2018 WAVE Awards Spotlight: Rock Hard Fitness

CENTRAL FLORIDA’S FAVORITE FITNESS CENTER

Let’s be honest, most people hate working out. Sure there are those friends of ours who love to feel the burn and can’t wait to tell you that it’s leg day, but for the average person gym time is the most dreaded time of the day.

Within the LGBTQ community, that dread may have as much to do with the environment as it does with actually having to sweat and lift heavy objects. The folks at Rock Hard Fitness know this.

“We’ve heard horror stories of other gyms making people feel intimated and uncomfortable,” says owner Max Dunley about the LGBTQ community coming to Rock Hard Fitness. “Being honest, they come here because we’re not douche bags.”

Dunley and his partner Jennifer Mae started Rock Hard Fitness in 2013. Thanks to their open and accepting environment as a gym for everyone, it quickly evolved into the go-to place for the LGBTQ community.

“When it comes to clients from the LGBTQ community we have the philosophy of ‘we care, but we don’t care,” Dunley says. “We don’t care how you identify on the spectrum, but we care about and support the community.”

Rock Hard Fitness doesn’t just talk the talk; they have walked the walk by hosting several charity boot camps supporting organizations such as Zebra Coalition, Second Harvest and Freedom Ride.

Dunley and Mae’s charitable contributions aren’t the only reason the community has embraced their gym. Rock Hard Fitness is able to do something that the chain gyms just can’t do: they know your name.

“When people ask me about membership numbers I can’t really say because I don’t keep track like that,” Dunley says. “[Hypothetically] I can say our system has a thousand active members. What I can tell you are the names of those people who are coming to which class; and we can see who isn’t coming to class or hasn’t been back in a while. So then I run and text them ‘Where you been?’ and “Is everything ok?’ We don’t focus on membership numbers, we focus on our people.”

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