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.

Wesley Chapel Rotarians Celebrate Another Great Year With A Special Sendoff!

Belated congratulations to my friend, and now past president of the Rotary Club of Wesley Chapel, for an outstanding year at the helm of our area’s largest Rotary Club, which meets Wednesdays at noon at the Lexington Oaks Golf Club clubhouse.

Kent passed his president’s gavel over to new president David Gainer on June 15, at the club’s annual awards banquet and installation of new officers. Ross presided over the club’s many service projects, which included not only another successful Duck Fest, but also the start of a new tradition, the Hats & Horses Kentucky Derby party, during his tenure.

At the banquet, Ross gave away many service awards (including one to my fiancĂ©e Jannah McDonald) and welcomed inspirational guest speaker Tiffany Ervin, the self-proclaimed “Rotary Greek.” His very deserving Rotarian of the Year was future stand-up comedy star Jodie Sullivan.

At Kent’s final meeting as the club’s president on June 27, everyone in attendance honored him by wearing his signature vest and a mask of his likeness. Great stuff! — GN

Bahama Breeze Island Grille Opens With Caribbean Fare & Flair

OK, you long-time readers know I don’t get too excited about too many of our seemingly neverending supply of new chain restaurants opening here in Wesley Chapel.

But, this one’s different. I genuinely love the new Bahama Breeze Island Grille, which opened on July 16 on the north side of S.R. 56, between the soon-to-open Hyatt Place hotel and Chuy’s Tex-Mex.

And, it’s not just because general manager Jeannie LaFever is so awesome. It’s always great to meet nice, energetic people who obviously love what they do, but we’re talking about a restaurant here. No matter how nice the management, wait staff and bartenders may be, if the food isn’t great, at least one local publisher would not be a frequent customer.

Known for its Caribbean fare and flair, Bahama Breeze is a chain eatery that delivers on its promise of great island-inspired food and drinks in a tropical setting with live music every night (and all day Saturday and Sunday). And, even though I’ve heard a few locals complain about the early crowds and that the restaurant isn’t located on a body of water and faces a busy roadway (blah blah blah), I’m just glad the food is up to snuff.

“And, even though we’ve been slammed, everything’s been running pretty smoothly so far,” Jeannie says. “People are just really excited we’re here!”

Jeannie’s favorite dishes include the most popular jerk chicken pasta, the true fall-off-the-bone baby back ribs. the beef empanadas, the jerk chicken wings, the coconut shrimp and the braised short rib & oxtail.

To date, I can vouch for two different sauces on your “Market Catch” fresh fish, which has been redfish on both visits for me. On mine and Jannah’s first visit, we thoroughly enjoyed the almond-crusted redfish topped with lemon butter sauce (great mashed potatoes and green beans as the sides), as well as the mango glazed redfish with grilled pineapple salsa shown above right.

On our most recent visit, Jannah went a little less adventurous, with her tasty Cobb salad, but I really loved the chimichurri sauce on the skirt steak churrasco. Skirt steak isn’t as tender as, say, a filet, and Bahama Breeze’s only other steak is an 8-oz. top sirloin (which I may just try on my next visit), but wow, with that sauce and the outstanding yellow rice and black beans served as sides, this is my current favorite dish at “the Breeze.”

Jeannie also wants to make sure that locals dive headlong into Bahama Breeze’s exotic tropic drink menu.

“Our Bahamarita is the bomb,” Jeannie says. “But you can’t go wrong with a mango jalapeño mojito, a Goombay Smash or a pineapple-coconut martini, either.”

Bahama Breeze Island Grille (25830 Sierra Center Blvd.) is open every day for lunch & dinner. For more information, call (813) 949-0779 or visit BahamaBreeze.com. And please, make sure Jeannie and her outstanding staff know you read about them in the Wesley Chapel Neighborhood News!

‘God Said It Was Time For A New Direction’—Hans Geissler

I have only met Hans Geissler of Morningstar Fishermen a few times since I was first introduced to him at a Rotary Club of Wesley Chapel (see story on page 33) meeting back when the club met at the old Ciao! Italian Bistro in the Shops at Wiregrass. But, like most people when they first encounter him, I felt from Day One like we were old friends.

Current Wesley Chapel Rotary Club member Dane Parilo first met Hans back in the early 2000s, when both men helped charter the Rotary Club of San Antonio (FL). Not only have Dane and Hans been close friends ever since then (Dane even got the Wesley Chapel Rotary to make donations to Morningstar), Dane has helped his friend expand Morningstar Fishermen, the incredible faith-based 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization Hans started in 1993, several years before both he and Dane joined the San Antonio Rotary.

Morningstar is amazing because its mission statement expands on an old saying:
“Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to raise fish and grow vegetables and the whole community eats for a lifetime.”

In about a quarter of a century, Morningstar has helped people in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and more than 20 other countries across the globe grow vegetables and raise fish using aquaponics, a form of biomimicry. In places where people so often go hungry because they don’t have the natural resources or knowledge of how to grow their own vegetables by raising their own fish — and by using only 1-3 percent of the water used in traditional agriculture, all with no soil. The roots of the plants are actually fed by the waste generated by the fish, usually tilapia.

Hans, who has created Morningstar’s headquarters on Old Saint Joe Rd. in Dade City, where he has multiple fish tanks served by a system of pipes pumping water, has primarily brought the science of aquaponics to these poor nations — from Haiti to multiple countries in need in Africa, Asia, Europe and Central and South America — by setting up the same self-contained ecosystems large enough to raise fish and fresh vegetables to feed entire communities in need. Today, however, he says he has a different focus, one created by a recent natural disaster at his modest Dade City headquarters.

On July 6, a bolt of lightning struck Morningstar’s power tool shed, where virtually all of the books and records of the nonprofit also were destroyed. A large lawn mower basically blew up and a 23-foot boat next to the burnt building very nearly caught fire, too.

While most people would be devastated by such a loss, especially since Hans had no insurance whatsoever for the building, the Morningstar founder took a different view:
“God said it was time for a change, for a new direction,” Hans told me as we examined the building’s charred remains. “Unfortunately, many of the systems we set up in these other countries to help poor people would end up being taken over by bad people because they could get away with it, often using legal loopholes to do so.”

Because of that, Hans says, Morningstar will now focus on helping the poor and hungry right here in the U.S. “And, instead of building the systems for them and leaving them there, we provide seminars and animated videos showing communities and even individual people how to create the systems themselves and how to fund the start-up costs to buy the needed pipes, fish and vegetables.”

Since the fire, Hans is even more determined to “Help Others Help Themselves” here in the U.S. He can even show anyone how to create a small, working aquaponic system at their own home.

But, to do so, he needs more help than ever. And, I told Hans I wanted to help, even though I don’t have a great track record of raising money for worthy causes.

To find out how you can help, visit MorningstarFishermen.org or call (352) 523-2722 and please tell Hans I sent you.

Prayers For Pedro & The Aguerreberry Family

IMAGINE, IF YOU CAN, your husband or wife taking the kids for their usual bike ride together and waiting for them to come home. Everyone knows bicycles can be dangerous, but even those times that you get that feeling in the pit of your stomach because it’s taking a little longer than usual for them to return, it pretty much always turns out OK.

Doesn’t it?

Then, imagine what the family of West Meadows resident Pedro Aguerreberry, 42, is going through today, less than three weeks since Pedro took his sons Lucas, 8, and Bennett, 3, out for a bike ride, never to be seen alive again by his wife Meghan or those young boys.

But, this wasn’t just another tragic accident that, in an instant, changed forever the lives of the Aguerreberry family and everyone who worked with the always-smiling Pedro at Citigroup and their friends and neighbors in New Tampa.

Instead, it was an intentional act by a sadly mentally deranged young man who posted on Instagram the day before he made that quick U-turn in his car on New Tampa Blvd. (the main road that runs through West Meadows) to run down Pedro and his young sons that no one should blame him for what he was about to do. Instead, Morse said, “blame the devil.”

Yes, Morse, the former Freedom High student who was Baker Acted by the Tampa Police Department (TPD) on June 12, just two weeks earlier, only to be released — against the protests of his own mother — on June 19, a week after being held and evaluated, was obviously dealing with a serious mental illness. But, this isn’t about whether or not the man charged with the first-degree, premeditated murder of Pedro should be declared not guilty by reason of insanity or not. It’s about what happens after a happily married, devoted husband and father is intentionally taken from the arms of his loving family by someone he had never met.

Trying To Make Sense Of It
Even though I had never met Pedro or Meghan, I was one of more than 200 people who filled St. James United Methodist Church on Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. on June 27 for his funeral. The next day, I also came out to take pictures of the 100 or so who got together to put on a memorial bike ride and run in his honor.

At the memorial service on Friday, I was stunned that the start of the service was delayed by an hour, as I was one of only maybe 30 people who were actually sitting in the seats. The other (approximately) 175 or so people in attendance made a circle around the outside of the seating area and every last one of them hugged Meghan and the boys (Lucas was able to get himself into a seat, but Bennett, who was more severely injured in the crash, was still in a wheelchair) and offered them all prayers and other words of love and encouragement.

I had never seen this done at a funeral before but I definitely felt this amazing energy flowing between every one of those well-wishers and the entire Aguerreberry family.

As if he hadn’t already been through enough that week, poor Bennett simply couldn’t handle the receiving line. After the first 20 minutes or so, he said, “Mommy, please stop letting go of me,” as Meghan tried desperately to continue holding his hand while hugging every one of the attendees with her other arm.

Still 20 minutes later, Bennett pleaded with her again, “Mommy, please stop hugging them.” I can’t imagine that anyone who left St. James did so with his or her heart still intact after hearing this sweet child’s plaintive cries.

After that, it was difficult to focus on the beautiful, sweet words of remembrance from Brett, Oscar and Laura, Pedro’s friends and coworkers at Citigroup who spoke. Everyone who did mentioned Pedro’s smile.

“Pedro was always happy and always had the greatest smile on his face,” Brett said. “He was always saying, ‘Hey, Brett, isn’t this just the greatest day?’”

It’s still so hard to believe that someone like that could be taken away from the people who love him by such a senseless, heinous act.

Even so, I personally wanted to thank Loyless Funeral Homes for providing such a beautiful video memorial for Pedro, both online and during the service. All of the pictures of him and his family on these pages were saved from that video.

Honoring Pedro’s Memory…
It certainly isn’t difficult to understand why so many people have felt compelled to try to help the Aguerreberry family. In addition to the memorial bike ride, a GoFundMe page has already raised tens of thousands of dollars to help them and The Fat Rabbit Pub in Tampa Palms and 900Âș Woodfired Pizza in the Shops at Wiregrass (owner Steve Falabella lives in West Meadows) were among those holding fund-raising events (Fat Rabbit’s was on July 8) to help.

As for the bike ride, cyclists young and old started at the BBD entrance to Flatwoods Park, turned right onto BBD and left onto New Tampa Blvd., pausing to honor Pedro at the makeshift shrine set up by his fellow West Meadows residents near where he was struck and killed by Morse’s car a little west of Wood Sage Dr.

Brett was among the handful of runners who said a little prayer for Pedro before taking off to run the park’s paved loop together.