(Ed. Note: Today’s article is by guest writer Heather Ryerson.)
Locally owned, South Landing Fitness, at 1020 Sevier Avenue, opened in 2016 as South Landing CrossFit. Husband and wife team, Crissy and Shane Glarrow, along with their long-time employee and leadership team member, Billy Holman, knew they needed a different model. In 2018, they recentered their goals for how they felt they could best impact the community through health and performance. South Landing Fitness was developed from these conversations.
Last week, I met with the four-person leadership team at their facility to discuss upcoming changes and their holistic health and fitness philosophy. In addition to Shane, Crissy, and Billy, they added Taino Fears-Perez in 2022.
Taino has a focus on performance training and was a collegiate strength training coach. Billy grew up going to gyms with his family, and he always knew he wanted to be in a profession where he could work with others in training their bodies and achieving health in body and mind.
Shane is a former civil engineer by trade and a type 1 diabetic. He was an athlete growing up, and he had no choice but to focus on health and wellness. Crissy is a former gymnast who found strength training in college. Strength training aided her journey toward health, body positivity, and changing how we as a community have conversations around health. All the coaches at South Landing Fitness take this approach with their clients, and they see it as their way of impacting positive health throughout the community.
Clients begin their health and fitness journey at South Landing Fitness, with a free one-on-one consultation to determine goals. Next, they have three one-on-one training sessions. At that point, they decide to stay in one-on-one training, move to semi-private groups of up to 5, or join a group of up to 14. There are limited open gym hours as they believe that the training model they have embraced leads to better results for the clients.
The goal of private consultations and personalized training plans is to take the intimidation out of walking into a gym or fitness center and make goals achievable for their clients. They recognize this as a barrier to many people reaching their health goals and want to break it down. All the coaches stress relationships with each other as a team and with their clients. They believe quality coaching, connection, camaraderie, and consistency combined lead to more significant outcomes for all.
South Landing Fitness also partners with Nourishing Our Needs and PhysioLab for any needs their clients have that go beyond what they provide. They want to “stay in their lane” to give clients the best of them while also supporting other local businesses and their clients.
Another way they want to serve their clients more fully is through their upcoming facility expansion. The current gym space is 3,000sq feet with two bathrooms and showers and a small office space. They will expand into their existing building toward the front-facing Sevier Ave and double the square footage to 6,000. This will allow them to add private and semi-private training areas, a larger consultation area for meeting with clients, green turf areas with cardio equipment, improved locker room areas, and a breakroom/office for staff to work on their training plans for clients.
This expansion plan has been a long time coming. They began talks in 2021 with their now strategic partner, Nadim Jubran, for how this could happen and what the process would entail. He has played an instrumental role in the plans and is helping the team work through a rebranding process. We can look forward to hearing more about the rebranding and gym expansion in the coming months, as they hope to begin by May this year. They are working with architect Dakota Montgomery of Compass Ventures and contractor Issac Pannell with Pannell Construction.
South Landing Fitness has seven full-time team members/coaches and is looking for two more. They take pride in supporting their team with a quality workplace and living wages, allowing them to focus on this as a profession and career. Their coaches create client plans, participate in training and meetings, and are hands-on with their client’s goal-setting and support. To learn more about becoming part of this team as a Fitness Professional, click here.
Keep up with the latest updates on their social media here and here, contact them at 865.776.7230, or email for more information to info@southlandingfitness.com.