After 22 Years, Fit 4 Life Personal Training & Physical Therapy Is Still Thriving

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: I have not only known Travis Monday (a fellow University of Florida alum) for as long as he has been in business here in Tampa — which is 17 years (this month) of the 22 years he has owned and operated Fit 4 Life Personal Training & Physical Therapy — I’ve been working out at his New Tampa studio. In other words, if you think I’m out of shape, feel free to blame him.

Just kidding, Travis. Imagine instead what I would look like if I hadn’t been visiting Fit 4 Life at least two days a week most every week since 2001.

But, let’s start with a little history.

Travis, a former UPS driver who is certified as a personal trainer by the American Council on Exercise (ACE), as well as in SuperSlow training, first opened Fit 4 Life in Wausau, WI, in 1996, at the tender age of 22. After five successful years of operating his personal training studio in his home state, Travis sold that practice and opened Fit 4 Life in Tampa Palms in 2001, although that was at a different location than where he has been for at least the last dozen or so years, in the Tampa Palms Professional Center, just south of the Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. exit (#270) off I-75. He started adding licensed Physical Therapists (PTs) shortly after opening that first, 2,500-sq.-ft. Tampa Palms studio.

He moved from that location to the former Model & Visitor Center in front of Hunter’s Green off Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. in New Tampa before opening the current studio.

In fact, Travis met his wife Fiona when he first hired her as a PT for Fit 4 Life. Today, they have two young daughters, Molly and Madison, and continue to be the driving personal training and PT forces behind this dynamic, 4,500-sq.-ft. studio.

MedX Equipment

When Travis first opened in Wisconsin, he had only six pieces of circuit training equipment, all of which were MedX machines, which Travis says are the best out there for using the SuperSlow training method. Because Fit 4 Life is a personal training studio and not a “gym” or “health club,” every training client works one-on-one with one of Travis’ outstanding trainers every time he or she visits the studio. Instead of throwing up as much weight as you can using momentum to get through reps, your trainer will force you to move the weight in each rep of each exercise as slowly as possible, ten seconds in each direction of the exercise.

Today, Fit 4 Life not only has 18 pieces of MedX equipment (you usually only use 5 or 6 of the machines each visit), one of them is a computer-driven neck and one is a lower back (lumbar extension) PT machine; both allow Fiona and her fellow licensed PTs to track your progress. If you have neck or low back pain (or both) and haven’t gotten the relief you hoped for from your previous PTs, you owe it to yourself to give these machines a try at Fit 4 Life.

“There’s no doubt that since the economic downturn in our area in 2008, we’ve seen much faster growth of our physical therapy clients than we have personal training,” Travis says. “Even so, we have helped more than 6,000 training clients lose tens of thousands of pounds of fat. We’re up to 3,000 people we’ve helped with their low back and neck pain and have a 95-percent success rate, and an 88-percent success rate with surgical candidates.”

He adds, “We are the only clinic in the area that truly does one-on-one physical therapy. We don’t just get you out of pain, we are 100-percent committed to finding the underlying problem and solving it and we have expanded to help all PT needs, from shoulders, necks, hips, knees, etc. because of our high success rate. And, more than 350 doctors have sent us PT clients, but you don’t need a prescription to come here for therapy.”

For more information, to set a personal training or physical therapy appointment, or to RSVP for the Client Appreciation Martini Party, call (813) 907-7879. You also can stop in anytime the studio (located at 17419 Bridge Hill Ct.) is open and sign up for the party at the front desk. See the ad on pg. 29 of this issue for two complimentary personal training sessions, or visit Fit4LifeTampa.com to find out more.