Good Neighbor Podcast South Charlotte
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of South Charlotte.
Good Neighbor Podcast South Charlotte
Ep. # 133 Beyond Personal Training: How Fit Method CLT Transforms Bodies and Lives
Gary Ross and David Loman are revolutionizing fitness training in South Charlotte through their private studio, Fit Method CLT. As Regina League discovers during this revealing conversation, their approach transcends traditional personal training by addressing the whole person rather than isolated symptoms.
What makes Fit Method CLT unique is their detective-like process of finding the true causes of pain and movement limitations. "The lower back is the victim," Gary explains when discussing clients with back pain. "What is the actual criminal in this situation?" This philosophy leads them to examine how weak hips or limited upper back mobility might be causing issues elsewhere in the body. As former military and lifelong Charlotte residents, they bring both discipline and community connection to their training approach.
The duo dismisses common fitness myths, particularly the fear many women have about getting "bulky" from strength training. They emphasize how body composition changes often happen without significant weight changes, citing clients who look dramatically different while maintaining similar scale weights. Their accountability system has produced remarkable results, including a client who shed over 80 pounds after pandemic weight gain. "Accountability is one of the biggest limiting factors in people getting results long-term," David notes, explaining how their business model allows coaches to maintain smaller client rosters for more personalized attention.
Ready to experience fitness training that treats you as a whole person rather than a collection of isolated issues? Visit www.fitmethodclt.com, follow @FitMethodCLT on social media, or check out their podcast "The Fit Method Podcast" on all platforms to learn more about their revolutionary approach.
Fit Method CLT
Gary Ross & David Loman
(704) 268-9772
8918 Blakeney Professional Drive Suite 110 Charlotte, NC 28277
navigationfit@gmail.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Regina League.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm here in South Charlotte and my favorite thing to do is talk with local business owners, and today I have with me two gentlemen. This will be my first time talking with two people at one time, so keeping my fingers crossed, Gary Ross have and David Loman and they are the owners of Fit Method CLT, located in Blakeney. Welcome guys.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:Good afternoon, thanks for having us Say everything right.
Speaker 3:Perfect, perfect.
Speaker 2:Well, I've seen you guys for years because I live in the Ballantyne area, so let's start out by telling us what you do and maybe a little bit about each of you.
Speaker 3:I guess I can go first. So we have a private training studio. We train everybody from young athletes to professional athletes, to a lot of people coming back from injury. So a lot of our referral sources are sort of in the physical therapy and orthopedic surgery world. I am a former sergeant in the Army Infantry, I'm a combat veteran, and David and I used to work together at a former facility and decided to start our own company, which is Fit Method Charlotte. So I'll let him talk about himself a little bit.
Speaker 4:Well, Regina was saying before we got on here that she's lived in Charlotte since the 70s. I'm a native of Charlotte, so I live and breathe this community. I'm very passionate about creating a platform for people to succeed in health and wellness and giving our coaches a platform to work with clients at the highest level. So that was our vision when we started this company was to give the best coaches in Charlotte a platform to succeed on their own as entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2:It's a very unique approach and I love what I'm learning so far. I saw on your website you use the words cutting edge fitness application. What does that mean to you guys?
Speaker 3:So in the world of fitness it's always evolving, and I'll give you an example right. So the brain is really important to how we move. We're like, well, how do we stay cutting edge? We brought in the top what we call the neuro performance coach in the country. He knows how to use the brain to access range of motion and strength and speed. From Rochester, new York, we brought him down here to do a seminar with our guys and girls last summer. So we try to stay very cutting edge with our knowledge base, knowing that it changes over time. I mean, workouts in the 70s and 80s look quite different than they do now. There's still some basics that we try to follow, but we try to stay ahead of the game when it comes to cutting edge applications for all of our different clientele.
Speaker 2:So what is the philosophy you guys have? You definitely had a vision when you started this business, and what is your philosophy?
Speaker 4:Well, I would say, you know, we get asked a lot how do we differentiate ourselves between what physical therapists do and what personal trainers do? And we take a very holistic approach to from the very beginning. When a client comes in the door for that consultation, If they're coming in with some type of orthopedic issue, if they go to a physical therapist, they kind of take a very microscopic view of that specific joint, and we take a more holistic view. We're going to look at every joint in the body. We're going to take a very comprehensive assessment by a biomechanical assessment and just look at the person from every angle, because we know that the body works all together, kind of like this perfect symphony or orchestra, and so if we can find the root cause of something, they're going to feel more pain. Gary likes to call it the reverse spiral. People come in, they start moving better, they feel better, versus the people that are in pain they tend to not move more, so then they get in more pain as a downward spiral. So we're trying to reverse that.
Speaker 2:So give me an example of what that means when you're trying to find the root of the cause. Is this a questionnaire? Is it equipment that you're using?
Speaker 3:Great question. We do it mostly via a movement assessment. So if someone comes in, for example, and they have a lot of knee pain, which is very common, or lower back pain, let's say they're a golfer. They're a 55-year-old golfer they have lower back pain. A lot of times they focus on the lower back, but a lot of times it's because their hips are too weak or too immobile, or their upper back because we sit all day, we're hunched over and they don't have good thoracic rotation. So we want to find okay, it's not your lower back, the lower back is the victim.
Speaker 3:Regina, what is the actual criminal in this situation and how do we solve that? Through a combination of strength, mobility, neural performance, active stretching. We try to take a very holistic approach, like David said, to be able to address those quote unquote root causes. That's so important because if they feel good for a couple days but they don't get the proper feedback and get to feel better all the time, we haven't done our job. So we want to really have life changing effects with what we do here.
Speaker 2:So how do you customize a program then? Let's say, someone comes in and there's one person that just really wants to lose weight and another person is looking for muscle gain.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, a lot of that is identified in that first consultation. One of my favorite questions I love to ask people when they first come in is give me a day in the life. What does that look like from the time you wake up to the time you go to bed, walking through everything you eat, everything that you do, what your work schedule is like? And then I get to really know the person, because the more information we have, the better we can customize that plan for that individual, versus if they just kind of fill out a general questionnaire. I don't really know that person very well, but it also creates a lot of rapport in the beginning. So that creates buy-in and trust and you can only I feel like you can only help somebody as much as their spute of trust is in the beginning and we can identify that pretty quickly. But that's kind of my approach. Gary and I can take very similar approaches with our assessment, although we kind of customize it to our personality and temperaments.
Speaker 2:So if you're just a person wanting to get fit and kind of next level fit, are you guys the right place? There's, let's say, no particular injury, and I'm not a professional athlete but I want to get trained properly. Is that you guys?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, we can do it. I mean in terms of getting people to their highest level. We have people who have no orthopedic issues, who are not professional athletes, who want to develop more strength, more speed, more power. Our coaches, in my opinion, are the best in town at delivering on that. I would ask you, if you said I want to get more fit, I would ask you what you mean by that. What do you mean by next level fit? Regina, and we try to dig in deeper to really get to the root of what they're looking to accomplish.
Speaker 2:That's fantastic. Yes, because it means different things to different people.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:What is one fitness myth you wish people could let go of?
Speaker 4:Oh, this is a good one. I think the one that I tend to see the most is a it's like a mental barrier with women is that they think inherently that they're going to come in and start lifting weights and they're going to get too bulky, and I've never seen it happen. I will say that there's a difference between gaining weight on the scale versus changing their body composition, and we tend to see that those both happen at the same time. Because somebody that's never strength trained properly and has never really dialed in their nutrition on a high level, with consistent protein throughout the day, monitoring their sleep and their stress management, when you get all those working together, they're going to see a huge body compositional change, but their weight is not going to fluctuate as much, which is frustrating because they look at the scale.
Speaker 4:But what we tend to see the most is their clothes fit differently. They start looking different. They look slimmer, even though they, you know, muscle and fat, the density is a little different. So it shows up. If I've got somebody that's 150 pounds, that's, you know, 20, 30% body fat, versus somebody that's 10%, they look completely different but they weigh the same. So that's kind of that's kind of the thing that I I tend to see is that that myth is still floating around and we can't get rid of it.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, so, without naming names, tell us one of your favorite body transformations of your clients.
Speaker 3:I'd like to take that one as well. Okay, sure, I know you have one up in mind.
Speaker 4:Well, I've got two, but one in particular is an individual. I've worked with him since 2018, and he had this mental barrier all through COVID and I think this relates to a lot of people that went through that. The average during that two-year period of additional weight gain was national average I think it was about 48, 49 pounds over those two years. Average American gained that much, and I had a client that gained more than that. He got up close to 290, and now he just sent me a picture that he's 212 pounds. So he's lost well over 80 pounds in the last two, two and a half years, and a lot of that was just accountability.
Speaker 4:I think I was holding him accountable weekly and monthly and we were checking in and he was so determined. He's an entrepreneur. He's worth, you know, well over you know, we'll just say over a hundred million dollars. So he's very successful, very driven, but for whatever reason, for those two to three years he just could not get past that mental barrier and I that's that's all I can put it as is. You know, he had high level of accountability and his family was supporting him. Um, his brother, you know, was kind of holding accountable as well, so I'm not gonna mention his name, but that's you know. Those types of things happen when, like, accountability is one of the biggest things that we see is the is the limiting factor and people getting results long-term, because this is an infinite game of working out and sustaining health and fitness. It's like if you had a car and it's the only one you have your whole life. That's the same thing of what your body is. If you have that one car, maintain it and take very good care of it.
Speaker 2:How do you keep people motivated, especially over a time period like that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, it's a combination of touch points. You got to make sure you're talking to them often. We try to create a culture here where all of our coaches and all of our clients know each other. It's not group training, we specialize in one-on-one but they know each other intimately so that they can hold each other accountable as well. And then, by building healthy habits in their lifestyle, even their families start to hold them accountable. Now they can't escape it. No matter where they go they're here, they're traveling, they're going to the restaurant they're accountable by somebody. Someone's holding them accountable. So it's a cultural thing that we're proud to have created here, I think.
Speaker 2:That's pretty cool. How do you do that? How do you engage with them when they're not right there with you? And I guess it's nutrition, as you said, sleep. How do you manage that with them?
Speaker 3:because it's one thing to send someone like a Microsoft Word or Excel spreadsheet workout like, hey, regina, go do this. But if I can see if you're doing it, which all our coaches can see now we know, hey, did you do your workout yesterday? I didn't see you mark it as completed. Text me what you're having for dinner tonight. Oh, that doesn't look very healthy. I mean, it looks delicious. So we try to. I will say the way our business model is. Our coaches don't have to take on as many clients as other coaches and the benefit of that is to make a good living. So the clients they do have Regina get incredibly good feedback and they have a lot of service because they have less clients to service.
Speaker 2:basically, and you're treating it sounds like mind, body, nutrition, everything.
Speaker 3:Very much so we think of ourselves as preventative health care specialists. Right, If I can get you to sleep better, eat better, move better. Now I've gone far beyond, just quote unquote personal training at that point.
Speaker 2:OK, check, check, check. I could use all. All right, I got one question I want both of you to answer. If you could train anyone, dead or alive, who would it be?
Speaker 3:I'm going to go first, then, yeah, you go first. I had three in mind. It might be cliche, but I think you know people talk about Michael Jordan all the time. I think I would want to train Kobe Bryant.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:Tremendous athlete, tremendous competitor. You know what I mean Just everything you could ask for. So I would have had to be creative because he's already such a high level athlete. But just all of that to keep a guy like him focused, because he's so driven. I think Kobe Bryant, that's the one that gets. That's as soon as you ask the question popped into my head immediately no hesitation.
Speaker 2:Excellent, how about you?
Speaker 4:yeah, the first one that came to mind was tom brady, just because, uh, he was a nobody coming out of college, yes, and from where he started to where he ended up in his career and I've heard multiple interviews from him I mean he's just first class and everything that he does, um, I would just like to hear his mindset and learn more about it, because, ultimately, what we've learned coaching other individuals, uh, especially high level C suite executives, the one that the biggest separation in everybody is their mindset. And if I could tap into his mindset, I feel like we could learn more as a company and grow more holistically here in Charlotte. Just that winning mindset. I mean, he's got a legacy of championships. So that was the first one that came to mind.
Speaker 2:Wow, love it guys. All right, well, how can our listeners find you guys?
Speaker 4:All right. Well, how can our listeners find you guys? Yeah, so we're on. We have a podcast as well. So the Fit Method podcast, which is on all the platforms. We're also on social media, so Fit Method CLT, that's our Instagram and Facebook, and then www. fitmethodclt. com.
Speaker 2:Excellent. Well, gary and David, what a pleasure You're right here in the South Charlotte Ballantyne Blakeney area. It's really nice to have met you both.
Speaker 4:It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having us on.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPSouthCharlotte. com. That's GNPSouthCharlotte. com, or call 980-351-5719.