Action Conditioning hasn’t experienced growing pains
Action Conditioning has taken their training downtown.
The gym that has been in business in Lethbridge since 2010 is coming up on one year of operation at its new digs at 303 3 Ave. S., having moved in November of last year.
“We spent a bunch of time doing the layout of the gym and facility to really (understand) what people are after and what they want out of those facilities,” said Ryan Deacon-Rogers, director of Action Conditioning. “To be able to walk in the door and have a place to sit and relax and be able to walk in and do your warm up and get on to the group floor and do your conditioning, it really gives us a wide scope of training that we can do.”
It’s Action Conditioning’s third location in Lethbridge since opening up at Two Guys and A Pizza Place in 2010 before moving to 3 Avenue South, a few blocks east from the new location.
“We started there (Two Guys And A Pizza Place) and in 18 months we didn’t have the capacity to house how many people wanted to come,” said DeaconRogers. “So we started looking for a building and we ended up in the old Rona building. We spent five years there and we didn’t have quite the services that we thought our clients wanted. We wanted to have a little more for customer service. We found this (location). We approached the landlord and said what we wanted to do and approached the city and they approved it.”
Nearing the first year of operation at their downtown location, both DeaconRogers and fellow Action Conditioning director Jason Prebushewski noted a trend toward group training and physical literacy.
“I started as a client and I was somebody who wandered around the gym, paid my $40, waited for somebody to finish something, got five drinks of water and went back and all of a sudden, 45 minutes was up and I would leave,” said Prebushewski. “When you enter the classspace setting you have not only your coach, but the other clients with you that motivate you and keep you going and hold you accountable. You have clients texting you and saying ‘You weren’t at class this morning, where are you?’ I like that family feel and that accountability. There’s no accountability going and lifting on your own and I think that’s where we’re seeing that trend turn. If people are really serious about their goals they need to come and be serious about it with somebody who can do it properly.”
Having a buddy or a group to train with is beneficial, but Deacon-Rogers also stressed familiarity with the movements of each workout in order to avoid injury.
“We do quite a few youth hockey teams. They come in for some dry land training. It’s also about learning to move and that physical literacy. It’s so important when you’re a kid because when you’re talking sports-specific. As you get older and into high level sports, there’s an expectation when you go to tryouts and they do physical testing that you know how to move. You know how to squat properly and you know how to bench press and how to jump properly. We can teach those fundamentals so as you go through at a young age you can build on those skill developments. It also reduces injuries.”
With clients ranging from youths to members in their 70s, the feedback about the new location has been favourable.
“It’s been nothing but positive with what offer compared to where we started,” said Deacon-Rogers of the 11,100-squarefoot facility with 1,500 square feet of field turf. “It was one of those things where we grew to the point where we needed to expand and now we’ve got a ton of space and variety that we can offer people.”