Off-ice teamwork
Gushue, Nichols open new fitness studio
The partnership between Brad Gushue and Mark Nichols has already yielded curling greatness and a lasting friendship, now the duo is about to team up for business success.
Later this month, the Brier and World curling champions will officially launch the province’s first Orangetheory Fitness studio on White Rose Drive in St. John’s.
“We both have instrumental roles on the team part, so we know how to work together in stressful situations and running a business you can have many of those,” says Gushue, who skipped Nichols, Brett Gallant and Geoff Walker to the province’s first national men’s curling title in front of a hometown crowd at Mile One Centre this March and followed it up with an undefeated run at the men’s world championship not long afterwards.
“I think we’re better equipped than most people going into a partnership just based on the history we’ve had together and what we’ve been able to achieve.”
While Gushue is no stranger to the St. John’s business community — he’s previously owned gas stations in the metro area and he currently operates both Menchie’s Frozen Yogurts in addition to a real estate business with his father Ray — Nichols is new to entrepreneurial endeavors.
But what he lacks in business acumen, the team’s longtime third more than makes up for it with over a decade of experience as a personal trainer.
“The way the studio is set up with both sides of the glass, as we like to call it, his expertise is on one side, mine’s on the other,” says Gushue. “We trust each other to let each other take the reigns on that and run with it.”
In fact, Nichols, at least to start, will be a hands-on owner at the progressive new style of personal fitness centre that has enjoyed tremendous growth in recent years, ballooning from 26 operating studios in 2012 to 525 as of last fall with another 520 in development.
Unlike a traditional gym, Orangetheory is a groupbased personal training concept where members wear a heart rate monitor throughout
a 60-minute class which employs an interval-training full-body workout using a treadmill, a rowing machine, free weights and TRX suspension training and led by motivational coaches.
Heart rates are displayed on large screens throughout the workout with the goal for each person to reach the orange zone during each interval, which is 84 per cent or higher of their individual heart rate. The science behind this strategy — excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) — is that the body will continue to metabolism calories for up to 36 hours after the workout to feed an oxygen debt.
“We can have a huge variety of fitness levels in one class because you’re training at your own heart rate, your own fitness level,” explains Nichols, noting that already-fit participants may have to work harder to reach the orange zone.
“Someone who’s new to fitness, it’ll take a little while, they might start off walking, and then maybe power walking on an incline, and then a few months down the road it’s turned into a slow jog, and the same thing on the weight stations.
You’ll see yourself getting stronger.
“That’s why I’ve been in the fitness industry for as long as I have, because I really enjoy seeing that and the confidence it builds.”
And they’re not just the owners, they’ll also be clients.
Team Gushue will be using it regularly leading into and throughout next season, which is a big one for the foursome as the team readies for the 2018 Olympic trials in December.
Gushue and Nichols first came across Orangetheory locations while travelling throughout Canada for curling events and were equally intrigued by the concept to start looking into franchise opportunities for the first location in Atlantic Canada.
“It’s funny, Brad was doing his research about this business separately from when I was doing it,” laughs Nichols. “We had no clue that each of us were looking at it until one day at practice about a year ago when it came up and then it kind of evolved from there.”
Over the winter months, they set up a preview centre in a trailer on the parking lot of the future location and started
pre-selling memberships. Including, surprisingly, the day after claiming Canada’s biggest men’s curling prize. “After we won the Brier, we celebrated that day and the next day we were right back in the trailer,” says Gushue. Adds Nichols, “People were coming into the trailer going, ‘what are you doing here?’” In reality, Gushue says all the ins and outs and minor stresses of getting a new business off the ground proved to be a welcome distraction from Brier prep, and subsequently, the world championships. “We went to practice and were focused there, but once we left practice, we were able to get away from it and not think about it too much,” he says. “If we didn’t have that outlet, I think that month leading into the Brier would have been just agonizing.” A soft opening for members who have already taken advantage of a discounted rate first month rate is set June 8, with the grand opening on June 21. A full slate of classes of 55 to 60 per week, depending on demand, starts the next day.