Before there was a gym
A rugby player with a PT badge
Dom drops out of college to play rugby league full time, and takes his personal training qualifications for something to run alongside it. No plan for a gym. Not yet.
Our story
From a car park to the big gaff.
We didn't start with a facility. We started with a car park, a few people who kept turning up, and a lot of graft. Eight and a half years later this is Widnes' largest independent gym. Here's how it happened.
2013/14
It started in a car park
No premises, no kit, no money. Just early mornings in a car park, in the sun or in the snow, and a handful of people who kept turning up. That's the whole foundation this place is built on.
The decision
A year in Australia settled it
Dom and Lauren spend a year out in Australia. Somewhere over there the decision gets made: come home and coach full time. Properly.
Back home
Two jobs, one idea
Personal training at David Lloyd Speke, still playing rugby, and building toward something of his own on the side.
Teaming up
Then we met Luke
The bootcamps came indoors to a local Widnes gym, because nobody fancied a car park in February. Luke was coaching out of the same place. The two teamed up, and outgrew it almost immediately.
TF 1.0
We took the plunge
Our own four walls at last, opened with the bare minimum of kit and a chalkboard on the wall. It got busier every single month. Lauren finished her qualifications, quit her recruitment job, and went all in.
A proper team
The first coaches came on board
All three of us coaching, taking classes and running our own clients, and the first personal trainers joined us. The bit that still defines the place: independent coaches who actually care.
Reinvesting
The first proper refurb
We banked enough to bring in our first full Primal Strength fit-out. Every penny that came in went back onto the gym floor. It still does.
2020
Then the doors shut
Weeks after the refurb, lockdown. We tore up the business model overnight and ran the whole thing online and outdoors, back in car parks where it started. Nobody got left behind, and the community came out the other side tighter than it went in.
Outgrowing it
Full, and freezing
We hit max capacity, and TF 1.0 was colder than cold in the winter. Our members deserved better than that, so we started looking.
2022 ยท The big risk
Nine times bigger
We signed for a unit nine times the size of the old place. It was a massive risk, and not everyone was as relaxed about it as Luke and Lauren were. But TF 2.0 came to life exactly as we pictured it, kitted out better than any commercial gym around here.
Now
Thousands through the doors, and still building
Eight and a half years, thousands of people fitter and healthier, and plenty of the originals from that car park still training here today. New kit keeps landing, GRIND opened on the gym floor, and floor two is next.
The journey
Three homes. One community.
The car park
Where the bootcamps began.
The first unit
Our own four walls, from 2017.
The facility
Where we are today.
The build
Watch it come together.
Every rig, every wall, every detail of the current facility, built with our own hands. From an empty shell to a full gym floor.
