When Matt Ouellett moved from Detroit to Ithaca in 2017, one thing he missed most was the training studio he left behind. The 62-year-old had made big strides in his fitness. The gym, Pulse, was a place where everyone knew each other’s names.
The move to Ithaca crashed the healthy routine Matt had created. He began to gain weight and worried about losing the ground he had worked so hard to gain. So he joined a big commercial gym and hired a trainer, but found he wasn’t getting the results he wanted.
At the time, Matt’s partner, Ron, walked each morning on the Lakefront Trail through the golf course, and when he did, he noticed our small training studio – Infinity Athletics. “I really think that’s the place for you,” Ron told Matt. After meeting us, Matt joined Infinity in Spring 2018. Since then he has come to train at least three days and has lost 25 pounds. He’s especially focused on form as opposed to how much weight he can lift and says he appreciates the little corrections we make. We recognized his commitment immediately and with it came an improved capacity to go longer, lift more, and maintain form. We also began noticing when he walked in the door – wow, his face was really getting slimmer. Generally speaking with all our clients, with steady work we see a tipping point where they show significant gains in their nutrition and consistency in their lifts. That’s been no less true of Matt.
Day to day, he says he feels a general sense of well-being which shows up in little moments. He was recently on a flight and he helped someone make room for their bag in the overhead compartment. He pulled out a heavy suitcase and flipped it without thinking, and when he looked up, the other passengers were nodding, smiling, raising their eyebrows at his strength.
Now that Matt’s in shape and his nutrition has improved, he wants to get more defined. “I actually have a back now, which is something I never had,” he says.
But aside from the training and results, the community feel we provide is one of the gym’s main draws. “Getting in the rhythm of regular exercise is a big win,” Matt says. “Part of why people show up even on days when they don’t want to is that there is a really friendly atmosphere.”
Though Matt gives us a lot of compliments about the sense of community at Infinity, we have to say he’s a big part of that. People just gravitate towards him, they joke with him, they ask him career advice.
We’re proud of Matt’s progress in the gym, but we’re even more proud to call Matt a friend. We can’t wait to see what he accomplishes over the next year!