As an avid athlete all my life, I have been fascinated by how the human body works and how athletes perform. I continue to study the science of exercise with a passion.
As a cadet at West Point, I was fortunate to be selected for the Army Strength Team. We were a group of cadets chosen to assist the professional strength coaching staff in training the football team as well as the other sports. It was that experience that truly sparked my passionate interest in the development of strength and fitness.
After a few years as a Combat Engineer officer in the Army, I left the service and joined the ranks of Corporate America. Julie and I were married that same month.
I left the corporate world in the summer of 2012. Since leaving the service, I had worked for 20 years in the medical device industry, the last 17 of them with a wonderful company, Boston Scientific. It had been a great ride.
But, it was time for a change.
After a couple decades of interminable business travel, I wanted to do something that made a difference in my community and I wanted to contribute something meaningful that would make a difference in people’s lives. I also wanted to test my mettle to see if I had what it took to start and grow a local business, something that would challenge me and require all of my skills, experience, and determination.
Through some fortuitous connections, I found ActiveRx. The company was an emerging franchise brand in the healthcare and fitness space. Everything about it seemed providential. ActiveRx worked with seniors to rehabilitate and restore functional strength. Every aspect of the endeavor seemed to match up with what I had been looking for.
It took some persuasion, but not only did I get Julie onboard with the venture, she even agreed to go back to work full time in the new endeavor. She had been out of the workforce for over 15 years while raising their daughters. From those earliest days, Julie became the beating heart, not to mention brains and beauty, of our little company.
While the idea of ActiveRx was truly compelling, for a host of reasons it did not survive. Sadly, the parent company disintegrated and dissolved at the end of 2015.
That left franchisees like Julie and me to ponder what to do next.
We decided to view our misfortune as opportunity. We chose to rebrand as ACCELERATED Strength & Balance and to relaunch with an orientation toward a younger demographic.
Back when we were ActiveRx, and our focus was more specifically on rehabilitation and strength restoration with seniors, our patients and members would experience the remarkable transformation that our approach delivers, and would consistently comment… “I sure wish that I had started this 20 or 30 years ago! What an amazing difference it would have made in my life over these past couple of decades.”
That feedback led us to the conclusion that we really ought to reorient toward intervening in the aging process much earlier. Our mission should become as much about preservation as it was about restoration.
Surveying the local and national fitness marketplace, there are countless options available to younger people, kids in their 20’s and 30’s, and young athletes in high school and college. And, whether they are effective or not, there are numerous options oriented toward seniors, affordable programs at the senior centers and similar places, programs like Silver Sneakers or chair yoga. But, there seems to be precious few programs that are specifically designed and targeted for men and women in midlife.
About a year ago, in answer to that need, we built and launched our online training platform, MidStrong.
Everything about MidStrong was tailored around training men and women in midlife who are busy with careers and families to build muscle and burn fat. You see, we KNOW from our own experience and volumes of scientific research, that the key to aging well is building a strong foundation of functional fitness. The earlier the better. Through the right approach it’s quite possible to begin to look and feel better than we did in our 20’s.
As a play on words, the name itself, MidStrong, is meant to infer the importance of strength in our midlife. We deliberately chose the brand colors to speak to the yin and yang of midlife. The forest green represents the perennial renewal of evergreen forests. While the grey is an acknowledgment that we’re all graying, but that we can do so gracefully. Our graying is something of a hard won trophy that speaks to the experience and wisdom we’ve battled hard to acquire through our youth.
Since we introduced MidStrong, we have seen steady organic growth. The brand seems to resonate well with our target demographic.
But, the tandem of MidStrong and ASB has led to confusion. It was always clear in our minds… ASB was our bricks and mortar business, local to Westborough and Central Mass. MidStrong was our online brand. But, that’s not always as clear to others. And, we’ve been managing two of everything, two websites, two social media efforts, and so on.
Over this same past year, it also became clear to us that we needed to move to a new location. The building that we are presently in has been wonderful. When ASB was more focused on therapy and rehabilitation it was a logical location. But, since our refocus on fitness and nutrition, it became apparent that we need a retail location, with a storefront and signage. We need a space that’s more conducive to fitness training.
So, we’re in the process of moving. We hope to go live in our new home at the beginning of January. We aren’t going far, just across the parking lot.
So, we’re consolidating under one brand, MidStrong. And we’ll reintroduce ourselves sometime very soon in our new location. Thanks very much for your interest and support! We hope to continue to make a difference in our community and in the lives of the families we have had the privilege of serving these past several years.
Be strong, have fun!
