By Neil Sharma
A former real estate sales rep and Canadian Football League veteran is introducing an innovative, easy-to-use fitness program that is ideal for condominium buildings, where he feels gyms too often go under-utilized by residents.
Retired running back Jeff Johnson is a former 14-year CFL veteran, fitness instructor, and real estate sales rep. He won a Grey Cup with the Toronto Argonauts as a fullback in 2012. His wife Kelly has been involved in the fitness industry for over 15 years. As a personal trainer and instructor for multiple fitness disciplines, she’s trained everybody from fitness enthusiasts to Olympic athletes and runs her own business, Flow Into Fitness.
The two live and breathe wellness, and their shared ethos makes them natural candidates to import Wellbeats (formerly “Fitness on Request”), a popular exercise platform in the United States, to the Canadian market. It’s used in condominium and apartment buildings, military bases, retirement homes, and offices and facilities for large companies, such as Google and Intel.
Like its American counterpart, Wellbeats seeks to integrate itself into more than just new condominiums, but its inclusion in Daniels Erin Mills Condos in Mississauga, Ont. marks its first appearance in Canada.
The Mississauga project will include a fitness room equipped with a large projector, where residents will choose from an array of classes suited to different fitness abilities, goals and time constraints at a kiosk. They can work out together or alone. Wellbeats says they design every class to feel like a live experience.
“It’s a natural fit for the condominium community in that residents, through Wellbeats, can access world-class fitness content 24/7,” says Jeff Johnson. “Wellbeats develops fitness content for children starting from age six through to seniors’ content and everywhere in between. The type of fitness classes you’d normally find in a health club – yoga, kinetics, step classes, cycling classes – you can have it all in your condominium, and because we produce our own proprietary content, we can assure that what we deliver is safe and appropriate for all viewers.”
Jeff Johnson won a Grey Cup with the Toronto Argonauts in 2012.
After working as a sales rep at Century 21 Brown in Etobicoke, and living in condos, former running back Jeff Johnson says he realized most condominium gyms are underused and ill-equipped for residents who have little-to-no prior experience training. He says Wellbeats curtails the need to hire additional staff to manage the fitness rooms.
“When I came across Wellbeats and did due diligence, I saw there was a condominium posting,” he says. “There was a need and Wellbeats fills that need, especially when you compare the alternative of hiring staff to manage the condo.”
The American wing of Wellbeats, which produces all content, is partnered with a variety of specialized fitness companies. An example is Exos High Performance, which produced 11 first-round picks in the 2014 National Football League draft. The programs are approved by Linda Shelton, Wellbeats’ education and content director, who has produced hundreds of fitness DVDs and is a member of the National Fitness Hall of Fame.
Classes are strategically introduced depending on time of year, such as Maintain Don’t Gain during the holiday season and other muscle-toning programs for the summer. Additionally, the Johnsons say Wellbeats classes can become family-friendly affairs because of their start-to-finish, progressive nature.
“Living in a condo, being a fitness person and teaching in a condo, the challenge is you’re dealing with a lot of different people with regards to their schedules and fitness level and amount of time they have to dedicate to fitness,” says Kelly Johnson, adding that families often experience unforeseen changes to their schedules. “So to be able to walk downstairs and pick a class is fantastic. This gives people access, all at different times, and at all different levels.”
Wellbeats, formerly Fitness on Request, made the Inc. 500 List in 2012 and the 5000 List a year later as one of the fastest-growing companies in the United States, and while it only launched here in April, its name is growing. In the building industry, Wellbeats is in talks with a few major GTA developers and recently closed a deal to appear in a major downtown Toronto condominium in the near future.
Married for eight years with three children, Jeff and Kelly have known each other for much longer than that, having once worked together at Toronto’s Fitness Institute. Combining their experience, expertise and overall acumen in the fitness and business worlds, they’re Wellbeats’ sole coast-to-coast Canadian distributors. Given this country’s shift towards condominiums from detached houses, they expect Wellbeats’ popularity to soar.
