Small-group training new trend at Downtown fitness location

The personal trainer opened up the second location of Sessions Personal Training at 417 Colorado Ave. back in March, and has been the pointman in the latest local fitness trend of semi-private PT sessions. Now at 200-plus members, the gym sets up small group sessions of no more than six people, but each workout still remains very much individual.

“Even though a member will be sharing their space … their workout is going to be tailored to their individual needs and goals,” Flock said. “The community aspect is just being along [with] other people who are enjoying [and] suffering at the same time. The personalization is all about the fitness protocols that are being designed for the individual, as well as the nutrition, stress, sleep and recovery protocols that we’re implementing outside of the workout as well.”

Although he didn’t get into the fitness industry until after college, he knew of the city’s reputation for stellar gyms, noting that Santa Monica has more fitness businesses in the 5-6 block radius of downtown than anywhere else in Los Angeles. He worked early in his career at the downtown Equinox and Orange Theory Fitness, meeting his wife at the former.

The experiences in the downtown area fueled his passion to make it back to the location as a business owner.

“If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere,” he added. “If you can make a splash in Santa Monica, it lets people know that you’ve got something special going on.”

To make it there, he started by converting his Del Rey neighborhood home garage into a personal training studio, slowly but surely procuring a client base. After one year of the business and getting burned out by “80 hour weeks,” he was finally introduced to the world of personal training in small groups, giving him a spark.

“Everything I’ve done before that was either one-on-one or large group training,” Flock said. “[That’s] workout of the day, everybody’s doing the same thing, high energy, high fives, that kind of stuff. But no real customization. So for about a year and a half, I started working on what semi-private personal training might look like. At our garage, we found a six-person group [that] ended up becoming the staple of what we were able to provide, personalized results and still provide that kind of high energy environment.”

Flock’s methods became sought after during the COVID-19 pandemic, with mass gym closures leading to curiosity in the home gym setup. To wait out the pandemic himself, Flock became a consultant, aiding other personal trainers into marketing and developing their own semi-private PT businesses.

Once the pandemic began to subside, he knew the next step was to expand the concept into physical spaces, beginning with a Mar Vista location in 2022 before opening in Santa Monica this year. Sessions overtook the Colorado space once reserved for Fightr Boxing Club, with Flock having much of the infrastructure already made for a gym setting.

Taking semi-private PT to the next level at Sessions meant investing in new technologies to aid with workouts. New patrons are met with an in-depth intake process utilizing a 3D body scanner, in order to get different data points on balance, posture and body composition. When it’s time to start a day’s workout, the Sessions hands-free program delivery application recognizes each individual and displays their specific workout on a television screen.

Outside of workouts, which mainly consist of an even split between strength and conditioning, Flock advocates for education through customized protocols dealing in not only gym time, but nutrition, sleep and stressors as well. When fitness programs stall, Flock and his team help create “daily action steps” that develop better habits and behaviors on the homefront.

“Within about two weeks of the protocols and when we’re able to address the other things … we typically see people overcome plateaus in the same amount of time,” Flock said. “The biggest challenge for most people is just making small steps to take big leaps.”

Taking the biggest leap of his own career in Santa Monica, Flock hasn’t been challenged by the litany of fitness endeavors around him, but rather invigorated by the camaraderie of the city’s gym culture.

“We all want each other to win,” he said. “I think that there’s a misconception in the fitness industry … that the pie is very small, and that if you have a client, that means I have one less client, and I think that’s just not the case. The more I meet people from Barry’s, from Orange Theory, from Allegiate, from all these other places, the more I realize we all want the same thing, which is people to be awesome human beings and move better and feel better.”

For more information on the location, visit info.ilovesessions.com

thomas@smdp.com

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