a CrossFit gym.

A few other things played into leading me to opening the gym, one of which I laugh at now. I’ll lead with that.
– I had a client I trained 3 or 4 days per week, and I found out he was paying over $700 per month to workout with me. I was only getting a small fraction of that on my paycheck. The naive 23 year old that I was thought, “If I owned the gym, I’d get all $700 of that.” (I know realize how silly that was – but naivety is a blessing).
– I had actually begun writing all of the warm ups for the CrossFit classes for the gym I was working at. People were really enjoying my new take on the warm ups, which definitely boosted my ego a bit. In order to coach the classes, I needed to get my CF Level 1, so I did so. (Coincidentally, to open a CF gym, you have to have a L1 as well).
– My girlfriend at the time ended up getting a job there too, and she also loved CrossFit, so I had a built-in support system.
– There were only 2 CF gyms in Murfreesboro, and it was far enough from Nashville that a Non-Compete wouldn’t matter.

So, after about a year working at the Nashville gym, I decided I wanted to open a gym. I had no idea what I was doing. Fortunately my girlfriends dad knew business, and he helped guide us along the way.
I had planned to wait until I was done with Grad school, as I was also doing Graduate Teaching so I was quite busy.
However, I randomly drove by a warehouse in town one day that had a FOR RENT sign on it. I couldn’t find it anywhere online, so I went into the office that owned the property and inquired.
Upon learning the price, I started comparing it with other commercial buildings for rent in the area and found out that this one was extremely underpriced. It was priced so low that it was a huge red flag. There had to be a catch.

I had actually been living in Franklin at the time, commuting to Murfreesboro for school and teaching, then going to Nashville for work. Opening a business should have been the last thing I was trying to do. However, I was fortunate to be living in Franklin because I had started regularly dropping into a CrossFit gym there on the days I wasn’t working in Nashville. I got to know the owner quite well. This turned out in my favor, as the owner of that gym had a connection with a commercial real estate agent, of which he got me in touch with. I had the agent look into the property to see why it was priced so low and what the catch was.

There was no catch. It’s just an old school company (hence, no online listing of the property) and they hadn’t raised their rates to catch up with the current standards.

It sounded too good to be true, and turned out to be a rare case, where it was just that good, and it was true!

So I went for it, and opened CrossFit Rampage in 2011. On July 16th 2011 was when he officially opened for business. I was 24 years old, had no business experience, was driving from Franklin, to Murfreesboro, to Nashville daily while going to Grad school, Teaching classes on campus and working downtown. It wasn’t destined for me to succeed. Though in my opinion, I’d call everything up to this point a success.
I’ll stop the story here, although if you’re ever interested in hearing some of the fun stories of the early years in business I’d love to sit down and chat!


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