We are not a GYM, we are a private training facility!

We don’t have gym members, we have a SpotFam.

The Spot Athletics’ mission is to impact and inspire as many lives as possible through world-class coaching.

Founded in 2011 by World Champion Powerlifter and former University of Kentucky strength and conditioning coach, JL Holdsworth, The Spot Athletics has grown from a small 2,000sq ft. private facility to two, 20,000sq ft. training facilities.

Through this expansion, The Spot Athletics maintained its philosophy of being a private training facility. This means there are NO open gym memberships. Although there is plenty of space for open-gym members, The Spot Athletics believes in ensuring that every client in the facility is learning how to properly train, receiving world-class coaching, and executing a program that will get them the results they desire. This can only happen by always maintaining a private training facility, which is what we have chosen to do.

How we operate is uncommon, which is why the results we get for our clients are uncommon. Every client at The Spot is working with a coach, whether it's a 1-on-1 or large group training session, our coaches ensure you are always moving towards your goals. To ensure this happens, our coaches go through an intensive training process to learn The Spot Athletics’ system of training. This system is anchored by one overarching belief of doing the basics savagely well. That is why we hold weekly “coach development” meetings and routinely bring in presenters, from around the world, to ensure our system and coaches maintain the world-renowned reputation we have earned as a leader in the fitness industry.

Living this mission allows us to not just have some of the best coaches in the world, but the best clients as well. We are honored and grateful to have the chance, every day, to transform people’s lives. Whether that is: an athlete trying to make the team or make it to the pros, or an adult who just wants to look and feel their best, having the opportunity to help people on a daily basis is our purpose.

Our Training Philosophy:

Build Better Movement

Positive Energy Always

Teach Perfect Technique

Zero Pain Tolerance Training

Our philosophy guides all of the coaching and programming at The Spot Athletics. While it seems fairly straight forward, most personal trainers don’t even have a training philosophy. Having this philosophy and operating by it’s tenants ensures you receive the highest level of training regardless of the program or coach you work with at The Spot. Below we will talk a little bit about each of these tenants and what they mean to us.

1. BUILD BETTER MOVEMENT: Whether you want to lose some weight or become a professional athlete, being able to move better is crucial to attaining any fitness or performance-related goal. Our facilities and programming are set up to ensure this primary objective happens. While most gyms have rows and rows of machines, we pride ourselves on having generous amounts of open space and functional equipment that helps improve your movement. All our sessions begin by ensuring you build the flexibility, stability, and control needed to take your movement to the next level. The bottom line is, the better you move, the more you move, the more you move, the more likely you are to achieve your goals.
   

2. POSITIVE ENERGY ALWAYS: If you believe it, you can achieve it! This is a tenant of our philosophy because no matter how great our programs or coaching are if you do not believe you can accomplish a goal, it will never happen. Our founder’s grandma, Jean Kempton, used to tell JL that “Can’t is not an option”, and make him repeat “I can, I will & I’ll Try” whenever he said “can’t”. This served JL well as he took 2nd in the state in wrestling in high school, had a successful college football career and set world records as a professional athlete in powerlifting. Not only do we have a large graphic on the wall of our facility commemorating this quote, we hold all of our SpotFam to the same standard that JL’s grandma held him to. Just like JL’s grandma cared about his success, we deeply care about the success of every client training with us at The Spot. The bottom line is, Mindset is everything.
   

3. TEACH PERFECT TECHNIQUE: We tell every person who walks into The Spot Athletics that it is not “how much they lift” that matters, but “how they lift it”. At one time, JL held the world record in the bench press at 775lbs. You do not lift that kind of weight without developing perfect technique over many years. During his lifting career, he saw far too many people increase their weights too fast, without sound technique, and end up injured. Training should always make you feel better, not worse, and getting injured is the worse feeling you can have from training. That is why every client who trains at The Spot must “Earn the Right to Touch a Barbell”. This allows the client to build a solid foundation by demonstrating great technique and the ability to handle a specific load for each lift, before they start using a barbell. Some of our clients, who are experienced lifters, earn the barbell in one session. Some of our younger clients, who started with us at 8 years old, have worked four years to earn the barbell. The bottom line is no matter your chronological age or lifting experience, we are going to ensure you are taught perfect technique and are held to that standard as close as possible. (no one is ever perfect in the execution of a lift, but we are going to always work to get you as close as possible)
   

4. ZERO PAIN TOLERANCE TRAINING: The old adage of “No Pain, No Gain” is the worst saying that ever entered the fitness industry. Pain is LITERALLY your body telling you something is wrong. Training at The Spot is about celebrating what your body can do with the right training, not punishing your body until it breaks. This trend in “Boot Camp” or “High-Intensity Training (HIT)” style fitness became popular at some point and a lot of the myths surrounding that style of training still dominate popular beliefs. These workouts were super hard and people felt like that one hard workout was doing something for them. Problem is, what it was doing was injuring them. Think about it, the point of a “boot camp” in the military is to weed out and hurt the weak people so they don’t make it into the fighting unit. Well, personal training and fitness classes should not be about trying to hurt the weak or susceptible to injury, it should be about building people up and making them strong so they won’t get injured. We are not saying that you wont’ have some really hard workouts at The Spot, because you will. What we are saying is that you will never do something at the Spot that isn’t part of a bigger plan to get you to your goals. The bottom line with this tenant is that you are not required to do any exercise at The Spot, you are only required to work hard and get results. We solicit contact communication from our clients to ensure that they are never doing anything that causes pain. If there is some movement or exercise that causes pain, we just modify and adjust it so your can still get great results, and do it while keeping your body feeling great.