By Kimberly Wethal kwethal@apg-wi.com April 26, 2022
Gym opened mid-March along Milton Avenue
JANESVILLE
When you walk into Get Fit 45, tucked into the corner of a strip mall just off of Milton Avenue, you’re not just walking into a gym—you’re looking at a promise fulfilled.
Inside, bright red walls frame a space where there’s room to box, lift weights and wave battling ropes. An 11-and-a-half-year-old pit bull named Diesel roams the space, monitoring heart rates of class attendees as a trained service dog. And across from the main door, there hangs framed pictures of “the greatest man who ever lived,” Deon Franklin, with a phrase painted below: “Do it for Deon.”
Franklin, a Kenosha native and a youth football and basketball coach, died in September 2017—and with the opening of Get Fit 45’s first brick-and-mortar site, co-owner Nick Larsen is making his and Franklin’s dream a reality. The idea was to open a gym that eliminated the intimidation of walking into a room with “a bunch of meatheads” and offered guided workouts without the exorbitant price tag of a personal trainer, Larsen said.
“It was our dream to kind of have a place like this for people that are struggling,” Larsen said as he sat on a workout bench at the gym, located at 1260 Milton Ave., Suite 130, with Diesel laying at his feet. “We always talked about doing it. We always were building up to it. And then when he passed, it was kind of like ‘Alright, I got to do this.’”
Get Fit 45 officially opened March 11 as a business partnership between Larsen and fellow trainer Kate Farley, who is a Janesville native. Larsen has been doing online training programs under the same name for nearly 10 years. The concept is simple—for 45 minutes, you’ll do a workout with exercises or circuits occurring at 45-second intervals. Most people’s bodies tend to tire out around 25 or 30 seconds into a set of reps, Larsen explained, so the push to 45 seconds allows not only the main muscle groups to be worked, but also kicks other stabilizing muscles, such as hamstrings and hip flexors, into gear.
Classes tend to range between two to 10 people, with approximately a dozen and a half gym members having signed up for classes. In its current format, the gym has the capacity for 150 members, Larsen said, a number purposely set lower for the sake of keeping workout class sizes small to give people personalized attention.
“When we have classes of 10, they’re almost more fun because everybody’s kind of driving each other, they’re pushing each other—it becomes teamwork,” Farley said.
And they want their clients to be more than just a number associated with the key fob that opens the door, Larsen and Farley agreed. At larger, chain-style gyms, that’s often all a member is unless they shell out hundreds more a month in personal training sessions, Larsen said.
And going it alone tends to also increase gym intimidation fears, he added, as no one shows you.
“We’re gonna kill you for 45 minutes—you’re gonna hate us for 45 minutes, but the rest of the day you’re gonna love us, and you’re gonna learn to love yourself,” Larsen said.
Just as important as the workouts are the community meals Get Fit 45 holds on the weekends, Larsen said, as he looks to make sure that anyone who needs a meal can get one. Growing up, neither Larsen nor Farley had the easiest childhoods to navigate, but with community meals, they’re hoping to send a message to others that where your background starts won’t necessarily stop you from working to be a better version of yourself.
“We want to be the people that we needed when we were younger,” he said. “We’re going to make sure we can help out where we can.”
Hooked on changing lives
Larsen started Get Fit 45 at a time when he said he was lost in his life.
He had been an athlete all the way through high school and college, playing football through the collegiate level, basketball and boxing, but injuries kept him from going further. Seeing his first client—who had been told she couldn’t fly to attend her daughter’s destination wedding because her weight made her a risk to fly—lose 130 pounds in nine months is what solidified his decision to be a trainer.
“It’s nice when somebody just wants to lose 10 pounds and tone up, but to help somebody change their life or hit a goal that they didn’t think was possible—that’s what got me hooked into fitness,” he said.
Farley shares the sentiment, saying she got into fitness as a hobby but later found herself going for her certifications after friends turned to her for help on how to conduct their workouts.
“It’s a different type of feeling when you can watch somebody slowly feel good about themselves,” she said. “You see that that part of their brain kind of clicks, where they’re learning because of something you’re teaching.”
Franklin had loved that aspect of fitness training, too, Larsen said, as he discovered that he enjoyed the impact he could have on someone’s life while participating in Larsen’s training classes prior to getting certified himself.
“You can have somebody swearing at you but smiling at the same time. … He saw that, and he said he really wanted to do that,” Larsen said. “Once he started coming to my group settings … he fell in love with it and realized the impact you can make on people’s lives within 45 minutes.”
Passing on a blessing
You won’t find many options for workouts on the weekends at Get Fit 45.
Part of the gym owners’ shared philosophy is being the adults they needed around them when they were children—they uphold that by hosting one 45-minute class both Saturday and Sunday, and then going right into transitioning the space for hosting community meals between 12:30 and 2:30 p.m.
They’re free to anyone who needs them, and people don’t need to be a member to partake. Kids are expensive to feed, Larsen said, and the last thing he would want is for kids to go without.
On April 17, Easter Sunday, Get Fit 45 gave out around 300 Easter baskets in conjunction with the meal with the help of members who either donated items or went into the community to help coordinate meals and the Easter basket giveaways.
Larsen himself didn’t have a “peaches and cream” childhood, he explained, saying there were days he would go without meals and holidays he would go without presents.
“I don’t want a kid going to school and wondering why every other kid got an Easter basket and he didn’t,” Larsen said. “If I have a blessing in my life, I need to bless somebody else.”
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