River City Live & TitanUp Nocatee
My girl Megan Killis from Jacksonville Mom’s on her own journey and she’s like, hey Rant, come check out my workout here at TitanUp Fitness. We just finished, I came in late, and I’m still sweaty. Anyways, check out the rewind.
“We just want to bring it in more of a team environment where we want to teach you the fundamentals of strength training, educating on proper lift form and rest time, as well as where to kind of set your goals so you can achieve them.” That’s head trainer of TitanUp Fitness, John Gillenwaters, speaking about the goal of the gym. Typically a 13 week program, the gym focuses on the motto: “Lift Local.” “So we’re all about keeping everything as local as we can. We’re a small business started in Jax Beach ten years ago and we want to make sure that we kind of stay that way and keep those roots. We don’t want to make everything corporate like. We still want to make it still have our classic charm that we keep.”
Not many can be more charming than Jacksonville mom blogger Megan Killis, who invited me to check out the TUF vibe. “I tried one of the classes when we were doing a bunch of things and I really enjoyed it. When I first started at Tighten Up, I had zero upper body strength. I was always strong in my legs, playing sports, growing up and stuff, but zero upper body strength with the strongest band assisting me on pull ups. I could barely do two and now I can do four raw pull ups. I could barely just do the barbell and now I can do 130 pounds benching.” I don’t have video here as proof, but I’ve seen it on her social media channels. Mk Beast mode.
So I see a lot of ladies in here. I might be a little intimidated. Normally, the boys get in and get their sweat on any time as well. In this case, “the boys tapped out because today’s leg day, so unfortunately they like to skip out on it. But no, any person could do this program. A woman of 85 with limited knee ability, a kid who is learning how to do big movements for sports. We can always change and modify any work. That’s the beauty of our program.” Well, I had someone described me as having legs like tree trunks, so I tend to skip leg day. Except today. Anyway, John says there’s a couple of reasons TitanUp Fitness has gained in popularity. “One for the actual workout. It’s about pushing yourself, it’s about strength training, working with what works best for you, and not just something that is handed out by a big corporation. We don’t want to give you a laundry list of different exercises. We want you to push the weights that you need to be pushing, but it’s also all about the community. You’ll see in between the rest time. Everyone’s conversating they’re keeping it cool. They are all talking about their plans. It’s more like a community than anything.”
Megan goes deeper into the camaraderie that members feel. “Well, it’s great because this is really like personal training and a group setting and so you can see we have the different rack set up here. You get in a group that’s at your level and once you start coming to a regular time, you meet people in your pod. That’s what we call them and it’s great. Everybody is encouraging one another and helping you out and it’s a great positive environment.” I mentioned that the program is 13 weeks. “Don’t let scheduling dissuade you. You have the option to get in where you fit in anytime. We’re on week six right now. Doesn’t mean you need to wait for the next 13 week program. Get a head start on that program.” I’m Adams for river city live. They’ve got a location in Jacksonville Beach. That one was out at Nocatee, just go to titanupfitness.com
