ABOUT US
The Story Behind Get You In Shape
It’s always great looking back and seeing the path that I was lead to in order for me to finally start to Get You In Shape in 2006. There are many different paths from 1975 (when I was born) to 1998, but to spare you some of the unexciting details let me start at the latter. In 1998, I started my journey being the Graduate Assistant at my college and working with the athletes on the basketball team. My “coaching” began as I helped the team in the weight room and on the court. In 1999, I got my master’s degree in Health and Kinesiology, teacher certification and soon after I received my Personal Trainer Certification.
In 2000, I was then given the chance to go play professional basketball in Ireland for a year and also got to tour around Western Europe for a month while being over there (the all by yourself, backpack, hostel, find your way around the type of travel). For the next 5-6 years, I was able to get some incredible experience in the game of life and learn a lot of things that proved to help in the formation of Get You In Shape.
Looking back at all the things I experienced, all the things I did, all the different steps I took, the different roles I played, they were all just pieces of the puzzle that helped put everything together for me to start to Get You In Shape in 2006. In 2006, two doors opened that would eventually prove to be WHY I chose to quit everything and pursue my career in health and fitness once and for all.
The first door that opened was getting my first Onsite Corporate Fitness Program at the University of Dallas. I had already done group training with the CCA basketball team of athletes in Carrollton but this was just bringing what I was doing with one on one training to a group session. The University of Dallas group personal training program solidified to me that I had been given gifts to be used in group fitness and that this is something that I WANTED to do. The program was a success and I had a blast coaching in a group atmosphere.
The second door that opened is HOW the name GET YOU IN SHAPE started. A friend of mine worked at a television and production station and approached me with the idea of having a television show that would start with an interview and end with a fitness segment. This would also end up being a Fitness DVD with the interviews being included along with 5 different workout segments.
The ball was in my court to come up with the entire programming including the fitness portion and finding the people to Interview. I was able to call and get interviews with some of the most well-known people in their fields in the Dallas area. Some of the interviews were the late Coach Joe Avezzano, Sidney Stohs M.D. (Professor, Pharmacology and Toxicology), Lance Walker (Past Global Director of Performance at Michael Johnson Performance), Everett Aaberg (Owner of Telos Fitness Center), Ken Goldberg M.D. (Founder of the Male Health Center) Meredan Zerner (Registered Dietitian @ Cooper Aerobics), and Collete Cole (has led Coopers Female Focus Program since 2006). These are a few of the incredible list of folks I was able to interview and learn from.
All that being said, I spent a long time trying to come up with a name for the television show. I also wanted to make sure that the URL (website) was available and business name was not taken.
From this Get You In Shape was BORN! In 2006, Get You In Shape was formed and the rest is history. The short end of the story was that the television show never panned out. but I do have the experience of producing the Get You In Shape Fitness DVD which has a great tool for many people to help get in shape over the years. Once the doors opened to use my gifts to help people look better, feel better and become better versions of themselves.
In 2007, I pioneered a group personal training program called the Get You In Shape Fitness program in Coppell, which received rave reviews including a feature in The Obama Diaries, by Laura Ingraham.
From the start, I wanted to make giving back to charities a big part our business and something people we would be known for. We started doing charity workouts and started the Get You In Shape 5k for Coppell Special Olympics. This has been one of the most rewarding aspects of what Get You In Shape is all about. One of our tagline is Get Fit, Have Fun and Make a Difference so we try to live that out every day.
To date, Get You In Shape has been raised more than $250,000 for various charities which is something I feel blessed to have been a part of. Get You In Shape has worked all over the DFW area doing onsite corporate wellness and fitness. Get You In Shape’s fitness program, though, is in Coppell, TX. Since starting, Get You In Shape has been able to help well over 5,000 people look and feel 10 years younger. There are over 1,000 of these clients are featured in video testimonies on our YouTube Channel
Get You In Shape has grown into one of the leading fitness companies in Dallas and was featured on The Doctors television show with Jillian Michaels as being one of the Top Fitness Companies in Texas. I have been a best-selling author twice and have been featured as a fitness expert in numerous newspapers and media appearances including The Doctors, ABC News Channel 8, and CNN.
I started to Get You In Shape as a single man. I got married to my wife, Cynthia, in 2007. In 2011 we had our first child Elliott (12) and we now have Mary (11), Faith (9), Skyler (7) Noelle (6), Luke (3 years) and Jane (2 years).
Has it been a smooth road?
I think if you ask any small business owner, it is never an easy road. It is certainly something I would not give up and never take anything for granted because of all the blessings that have happened since choose to start my own company. I think having a passion to do what you love is what drove me those earlier years of the business. One of the main struggles with owning a small business is making sure you have a team in place to fulfill the services you offer. We have been blessed to have had some amazing people over the years help with our mission.
The biggest struggle over years has been trying to balance family life with running a company. Everything seemed to be easy those early years because we did not have any kids yet and I was very driven to do whatever it took to grow the business. I have found a good balance running a company and being around for my 7 kids every day.
A little more about Get You In Shape.
We specialize in transforming lives and helping people become better versions of themselves. We do this through group personal training, Online Coaching, lifestyle coaching, corporate wellness and onsite corporate fitness programs.
We have helped thousands of people throughout the years and have over 1,080 Video Testimonies just on our YouTube Channel alone.
Our tagline is Get Fit, Have Fun and Make a Difference. We are known as a company that gives back to local charities as we have been able to raise over $250,000 to give to charities
WE DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY — BECAUSE WE BELIEVE DIFFERENT THINGS
Some fitness programs only have one way of doing things and that’s the only only way. Most are cookie cutter fitness exercises where you really don’t have a choice but the do what they are doing. Some Fitness programs believe fitness is a competition or sport. That means they put you in a competitive environment where you feel like you are not just working out to look, feel or perform better for yourself but trying to compete with the other clients working out with you. The result can be various levels of injury.
We believe the polar opposite. We focus on giving you personal training in a friendly group environment where you will have varies fitness levels and options for each exercise allowing each individual to only be pushed to their person fitness level.
Having SUPPORT and ACCOUNTABILITY has been proven to be one of the key factors in not only achieving short term goals but also long term lifestyle goals.
We don’t believe the body is a machine to be abused so we focus on having a personal trainer coaching you with a positive group of like-minded champions all helping each other with the encouragement, inspiration and accountability we all need to start, stick and stay on something long-term.
Fitness is a living, breathing, dynamic organism designed to reward you with a lifetime of vibrant health and function for as long as you keep it active and injury free.
WE DON’T HOST WORKOUTS — WE COACH WORKOUTS
If you’ve ever been in group exercise class where an instructor barks out orders while exercising themselves and doesn’t constantly correct form, then you know what a hosted workout is all about. We believe you deserve better. You deserve to have the trained eye of a qualified coach watching over your form, making minute adjustments, and keeping you safe through every single exercise.
We believe it’s not enough to use motivational yelling to hype up a class. It’s not enough to crank up the music, so people feel the beat. And it’s not enough to ‘high-five’ people who are investing their time and money in their health. At best, those tactics are complementary to a well-designed fitness program. At worse, they are lazy tricks cloaked as training.
We believe people who invest in a fitness program should have more than hosted workouts. We believe you deserve to be coached every step of the way.
EXERCISE AT YOUR OWN FITNESS LEVEL - NOT SOMEONE ELSE’S
Remarkably, not every gym or fitness program believes you should use reasonable intensity in your workouts. In some fitness programs, the phase, “You can cry, you can crawl, you can bawl … but you can’t quit!” is their mantra. We believe just the opposite. We train you differently because we believe different things.
We believe your body has its own ‘kinesthetic intelligence.’ It knows when to push harder, and when to back off. We respect your body’s intelligence. Your body, individual to you alone, has its own optimal movement patterns. It has its own optimal strength level. And its own optimal fitness level. This ‘embodied intelligence’ is yours alone, and differs from mine and everyone else’s.
Attempting to force your body to exceed its limits by blindly following a given workout, or cultural standard is a recipe for injury. That’s why it’s vital you exercise at the intensity of your choice, well within your limits. You alone know when to turn up the heat, and when to back off. At Get You In Shape, you will always only push yourself at your own fitness level. You will have a personal trainer giving you different levels for each exercises so you can move up as you progress in your fitness level or move down if you need to modify.
USE MOVEMENTS YOUR BODY LOVES
The human body hates movement patterns that are abnormal to proper physiology. Forcing the body to move in ways it’s not designed to move or doing the same movement patterns day in a day out will lead to dysfunction. Unfortunately, many people overuse the same muscle over and over again with the same movement patters day in and day out.
That’s why at Get You In Shape we’ve chosen functional fitness as our main program design. Body weight exercises, slam balls, ropes, medicine ball, kettlebells and other functional equipment make the exercises both FUN and REWARDING at the same time.
Most commercial gym equipment tricks your body in forgetting its natural movement patterns. Traditional gym equipment either, (a) forces your body to move around it as you exercise, or (b) trains your muscles to adopt a dysfunctional movement pattern.
Get You In Shape helps your body move and function with every day movements using a variety of fitness equipment to help your body move better. Since 2007, one of the big takeaways is that our clients love not doing the same workout routine or movements everyday and love being able to change the fitness equipment often.