Pandemic Creates Healthy Opportunity For New Brunswick Transplants
SAINT JOHN — When Kim Newhouse and her husband, Frank Cruz, decided to pick up stakes from their home in Toronto and move to New Brunswick, they didn’t know that it would be the start of a new business venture.
Newhouse, a New Brunswick native, returned to her family home in Hampton in 2020 to see if the Atlantic Bubble could offer more for her family than Ontario. Along the way, she discovered an untapped fitness market.
“In Toronto, the idea of the small, boutique fitness studios has really taken off and the big-box gyms are sort of less popular,” she explains. “People are really looking for that private, one-on-one attention from a trainer, you know, to really find a community.
“We moved here and thought, okay, let’s give that a go!”
Partnership leads to opportunity
Partnering with local personal trainer Tara Daye, Newhouse and Cruz took their insight and experience from running a commercial fitness equipment company in Toronto, Fitness Equipment Solutions, and turned it into Rothesay Athletics and Training, which opened its doors this month.
Located at 83 Hampton Road in Rothesay, the business offers personal training and boutique gym services to those who need to stay fit for a living, as well as regular people who just want to improve their health.
“I’ve worked with the KV [Kennebecasis Valley] Fire Department, and also with the Emergency Medical Services team in Saint John,” says Daye. With more than 15 years of experience, her client list includes body builders, figure skaters, and equestrian world champion Sylvia Hoyt.
But you don’t need to be an athlete to become a member.
“We do serve everyone, including general population, first responders, young and old athletes alike.”
Each membership does have a monthly personal training component, to establish a “touch point” with each person, as well as nutrition components, injury prevention advice, access to small group training workshops, and personalized daily circuits members can complete on their own time.
“We get to know our members and really create a sense of connection and community with everybody,” says Daye.
Unique gym equipment
On top of the personal training component, the gym also has equipment that can’t be found elsewhere in the region.
“Frank has built gyms for the last 30 years for other people. You get a real sense of what pieces are necessary and what ones aren’t,” says Newhouse, adding the gym has a really good selection of standard equipment like stair climbers and treadmills, isolating machines, and lots of free weights.
They also have some one-of-a-kind pieces.
“We’ve got a split treadmill that probably no one’s ever seen here before,” says Newhouse. She describes a treadmill with two individual belts that can each go in a different direction.
“Other than the climbing gyms in New Brunswick, we are one of the few gyms that have a huge ladder mill,” adds Daye. A ladder mill is a machine that has the user climbing vertically, or sometimes leaning at greater than a 90-degree angle, up a revolving series of rungs.
The facility also has an indoor tire flip and an outdoor gym.
Daye’s partnership with Newhouse and Cruz has allowed her to offer workshops and bring in some of her personal training clients to the facility, including clients from her bodybuilding business, Stage Perfect Content Prep. This is part of the profit-sharing component the gym facilitates with trainers.
“We really want trainers to feel like they can make real living and have their own brand and have their own success,” says Newhouse.
If Covid-19, the thing that made this business a reality, rears its head again this winter, Daye already has a plan. Her online app “Training for Life” can help her clients continue with their fitness goals no matter the circumstances.
Another New Brunswick connection
The fitness industry wasn’t the only connection Newhouse and Daye had. UK transplant, comedian James Mullinger is also a mutual friend of the two women.
Mullinger, who is the godfather of Newhouse’s nephews, was there for the grand opening of the business, on October 1.
Alex Graham is a Huddle reporter in Saint John. Send her your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].