Good Neighbor Podcast: Milton & More
Bringing Together Local Businesses & Neighbors of Milton, Crabapple, and Hickory Flat
Good Neighbor Podcast: Milton & More
S2 Ep31: R5 Wellness with Chris Rech
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What if boosting your mood, enhancing your skin, and accelerating recovery were all within your reach? Today, Stacey Poehler sits down with Chris Reck of R5 Wellness to unlock the secrets of holistic wellness practices that promise just that and more. As a seasoned football coach and father to college athletes, Chris shares his family's journey into the wellness industry, driven by a passion for helping others achieve peak performance and a balanced lifestyle. Together with his wife Jamie, they've built R5 Wellness, a sanctuary offering innovative modalities like cold plunges and red light therapy, designed to rejuvenate both body and mind.
Tune in to learn about the transformative power of these therapies and how they've impacted Chris's own family. From the mood-boosting effects of cold plunging to the anti-aging wonders of red light therapy, Chris provides insights into how these treatments can support recovery, improve sleep, and enhance skin health. Explore their unique offerings, such as compression and PEMF therapy, and discover personal stories of healing and well-being. This episode is packed with firsthand experiences and expert advice on how to harness holistic practices for a healthier, more vibrant life.
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Stacey Poehler.
Speaker 2Hey everybody, I'm excited to be talking to Chris Reck. Chris and his wife, jamie and their family own a new business called R5 Wellness. Welcome, chris, thank you for having us. Yeah, so why don't you tell us called R5 Wellness? Welcome, chris, thank you for having us. Yeah, so why don't you tell us about R5 Wellness?
Speaker 3Sure. So we're a holistic wellness center dedicated to helping people feel their best. We have cold plunges, red light therapy, infrared saunas, compression therapy, PEMF therapy. Those are our main modalities. Whether they're trying to recover from a hard workout, increase their mental focus, remove stress, improve your skin, improve your sleep, we have everything for you to reach those goals.
Speaker 2Sounds that way. How did you guys get into this? Tell us about the journey.
Speaker 3I've coached football in Alfred and Milton for the last 23 years. We have three kids. Two of them are college athletes, One has just graduated, was a baseball player and one is a junior she's in gymnastics and so we have definitely put them through their fair shares of recovery over the years, fighting injuries and staying healthy to be at their best for their sport. We understand the importance of recovery and what it takes to stay on that field. We sold our business a couple of years ago and we're looking for something else to do, something our whole family could do together. That we all had the same common interest Helping others to stay healthy and live their best life is how we came up with R5.
Speaker 2Awesome, awesome, and can you talk about the different modalities, maybe, and how it helped folks with recovery, sleep and their skin?
Speaker 3Absolutely my favorite is the cold plunge. I don't know if your listeners have ever tried cold plunging. Everybody knows of cold plunging as reducing inflammation and pain. There's so much more to cold plunging. A cold plunge can boost your mood up to 250%, reduce stress, anxiety, even depression, increase your alertness, improves your circulation, strengthens your immune system. So there's so many more benefits besides just that recovering and getting back on the field or the court or wherever.
Speaker 3Red light therapy Our panels have two types of lights red lights and near infrared lights. Red lights is what's great for your skin for complexion, acne, cellulite, wrinkles, stretch marks. It'll burn belly fat. It's amazing for your surface. Near infrared light goes deeper into your body, will help with pain and inflammation. Mental focus repair your muscles, your tissues will help with pain and inflammation. Mental focus repair your muscles, your tissues, basically from the cellular level. So the really great benefits to Red Light therapy.
Speaker 3It's also known as the anti-aging device. Infrared saunas will help you detox, boost your immune system, pain inflammation, sleep, relieve stress. So they also improve your heart, burn calories. We have compression boots, which is what we call our compression therapy. So basically that's compressed air that massage your legs, will help with recovery, pain, inflammation, varicose veins, as well as blood flow. Our PEMF stands for Pulsed Electromagnetic Fields. We have a mat which will help you detox, sleep, chronic pain, things like that. You don't feel anything on the mat, it feels like a giant heating pad. But we also have PEMF loops which will actually help you with your pain therapy, accelerate your healing, increase blood oxygen levels, tissue regeneration and repair muscle spasms, things like that.
Speaker 2Wow, seems like you guys cover it all. Can you maybe talk about some stories or personal experiences with your family and how they have benefited from this?
Speaker 3So yes, my daughter does. The big thing is a contrast therapy going cold, hot, cold. What we do here is we typically recommend three minutes in a cold plunge, 20 to 25 minutes in a sauna and then back to the cold plunge for two minutes. So that will help you strengthen your connective tissue so you are less likely to get injured and strains things like that. To get injured and strains things like that, the heat will open up your arteries and then when you go back in a cold pump that oxygen and water through those veins to help you heal faster as well.
Speaker 3So both of our kids our oldest unfortunately had to medically retire his senior year of baseball in college because he had multiple knee surgeries. He had a stem cell injection in college because he had multiple knee surgeries. He had a stem cell injection, multiple cortisone shots. So you know he wishes he did more recovery to keep him healthy before he had to do that. Now he's very into the recovery from the you know, from the healing side, fortunately still ended his baseball career. Our daughter does recovery every day. She's in the gym for four or five hours a day. At the University of Maryland they do contrast therapy all the time. They go cold plunge, hot tub cold plunge to keep them healthy, and in the gym all the time.
Speaker 2Wow, sounds like your family's very active. What do you guys like to do for fun when you're not running our friends?
Speaker 3We also have an eighth grader who plays football and baseball, so we travel a lot all over the country from January to April Seeing our daughter compete. Our youngest is now, like I said, he's football, baseball. Our oldest can't play. He now gives back by coaching baseball. He coaches for a big organization in the area and they share his coaching 14 year olds. When we're not on the field or in a gym, we love to spend time with family, whether it's going to lake, being at the pool, going to dinners. We spend as much time as we can with each other.
Speaker 2Awesome. Are there any myths or misconceptions out there about these types of therapies that you want to clear up?
Speaker 3So I think everybody has done cold plunging, or most athletes have tried a cold plunge at some point in their life. Most people have tried infrared saunas or steam saunas at least they're familiar with that. The one misconception that we find a lot is red light therapy. Some people think that red light therapy is a gimmick or a hoax and it really isn't. It is FDA cleared, proven to help your skin. It is proven to help your mental focus. It is proven to help you sleep better. So I think that would be the one misconception that standing in front of a panel of LED red lights can really help you as much as it does.
Speaker 2And by how long would a session with the red light therapy last, and about how long would a session with the red light therapy last?
Speaker 3Typically it lasts 20 to 30 minutes, but we have booths set up, so, instead of having one panel where you would stand in front of it for 10 minutes and then turn around for 10 minutes, we have them on both sides of you. So 10 to 15 minutes is plenty here, oh, wow, oh wow.
Speaker 2And then can you talk a little bit about the infrared sauna and how that's set up.
Speaker 3Sure, most people are used to traditional saunas. Traditional saunas are somewhere between 180 and 200 degrees Infrared saunas, and so, excuse me, let me go back. The traditional sauna heats the air, so when you walk in there, you instantly feel that heat. It's hard to breathe in. It's a little uncomfortable. Infrared saunas use special lights and heaters to heat you from the inside out. So it's more beneficial. It's much more pleasant to be in there. You can breathe, you can stay in there for 25 to 30 minutes easily. It will help you sleep better, it will help you detox, it will help you with pain and inflammation, it will help you relieve stress, your skin health, everything. So it's actually it's definitely more pleasurable to be in a infrared sauna than it is a traditional sauna.
Speaker 2Can you talk about maybe some challenges you guys have had to overcome and getting this business off the ground?
Speaker 3So yeah, I've thought hard about this. Luckily, we have not had any huge challenges, I think from our son, who's very involved in the business, who works here as well when he's not coaching. We take him for an example. He's worked so hard his entire life to play Division I baseball and for him to get hurt his junior year and have all those surgeries. It was tough to see him suffer and lose the dream that he had and not be able to play the game that he's put so much time in and love so much. So that was probably the biggest struggle and one of the reasons why we were so passionate about doing that. It's not just about recovering, it's about, you know, doing things to prevent those injuries from happening so you can stay on the field or stay on the court and less likely to get injured.
Speaker 2And are there any age restrictions, or you know how does that work.
Speaker 3Therapy is great for children. I wouldn't recommend a very small child stay too long in a sauna or a cold plunge. Obviously, but there really isn't any age restrictions. You know we've had from here in the three weeks we've opened, as young as eight years old and, you know well, into seventies and above.
Speaker 2What do you guys offer? They're packages, memberships. How does that all work?
Speaker 3We offer a very low cost membership where it's unlimited per month. We offer packages for all of our modalities. We offer packages for just one modality. If someone just wanted to come in and use red light therapy, they could buy a package of five or a package and we also offer drop-in fees to use either one modality or all the modalities.
Speaker 3We feel that self-care does not have to be expensive. Our goal is to keep the full memberships at a low cost where people can come in three, four times a week. It's like going to a gym. If you go to the gym once every two weeks, you'll get to your goal eventually, but it's going to take you a lot longer. If you go to the gym three, four, five times a week, you're going to get to your goal a lot quicker. And that's the same thing with self-care. If you don't recover or use the modalities often, you'll get there, but it's going to take you longer. If you're coming three, four times a week, you're going to get to where your goal is right For sure.
Speaker 2Anything else that you want our listeners to know about the business that you haven't had a chance to share.
Speaker 3I don't think so, other than you know, I think I just hit upon that People think that self-care has to be expensive, when it really doesn't. If you come, you try it out. We'd love to offer your listeners a free visit to try all the modalities. Spend an hour, hour and a half, with us, try all of our modalities no charge. I think they'll really feel the difference. Most of our members that have come in that have never tried these type of modalities have left after one visit feeling amazing. Then they realize how important it is to do that more often.
Speaker 2Well, why don't you share where folks can find you?
Speaker 3Our website is wwwr5wellnesscom. We are located at 5530 Windward Parkway, suite 700, alpharetta, georgia 3004. We are right next door to Wild Wing Cafe and right behind Cracker Barrel, on the corner of Georgia 400 and Windward Parkway. Our phone number is 470-657-5168. You can email us at info at r5wellnesscom and we're Instagram, facebook, twitter. All are at r5wellness.
Speaker 2Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Chris. It was great getting to know you and learning a little bit more about R5.
Speaker 3No, Stacey, thank you so much. This was great. We really do appreciate it.
Speaker 1We're glad to have you in the neighborhood. Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast, Milton. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpmiltoncom or call 470-664-4930.