Spotlight Series

I have here Kelly Young, the owner of Energy Kelly’s Boot Camp in South Riding, Virginia. Hi Kelly. Nice to meet you. I’m so excited to talk to you about your services today and learn about all the fitness and wellness options that you have for this community. But first, I wanted to ask you what made you become a personal trainer to start with and what made you start your business Energy Kelly’s Boot Camp?

Yes, I will give you the short version of that. Okay, that could be a long question. So I have always loved movement of any kind. And in high school, I was a three sport athlete and really enjoyed being part of a team. I think being part of a team is definitely my happy place.

And when I went to college, I felt pretty lost because I wasn’t on a team anymore. And I found myself exercising around four or 430 every day right around practice time. And originally, you know, initially, it was just running and then one of my friends wanted me to join a student special at this place called City Health Club. And it was like $99 for the semester. And I said yes, and I was very reluctant because I never belonged to a gym. And I didn’t really know what to do at a gym. And somehow I found my way into the group training studio. And I was instantly hooked on that feeling of training with other people working out with other people. And it led me down a path that I didn’t really expect to take.

I was not that was not my major in college. And I ended up going to graduate school and becoming becoming a fitness professional. I don’t know if I consider myself a trainer. I don’t know what I consider myself but if it’s professional for sure. With with with a focus on prevention and, and really trying to help people be healthy. I also had a cousin that died of leukemia right when I was at a really vulnerable age.

I was about 21. And I just had this whole epiphany like nothing matters like who cares about anything if you’re not healthy, if you don’t have your health. I wanted to help people take control of their health, even though there was nothing he could have done as far as to prevent his disease.

But I just felt like health was the most important thing. And that’s kind of ever since then, that’s been my priority is just helping people be healthy and enjoy the process of it. And then what made you start Kelly’s Boot Camp? Yeah, so I was, I was for the first time in my life, I was a stay at home mom for a hot minute. I’d moved from Richmond, Virginia, and I had worked for the one that my first three boys were born. And when I came to Northern Virginia, it just didn’t make sense for me to work. I was like, you know what, I’m gonna stay home and enjoy these three little boys. And I did. And I couldn’t sit still. So we were on the move all the time.

I did teach at some some of the local health clubs, and I would bring them with me. And my father unexpectedly passed away. And I decided to do a fundraiser. Because we were doing we were doing an event and my son or my uncle suggested that it would be more meaningful if we raised funds for the disease that he died of, which was a neurological disease called MSA. And I hosted a fundraiser at my clubhouse, very low key, basically like, you know, equipment I could find in my garage. And it was a circuit fun family workout.

And a bunch of people came. And it was really fun. And there was families and people were laughing. And it just was just a really great environment. I’m like, I am this is what I’m doing.

This is amazing.

Like people are having a great time exercising outside, like how can I do this again. And so I very quickly decided that I was starting a boot camp. And it was going to be Kelly’s boot camp. And I’ve been going strong ever since that was back in 2008, that I did the fundraiser. And I started the actual boot camp the spring of 2009. I thought people wouldn’t work out in the winter.

So I was like, no one’s gonna do an outdoor boot camp in you know, January, February. So I’ll start March 1. And since then, we go all year. So I was wrong about that. But very cool. Yeah, when they want it, they want it. You can’t miss a workout.

Yeah. Okay. And so what what is your name? So it’s a lot of energy. But why energy? Yep. So that’s a great question. So it was I was nervous because I had been Kelly’s boot camp since 2009. And I was opening a studio in 2017 May of 20. Gosh, it’s our anniversary. May of 2017.

I opened energy. And I was trying to name it. And my one of my instructors actually named it for me because we were walking. I’m like, I want to bring like the outside energy inside. And she’s like energy. I’m like, Oh, okay, that’s too easy.

So energy is the name. So we I try to differentiate Kelly’s boot camp is outside. And energy is inside. And that’s what most people a lot of my old timers, they love my outdoor and they I cannot give it up. I need to keep it. But it’s, it’s actually a very small part of what we do. Now. Most all of our classes are inside. We have just just a handful of classes that we continue to do off outside.

And that’s just because I’m stubborn. And I love it. And sometimes it’s kind of funny because we have this beautiful state of the art studio. And we’re like, working on a parking lot. But that’s okay. I’ll do it for people show up.

Yeah. Well, there’s something about working out outdoors to the energy outside and doing it inside as well. So that’s awesome.

So let’s talk about your classes, some of your classes that you offer. I know you have so many classes you offer, and that’s so good to see. And there’s so many different fitness programs that are in the Ashburn area.

What kind of sets you guys apart too, from the types that you have? That’s a great question. And I think it all comes down to our roots. I think that because I was outdoor, I wanted to, I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to end my outdoor program when we opened energy.

So I wanted to have programming that complimented what we were doing outside. So if people needed lower impact, or they wanted to work with different strength equipment, or they wanted to use the water rowers or whatever it is. So when I opened energy, initially, it was really an idea. The idea was to compliment what we were doing outside. And I wanted to have diversity in the offerings. I wanted to have some low impact options.

I wanted to have some mat classes, some Pilates and core fusion, and barre classes where, you know, that’s not something that would really be done outside. And we’ve just grown from there, really. It’s really cool, because I see my members every day, and my team is amazing. And we’re so in touch with our members. So if they say, Kelly, we want to strengthen stretch or Kelly, we want to, okay, we’ll put a strength. Okay, well, we’re gonna find room on the schedule, because it’s getting really full.

But yeah, we really are, we’re really connected to our members. And they feel like, you know, this was kind of from the ground up, and a lot of them are a part of it. So they feel like they can make a suggestion, like, hey, you know, like, this is this is something that we all kind of created together.

I don’t, I love to think of it as like, this is not just my baby, but all of our babies. And in the meantime, we’ve invited a lot of new people in, which that’s what the studio did for me. I don’t think the outdoors was inviting for everybody. But having a studio and a home makes me it feels a lot more comfortable for people than the parking lot. You know? Yes. And you serve a couple of clientele that I think is really underrepresented.

Yeah, I saw that you had some classes for middle school, is it girls and high school girls, which is amazing. I have a daughter who’s 12. And I have a son who’s 14. And my 14 year old son loves to lift weights and work out. And I want her to be just as strong and empowered. And then the other group that you serve, is the seniors, which is amazing, because they need to stay fit and strong as they’re aging as well for so many different reasons.

But I think it’s hard for them to jump into just any studio. So can you talk to me about those two groups? Well, I love that you use the word empowered for your daughter, because that is actually the name of Nicole’s program. It’s called Empowered Her. And she is an athlete herself. Nicole is the instructor. And she definitely is, I think, giving back to these girls.

She’s giving them confidence and energy. And she creates this really positive environment. And she makes it fun. Because I was a pretty strong athlete. And I’m 20 some years old. And I’m nervous to go to a gym.

These girls are now getting exposed early to the environment. They’re learning how to squat, and how to lift, and how to press, and how to breathe. And I just think it’s awesome. And it gives them confidence. And it gives them tools. It gives them tools, because it’s a foundation for their fitness.

And it’s a good environment. It’s a very healthy, positive, non-competitive. Some of the girls are athletes. You can’t help it. The fit get fitter sometimes. We always want to say, let’s make a class for the girls that aren’t in a sport, the girls that really need to move more. But we get a mix. We get a mix. But yeah, Nicole does an amazing job with the girls.

I’m so proud to offer that program. And she will be offering. She’s working on the times, talking to people that have expressed interest about what time she’s going to offer it in the summer. It’s always tricky, because we want to please everyone. And you can’t. And then our retro program is a 55-plus program. And that actually has been going almost since we opened Energy consistently twice a week. It’s a small group. So you sign up for the month.

You know, older people don’t want contracts. We don’t have any contracts anyway. But they like to do it each month. You know, I’m in Florida this month or whatever. So the coach, Meg is actually currently the coach. And she really unites them.

She celebrates their birthdays. She works on all kinds of, you would love it. You would be very, very proud as a physical therapist. She works on their balance, their cognitive health. She finds ways to incorporate all of the things that they need to, you know, falling and all the things that they need to think about into a fun fitness routine. And they really, really enjoy it.

I actually subbed, I taught this Monday. And I told Meg afterwards, I’m like, I think I’m going to steal retro from you because I got so much joy from teaching them. They’re just, they’re so appreciative. They come up after and like everything that they loved. And I’m like, no one, my other classes aren’t, you know, they’re, they just, they like to learn. I don’t like them saying they like, it’s like a different, they’re pretty much my, some of them are my age.

But, but, but yeah, it’s, it’s a really great group. They feel safe, which is so important. They feel safe. They feel seen. They know that we’re going to correct their form. We know, they know that it’s not like, you know, when I was teaching somebody had a wrist issue, so they couldn’t hold the band.

Somebody else couldn’t, couldn’t do anything with their lower body. It’s like, everyone’s got something, even general population. They all, they all have something that they’re working around and we honor that.

We say, we will figure out what we can do. Cause we just got to keep you moving. Yeah. And lifting weights, the right lifting weights. That’s awesome. Yes. And range of motion. Yesterday I had an 80 or Monday I had an 80 year old and she literally like started cheering. She was home because she pressed her arms up over her head and she had not been able to go beyond this.

And she goes, oh my gosh, it’s back. I have range of motion. I can press over my head. And I’m like, yeah, you got to keep moving. Yeah. They need to keep that confidence as they’re aging in that for sure.

Confidence. Absolutely. I want them to feel strong and they get, they do feel strong.

It’s really cute. So what kind of outcomes do you see with your clients? Like after they’ve taken, say, I don’t know, maybe four weeks of classes or maybe six weeks of classes, what are you seeing that they have improvements in? What are they talking about? I love that question. I’ll tell you what I see as an instructor posture and confidence.

I, especially my men, I train a lot of men. I had to a specialty classic, a dude camp. And they’re just naturally like this. They’re just naturally rounded. It’s just they’re on their computers. They’re sitting.

So I feel like I take, I tell them, I’m going to take five years off your life or on your life. I’m going to make you look five to 10 years younger. And it’s really true. It’s really, really true. And muscle balance. Sometimes, you know, the dudes that do workout, they’ll work their arms or whatever, and they don’t work their core and they don’t work their back. And they need, you know, their hamstrings, their glutes. Oh my gosh. Yes.

We try to balance them out a little bit. They probably will say, oh, she does too many of this. I’m like, well, I know that you’re walking and you’re moving forward a lot in your day to day life. So I’m trying to get that posterior chain, trying to balance things out a little bit. And really, I mean, you know, everyone comes to us because they want to lose their belly. Right.

That’s like what we hear all the time. And I honor that. And we know we can help them with that. But their why has to be bigger than that. I really believe that their why has to be that they want to move better. They want to age better.

They want to feel better. And I do think that these guys, all of our students, I don’t know why I’m talking about the guys now, but they feel different. They are energized by the workout. I’ll hear that too. Like they come in so tired and then they leave with more energy. And it’s like hard to think like, oh, I’m tired.

I can’t work out. Instead, you need to think like, I’m tired. I need to go work out because that’s going to give me energy. So, yeah. And then the biggest thing, I mean, that that we highlight because this is what people want to see is skeletal muscle mass increase. We’re very big on trying to help our members increase.

We’re not even OK with just maintaining. We want to increase their skeletal muscle mass. And if you had told me 10 years ago that I was going to put two to three pounds of skeletal muscle mass on a 63-year-old woman, or I would say, well, that’s going to be hard.

Maybe we can protect it. But we really we are seeing it. And it’s not just the workouts. They have to do the nutrition. They have to they have to do the nutrition. And we have two amazing nutrition coaches that help people with teaching them better, better ways of eating.

We don’t like the word diet. We don’t do anything fatty or trendy or six. You know, it’s everything is like these are things that are going to help you just make better choices every day for the rest of your life versus like a six-week program type thing.

Tell me tell me a little bit about your program, because I think that’s great. It’s nutrition plus fitness. I mean, that’s next level.

You’re going to get there faster and it’s going to last longer, too. Yeah. Tell me about that.

Well, so anytime someone comes in, if they if they say, Kelly, I want to meet with you and just find out more about the studio or, you know, I always I get them on the InBody because no matter their weight, they it’s important. And I don’t even like talk to them as much about their weight or their body fat at first. I’m like, you’re your skeletal muscle mass is low. And most women, it’s dangerously low. And that’s why they’re aging poorly. And that’s why they can’t maintain their weight. And they think it’s their metabolism. And I have to tell them, it’s your lack of muscle. So we really work hard to teach them to worry so much about the scale.

Yes, if you’re overweight, we need to get the scale down. That’s going to help you feel better and move better. But let’s work on your muscle.

So I’m a little bit passionate about this. But I tell them if I never see you again, can you just promise me that you’re going to start eating whatever I use their lean body mass as a general guideline for their for their protein? You know, that you’re going to start thinking about protein more that you’re going to be more protein focused. But that’s not that’s not like a program.

That’s just me wanting to help people. If someone really wants to be coached, and they want professional education and guidance on what to eat, how to eat when to eat, they need to go into a nutrition coaching program, which we offer various programs right now. Amy just started.
Amy Byer is one of our nutrition coaches. She just started a program called clean and shred. It’s, it’s actually she brought it back.

It was very popular. And then she just mixed things up a little bit. Our members are learners, they love to learn. So a lot of the people have done this program before, but they want to be in the room, they want to feel more engaged and connected. Amy does amazing group calls with them where she gets them excited about recipes and meal planning, and just ways to feed their family to feed the whole family and in a better way, but not a way that feels like so restrictive. It’s like, Oh, you know, I’m not just eating this bar, or right chicken and broccoli or whatever. And then Gretchen is our other nutrition coach. And she’s got a very different focus. She’s very macro focused.

She’s kind of she loves the numbers and she gets really dialed into that. And that works really well for people to that. That’s, that’s a little, you know, you have to be, you have to be dialed in to macros. You can’t just fake macros. Yeah. I tell people, I’m like, it’s not just signing up for the program. You got to do the work. Yes. The people that do it have incredible results, incredible results.

It actually blows my mind. They put on muscle within a short amount of time, their body fat drops a couple of percentage. Sometimes the weight doesn’t change as much. It depends on the person if they need to lose the weight. But, but we definitely, and the beauty of that is if you lose five pounds, because you cut your carbs, you’re going to put it back on as soon as you go back to whatever, right? We all know that we’ve all done it myself included. I know how to move the scale if I want to, but when you actually change your body composition, first of all, you might be able to weigh a little bit more, which will allow you to maintain it, because that means you’ll get more food.

I always tell people more muscle, more food, more muscle. That’s good incentive, right? Right. Right. I’m like, do you like to eat? Yes. Oh, well then you want more muscle because then you get more food. But yeah, so, so they’re both great programs.

We, we try to run stuff like every quarter. There’s something going on. Sometimes we’ll just have like an accountability program. I do a year long accountability program with the InBody that has been miraculous, super helpful for people. What, what our goal is, is not the quick fix, like what’s going to really move their health in the right direction. What is really going to help them not just today, but for the rest of their life, hopefully.

And that’s what we see. You know, I have members in their late fifties, their body fat’s lower than it’s ever been. They’re like, I never thought I’d have a waist again. I never thought, you know, I’d wear this size again. But it, it takes time. It takes a lot of time. It’s not, I don’t have the, I don’t have a quick fix for people. It’s, it’s work and it’s, it’s worth it. That’s my thing.

I’m like, it’s worth it. And then you’re seeing these transformations, which is pretty neat in that you’re seeing them from their starting point and getting into the nutrition program, seeing the fitness and then people around them are seeing them change and that’s motivating right there. Yeah.

Yeah. So if I wanted to start with you, if I wanted to start your program, how would I enroll? What’s the enrollment process? So we like to make things very easy for people. We are, we are, um, I would call it a boutique fitness studio, but there’s not a front desk.

So we try to, we keep our prices as low as possible with 11 County rent. And, um, we are, we want to invest in our classes, our instructors, our instructor training and things that actually matter. So everything is done from their phone.

They literally can sign up for a free class from their phone. Um, a lot of times people want to meet with me, which is usually my preference. I’d love to be able to meet someone before they walk into the studio for the first time, but it just depends on where they’re coming from.

So they’ll message me either email DM, um, through, through the app, through the website. And just say, I’d like to, you know, I’m usually give you a little history, which is nice. Like I’ve had a couple of back surgeries or I’m, I really need to lose weight or whatever.

And then, you know, then I kind of know, okay, well that’s me, you know? Um, and, and after we meet, I go through the schedule with them based on their time. Like they’re not a morning person. I’m not going to say this by 15am strength class would be amazing for you.

You know, I got to figure out them, like their kids, their, everyone’s juggling at least two or three things, right? Their work, their kids, their schedule, their morning, night, whatever. And I try to make recommendations based on what I know about them and based on what I know about the classes. And I suggest that they start slow.

I’m like, you don’t need to do this every day. In fact, if you come every day, I’ll bet my life on the fact that I’m not going to see you in two months. I’d rather you come to us twice a week and start walking three times a week and build from there.

Let’s build instead of start here and then duh. And I’m doing, I’m doing, so just like, just like you, I’ve been, you know, I’m a lifer in this industry and I’ve seen it all and I pay attention to people and I pay attention to habits that seem to move their health in the right direction and things that don’t work. And when they come, when they come in hot, they’re usually out quick and it’s an excuse because they can’t keep up with it.

So slow start, build on their own success, maybe not even think about nutrition when they first start. Let’s just get you moving. Let’s just get the water, start thinking about the protein, pay attention to it.

Okay, Kelly, now I’m ready. I feel like I, you know, I feel like I’m in a good routine with my fitness. I want to start, I want to get some of this weight off or I want to, you know, I want to get my body fat down and then we’ll, they can do custom, anytime they can do custom nutrition coaching with Amy or Gretchen and it’s super affordable.

We try really hard to make our programming affordable because there’s, there’s plenty of high cost, low touch point options out there. We’re the opposite. We’re low cost, high touch point. We know our members, we care about our members. We really, we really do everything we can to make them feel special and to make, to make them feel successful and to celebrate the little successes along the way. Then they have more, you know, you have to celebrate the little ones.

That seems like a common theme throughout everything that you talked about from your starting your passion and into personal training and then starting your business and within your clients, that motivation, that connection, that just energy within your community and building a community where you’re educating about fitness and wellness. That seems to be like a common theme for you. And I think that your clients probably, that’s what keeps them coming back.

It’s just that community feel. And I think that’s unique. I don’t, I don’t think that’s everywhere to have that in a community. It’s definitely what we’re most proud of. That’s so saturated with so many other fitness places as well. Well, that’s great. I think this is wonderful. I’m so excited to get more information out there to a lot of my clients. I know people are always asking me, you know, because for me, a lot of my clients are a little older and they have, they don’t want to jump into, they’re kind of nervous to kind of jump into the next program.

So, and I also being the physical therapist, you know, I’m like, okay, where are you going to be taken care of? Where are we going to prevent injury? And so I’m really excited to be able to talk more about your, your services. Cause it seems like you have a lot that they can benefit from and just more information out into the public about some of your, some of your services. Thank you so much.

This is great. Thank you. And I look forward to just connecting with you a little bit more.

Yeah, for sure. You’ll definitely have to, I’ll have to get some more information. And cause my clients pelvic pelvic floor in particular has been a hot topic in my community. And as a, as a fitness professional, I’m going to be totally honest. I never even knew that that was like a problem or a such a big area of, of, of, of concern for women and in men too. But yeah, we’ve definitely had a lot of conversations around it.

So it’s great to have a great resource for, for women in general. I think sometimes when those things happened, like say if they, women had kids and they didn’t resolve the issues then, then it transitioned to like later on in their life. And now they’re like a little older and they’re like forgetting about it, but it’s coming back and creeping up as they’re transitioning into doing other things.

And so, yeah, just being, again, I think I’m just trying to educate a little bit more too, and they’re staying quiet about it too. So thanks so much. Thank you.

It was so great to talk to you. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.

Bye.