[00:00:00] Fuzz Martin: Happy fall, y’all! It is me, Fuzz Martin. This is Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz. It’s technically not fall yet. Fall starts on the 22nd of September, but you know what? It’s the unofficial start of fall, and that’s what matters to me. Give me shorts and a hoodie. That’s my kind of weather. September’s my favorite month.
It’s my birthday month. It’s my wife’s birthday month. I just enjoy it. Back in 2015, we had a client here at Epic Creative, my business that was a sponsor of the CrossFit Games. I had a chance to go out to the games in Carson, California that year. It was a pretty cool experience. When I got back, I joined what was then known as A1 CrossFit, and it was a pretty transformative experience for me.
Today, the facility is known as A1 Health and Fitness. Owner Alex Kain and his sister Liz Dreher are planning a huge celebration in honor of their 10th anniversary at A1 Health and Fitness, and that is coming up on Sunday, September 15th, 2024. At A1 Health and Fitness on Highway 33 in West Bend, right over there next to Keith’s Marina.
They joined me on today’s show to talk about the gym, their journey, and the celebration. And with that, here are 15 minutes on A1 Health and Fitness’s 10th anniversary celebration. With Alex Kane and Liz Dreher on Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz.
Alex, thanks for joining me today. Can you first tell us a bit about your background? How did you get started here into the world of fitness?
[00:01:47] Alex Kain: Well, thank you very much, = for having me and, , my background, I, you know, honestly, I started coaching just like right out of high school. Um, I had been doing gymnastics and had a friend that was coaching at the Badger Middle School.
And so like 18 years old, started helping out at Badger Middle School coaching, gymnastics and kind of kept going from there. I kept a, a job of coaching, all through college and. And post-College and, stuff like that.
[00:02:20] Fuzz Martin: So, and you went to,
[00:02:21] Alex Kain: did
[00:02:22] Fuzz Martin: you go to college for Health and Fitness? Is that, was that your degree?
[00:02:25] Alex Kain: Yeah, I actually started off in, um, Chiro – no Pre-PT okay. And then, kind of shifted into health and fitness and Yeah. And then. Did undergrad and master’s in health and fitness or like, exercise physiology technically. Sure, sure. Okay.
[00:02:43] Fuzz Martin: And then you ended up going overseas and doing some coaching and stuff overseas, right?
[00:02:48] Alex Kain: Yeah, yeah. Um, pretty cool opportunity. Basically. I, so I guess fast forward a little bit, got into. My main background was like gymnastics and diving. That’s what I did. And then I got into cheerleading in college. And so out of college, I was coaching cheerleading and we got invited to this big competition called the World Cheerleading Championships down in Florida.
And through that and through connections met some people, in New Zealand and had an opportunity to go to New Zealand to coach and spent a total of about three and a half years there and then another year or so in Australia as well. So, and you were working with their national teams, or is that Yeah, so, they’re basically, when they compete, they compete in the ICU or the International Cheer Union.
Okay. Basically, yeah, they created a national team that would go over and compete, and so I was put in charge of, well, like co charge or whatever. Sure. Of those two teams. So, helped work with those teams. I
[00:03:53] Fuzz Martin: didn’t have my, uh, as you know, my oldest daughter was not a cheerleader, she was a powerlifter, because you saw her come through your gym.
Yeah, yeah. So, I didn’t spend a lot of time in the cheerleading world, uh, uh, growing up with my, my oldest daughter. Maybe my youngest daughter, who’s outside this room right now, might, uh, get into it, but.
Okay.
[00:04:09] Fuzz Martin: Uh, never, never really got into that. So, I, not totally familiar with the world, but I know it’s super competitive and, uh, very acrobatic and, uh, lots of, uh, Strength and gymnastics and all that involved, right?
[00:04:22] Alex Kain: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it’s not, I think a lot of times when people think of cheerleading, they think of like, you are a rock, kind of like almost what you might see maybe on, movies or, you know, on TV, whatever. And yeah, it’s, it’s a very competitive sport. Especially in the, the all star world and, and then into college and stuff like that.
I mean, even high school, there’s, there’s competitive teams. But, yeah, it’s a lot of, gymnastics, you know, tumbling across the floor, they even compete on a spring floor too, so similar to what you’d have in gymnastics. And then doing like, yeah, mounts and stunts and stuff like that, where you’re lifting people up in the air and holding them up.
[00:05:00] Fuzz Martin: So eventually you came back to the United States, and and you’re here now, and you opened a gym, back in what would have been 2014, right?
[00:05:09] Alex Kain: Yep. Yep, 2014,
[00:05:10] Fuzz Martin: yeah, August. And, uh, you, it was over on, was it on
[00:05:14] Alex Kain: Lang? It was on Lang, yeah, so, right off of 33, just on the east side of town, behind Lake St.
Vincent, DePaul. Sure, so it
[00:05:21] Fuzz Martin: was A1 CrossFit at the time. It was. And, little One Bay Garage, right?
[00:05:26] Alex Kain: Yeah, it was small, it was, yeah, like, it was, the actual workout space was, I think, 800 square feet, but like, the total, there’s a small office as well and a bathroom, and it was like, a thousand square feet.
[00:05:38] Fuzz Martin: And that was right at the time that CrossFit was kind of starting to take off, at that time, right?
[00:05:42] Alex Kain: Yeah, I, I mean, CrossFit had been growing, I actually discovered it when I was in New Zealand, so I actually found, A CrossFit gym in New Zealand and got into it, back when I was living overseas. I mean, CrossFit started, I think in 2007 is when it first they had their first quote unquote games, held in, um, California.
And then, but yeah, it’s basically, you know, during that span of about 10 years, so 2007 to 2017, it really exploded. Mm-Hmm. . And it really kind of exploded, I think more so in the US right around. 2013, 14, 15, kind of around there. Sure. And what was it that you really liked about CrossFit? What got you into it?
So I, I’ve always been into fitness and, and working out and stuff like that. And so, I had always done like barbell movements, you know, squatting, benching, deadlift, you know, traditional stuff like that. And, but then having a gymnastics background, I was very much into gymnastics type strength movements.
And so when it came out, I just, Like naturally almost kind of gravitated towards it because it took two things that I was kind of already doing and blended them together.
[00:06:53] Fuzz Martin: Mm-Hmm. .
[00:06:53] Alex Kain: And I mean, there’s other aspects to it than that, but yeah, those are kind of like some, some more of the key components and that’s what I really enjoyed about it.
[00:07:02] Fuzz Martin: Sure. And so you had this, you had the CrossFit and you had the small space and. Uh, it started developing a following and it wasn’t very long that you, you moved to a new space then, right over on Highway 33?
[00:07:14] Alex Kain: Yep. Yep. So we moved across town from the east side to the west side. So right, located right next to Keys Marina, kinda right off of 144.
Sure.
[00:07:23] Fuzz Martin: And then, eventually, semi recently, you shifted. Away from the CrossFit name to A1 Health and Fitness. Can you tell us about that?
[00:07:30] Alex Kain: Yeah, so, yeah, it was about, I think, 2020, 21, I think, is when we, or 2020, somewhere around there that we actually changed over the name. But, basically, like, I mean, I, I still love CrossFit.
I love everything about CrossFit. But I think for a lot of people, it’s, it tends to be pretty extreme.
Mm hmm.
[00:07:51] Alex Kain: And especially when you think of, like, the higher level, Mm hmm. They kind of, they show off these elite level kind of like skills and stuff like that. And I mean, especially for somebody who maybe wants to get into fitness, it is way too daunting.
It is too far over their head. And even from the standpoint of like, if you have a mother of three getting into fitness or wanting to lose some weight or whatever, you know, doing something like a heavy snatch or, you know, um, uh, uh, more handstand pushups, exactly. Yeah. It’s Hands down walking. I mean, some of that extreme, like, high level stuff is just, there’s no real need for it, too, you know?
, so, in a day to day application, it just doesn’t really make sense.
[00:08:34] Fuzz Martin: Sure.
[00:08:34] Alex Kain: And so, we kind of shifted away from that elite level stuff, you know? Still kind of following the methodology, similar to like what you’d see in like a HIIT training kind of thing. So it’s similar to that, but, yeah, kind of much more for the masses, so to speak.
[00:08:52] Fuzz Martin: So what are your focus? What do you focus on now at A1 Health and Fitness?
[00:08:57] Alex Kain: So we focus on, I mean, as a general, we focus on helping people reach their goals in the grand scheme of things. But how do we do that with fitness? We incorporate strength training and, changing up the workouts and stuff like that.
So keeping it new by bringing in different movements and stuff like that. But at the same time, you know, a combination of hit and, you know, hit being high intensity interval training versus like a more of a longer term, kind of longterm, not longterm, but longer in duration training versus a short kind of what you would call a sprint style.
[00:09:31] Fuzz Martin: Sure. And I know you, you, I see from your Facebook posts and such, you have a lot with, accountability. I know you’re doing some, like, back to school stuff and things like that, right?
[00:09:41] Alex Kain: Yeah, yeah, we’re actually doing a September back to school, special kind of challenge type thing. But we do a lot of the accountability.
That’s kind of how we shifted our focus to In terms of, like, fitness is like this big, there’s a lot more to fitness than just working out, you know? And, realistically speaking, it comes down to what people are trying to achieve, you know? Are they, are they wanting to be, everyone has a different goal that they’re working towards, and so You know, some people could be losing weight.
Other people want to get off their medication. Somebody wants to be able to play with their grandkids. Another person wants to just be better at weekend volleyball or whatever. So everybody has a different reason for why they work out. And so, we kind of, understanding that have like shifted to help people reach their goals.
And, And we’re going people about how we can get there by creating a path and creating a road to reach that.
[00:10:34] Fuzz Martin: Sure, certainly. So, you’ve obviously had some success stories in this and the reason that you have people that come to A1. Can you tell us some of the stories? Different kinds of success stories, maybe some examples of people who have, succeeded at A1.
[00:10:48] Alex Kain: Yeah, sure. We’ve had, I mean, we’ve had a lot of, of, of good success over the, over the years, but some of our, our bigger, you know, ones, we had a guy, Brian. He came in, he actually, fell off a ladder, on Thanksgiving Day and then was rushed to Flight for Life and ended up coding, came in to us, couldn’t even walk, like he was actually, I think when he first came in, I think he was actually in a wheelchair, but or he was on crutches.
[00:11:16] Fuzz Martin: Okay.
[00:11:16] Alex Kain: Like 300, 310 pounds. Sure. And he is now about 185 pounds. Wow. So, lost all the weight and obviously losing the weight helped with his knee and, and, uh recovering his knee and stuff like that.
Yeah
[00:11:28] Alex Kain: Lindsay is another, one who had, was lost over a hundred pounds. She started at about 2 45 and she now sits pretty comfortably, about 135.
I mean, a few other people, Kevin, Kristen, Amber, all lost, you know, in the vicinity of 50 to 70 pounds. Sure. And I would say our average client weight loss is, sits around 30 pounds. So yeah, helping people just live healthier lives.
[00:11:56] Fuzz Martin: Yeah.
[00:11:56] Alex Kain: And
[00:11:57] Fuzz Martin: so, how do you, you know, when somebody comes in and wants to get started with this, how, how do you help them get to that?
What’s the, what’s your. I guess method for getting them to that success.
[00:12:10] Alex Kain: It’s, it’s a lot about sitting down and talking to them and finding out what they’re actually looking for. You know, I think a lot of times you hear, like I want to get leaner and you know, sometimes it’s about kind of digging a little bit deeper of like, What are you actually looking for?
Are you looking to gain confidence in, in how you look? Are you looking, you know, for your clothes to fit better? Are you, you know, getting off medication? We had somebody just recently actually get off their sleep machine, which is huge too. And then even the amount of money that you save by getting off medications or a sleep machine is, is, is helpful.
But, it’s, it’s kind of like digging deeper into what their true goals are and then creating a. a path of how we’re going to get there, like creating a road, you know, of this is how we’re going to meet those goals. And this is, these are the steps along the way and what we’re going to do.
[00:12:58] Fuzz Martin: Certainly. So it’s been 10 years since you opened the first gym here, and now you’re going to be celebrating coming up very soon.
What’s the date of your 10 year celebration?
[00:13:10] Alex Kain: Yeah, September 15th. September 15th? Yeah, so it’s a Sunday. A Sunday?
[00:13:14] Fuzz Martin: Yeah. And you’ve got a big plan, and I, you have your sister Liz here who’s, sitting patiently by, and Liz loves to plan a party. Hi Liz.
[00:13:22] Liz Dreher: Hi! I do love to plan a party. She plans good parties.
[00:13:25] Fuzz Martin: So tell us what you have planned for
[00:13:27] Alex Kain: Not birthday parties, though.
[00:13:31] Fuzz Martin: I’m sure there’s an inside joke. There is, definitely. She, she
[00:13:35] Alex Kain: decided to do a surprise 40th birthday party, and I’m not really good with surprises, and it, it didn’t go, I mean.
[00:13:44] Liz Dreher: I’m alive, so. Oh, okay.
[00:13:46] Alex Kain: It went really, it was wonderful. It was a wonderful party, but the initial shock. Uh, surprise was a little rough.
[00:13:54] Liz Dreher: I almost wasn’t alive. Okay, alright, alright. So yes, we have all the things planned for the 10th anniversary party. It’s gonna be awesome. We have a bouncy house for the kids. 1840 is coming with craft beers, which is super exciting.
[00:14:09] Fuzz Martin: Are they taking that cool trailer that they have?
[00:14:11] Alex Kain: They are, yeah.
Yeah, both 1840 and Mob Craft Beer. Okay, great. So, yeah, we’ll have like four to six beers on tap. Great.
[00:14:18] Liz Dreher: And then Wes is coming from Antidote as well to do the food, and he’s going to be bringing some craft cocktails too, so that’s going to be We’ll kind of hit all of the taste buds for drinks and things.
We’re gonna have a DJ to kind of keep the Hype Up and Going and Music, Gaining Grit, so Brianna is going to be there with Gaining Grit. She’s going to be doing, I think, movement assessments and, and just kind of there to answer questions. I’ll be there representing Celtic Nat Massage as well. Fresh Chef from Milwaukee, which is the company that Alex uses at the gym, for meal prepping.
Yeah.
[00:14:51] Alex Kain: And they do bulk orders and stuff like that. Right.
[00:14:54] Liz Dreher: Just Meats is going to be there.
[00:14:56] Alex Kain: Another company similar to Fresh Chef where they do bulk, basically just meat. Okay. All right.
[00:15:01] Liz Dreher: And then Prestige Supplements, which is all of the supplement line that we use in the gym. So they have protein powders, pre workouts, post workouts.
Yes, they have. Tons of, tons of supplements, sleeping aids, things like that, all really, really good stuff. Felicia, who’s wonderful from Blue Luna, is gonna be there, and she just has a amazing presence to begin with, but she’s gonna be bringing some product, clothing, yoga clothed, ointments. All kinds of really good stuff, so I’m excited about that as well.
[00:15:27] Fuzz Martin: Yeah, she’s wonderful.
[00:15:28] Liz Dreher: Yep.
[00:15:29] Fuzz Martin: And this is all taking place at A1? At A1, yep. Okay, very good. And that, again, that is on Sunday, September 15th. What time is this happening?
[00:15:36] Alex Kain: Yeah, it’ll start about 11 and go until about 3 or so. Okay. So about 4 hours. Open
[00:15:40] Fuzz Martin: to the public? Yep. People want to come in and, see, see the gym, see what A1’s about, and maybe, learn more information about how they can get started and,
[00:15:49] Alex Kain: yeah.
Yeah, definitely. And we’ll be giving away some prizes and stuff like that too. So what she, what my sister listed off, like Gaining Grit, Blue Luna, we have, other stuff from Foxtown Brewery as well. We might have a few other vendors there, but basically, we’ll be giving away, prizes. Like, bags of gifts and stuff like that to, for fitness stuff.
Yeah, fitness challenges, but just kind of to, you know, give back to the community. Sure. For, you know, we’ve been here ten years and it’s been, it’s crazy to think that it’s been ten years already, but, yeah. Yeah. It’s been. Those things go fast. They do. Ha ha ha.
[00:16:25] Liz Dreher: But this is going to be the day. If you’ve been curious at all, this is going to be such a fun day to come and
[00:16:33] Alex Kain: meet the
[00:16:33] Liz Dreher: coaches and see, just kind of check the facility out and ask all the questions with like, no pressure and
[00:16:40] Fuzz Martin: Yeah.
So getting to that, and as we wrap up here, sometimes for people who are getting started into, Wanting to make a change for themselves, these things can be kind of daunting and maybe, you know, it’s something that is intimidating. So if somebody wants to make a change, what kind of advice can you give them, maybe when selecting what, what gym to start at or how to maybe take those first steps?
[00:17:05] Alex Kain: Yeah, I kind of, in what I said before, that fitness is much more than just working out. I think it’s important. Mm hmm. Instead of somebody just going, Oh, I’m going to start working out and like walking into a gym and just signing up. It’s better to talk to, you know, a trainer or the owner or whatever else, and kind of get a better idea of what, what they do and, and what they provide.
And then that will definitely help with the making it not feel quite so intimidating. You know, for some people, the best road is maybe personal training where they’re going to work one on one. Just to get more confident with themselves and with, handling weights before they step into like even a group setting or something like that.
So, think it’s really important to, to have a conversation just, you know, if you’re getting your kitchen remodeled, you wouldn’t just hire anybody off the street and say, Hey, can you do this for me? You’d want to talk to them and find out, you know, what kind of products are they bringing in and what kind of like, how are they going to do it?
How long is my house going to be under, under construction? You know, it’s same thing with, Fitness, you know, how long is this road going to take? Can we, can we set some goals? You know, how are we going to get there? Yeah, absolutely.
[00:18:11] Liz Dreher: I think it’s important too. It’s a, it’s a lifestyle and we teach you how to live that lifestyle and give you all of.
The instruments that you need so that you can hit your goals, stay on your goals, and, and then live your goals. You know, it’s, it’s not, this isn’t a week long. It’s not a yo yo
[00:18:28] Alex Kain: situation. Right. It’s about, yeah, getting, learning, getting results, and then maintaining results. Sure.
[00:18:34] Fuzz Martin: Absolutely. So again, the A1 10 year anniversary celebration coming up on Sunday.
September 15th. Time again?
[00:18:42] Liz Dreher: 11 a. m. to, yep, 3 p. m.
[00:18:44] Fuzz Martin: Tons of great stuff going on. Where can people learn more
[00:18:47] Alex Kain: about this? They can go to the website. So, a1healthandfitness. com. They can always phone the gym. Uh, the number is 262 899 8531.
[00:18:56] Liz Dreher: Okay.
[00:18:57] Alex Kain: Email too. And it’s
[00:18:59] Liz Dreher: all over Facebook. Yeah,
[00:19:00] Alex Kain: yeah. A lot of, there’s a Facebook event.
So, I think a lot of our members have been sharing it and stuff like that, so they should be able to find it that way too. Perfect. Well,
[00:19:09] Fuzz Martin: Alex, Liz, congrats on 10 years and for coming in today. Thank you. so much for having us. Yeah. Thank you again to Alex Kain and Liz Dreher for dropping by to talk about the 10th anniversary celebration for A1 Health and Fitness.
Always good to see them and always good to hear from you. If you have an idea for a guest for this show, let us Please feel free to suggest a guest. Go to fuzzmartin. com slash guest and fill in the form. That is fuzzmartin. com slash guest. If you prefer to just email instead of going to a website and filling out a form, you can do that too.
Fuzz at fuzzmartin. com is my email address. Super simple fuzz at fuzzmartin. com. New episodes drop on Tuesdays. You can listen on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube. Basically any podcast app that you can think of, you can listen to this show. You can also jump onto fuzzmartin. com and listen there if you’d like, which is, you know, very nice of you to do so.
Thank you so much for listening. Have a great week and I will talk to you next Tuesday, right here on Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz.
