Tim Harty, The Business Times 

Scott Jones wants to make one thing clear about opening a new training center where he said three different CrossFit-style gyms operated in recent years: “We are not CrossFit. In any of the verbiage, just make sure people know that. That seems to scare people away like the plague.”

So, to be clear, Out West Training, which opened Jan. 1 at 145 N. Mesa St. in Fruita, is NOT a CrossFit gym.

What it is, according to 59-year-old member Sandi Bittle, is functional, and “that’s the thing I love about it. I feel I’m getting overall health training as opposed to just muscle. At my age, I need that all-around training.”

That’s exactly what Jones and his wife, Lauren, as co-owners, co-trainers and co-coaches want to hear. Out West Training is a place “to train together, get fit, train for the Colorado lifestyle, whether it’s hikers, bikers, general fitness, people who wanna play with their grandkids a little bit longer in life, later in life,” Scott said.

As parents of two boys, ages 13 and 11, Scott and Lauren also want their gym to be a place for kids to train.

“If we can fill this thing up with kids a few nights a week and Saturday mornings, and fill the mornings and the middle of the day up with adults that want to get after it, that would be a good goal,” Scott said.

Scott said Out West Training is off to a good start.

On Jan. 20, he said 22 kids showed up for an event to introduce them to the training center.

“That was the first time we’ve really tried to get kids in the door,” he said. Two days before that, 33 people attended an injury-prevention clinic for runners.

Based on previous experience operating training centers – Scott is 46 years old, and Lauren is 42, and both have been trainers/coaches all of their adult lives – those were impressive turnouts.

“If we would have put on an event like that in the Front Range and had 30 people register, we’d be lucky to get 10 people to actually show up,” Scott said of the injury-prevention clinic. “And we had 30 people register, and 33 people showed up. It’s pretty cool.”

Scott said his family moved to Fruita about a year-and-a-half ago from Bailey, CO.

“We were living way up in the high country,” he said, “and our kids were sitting on a bus 30 minutes each way (to school). And sports was further. It was 45 minutes to get to baseball practice or basketball practice or whatever it was, and I didn’t think I wanted to do that for 10 years with my kids.”

And they had lived on the Front Range for about 15 years before that. So, after big cities and mountain towns they were looking for something else.

“We spent a lot of time out here,” Scott said of Fruita. “We put on retreats and events out here for years, and we knew the area pretty good, so we just thought we would try something different. We wanted a small community for family.”

They’ve run their own gyms before and trained “every type of athlete you can imagine,” Scott said “Athletes from pretty much every professional sports league, Division I athletes, future Olympians, and people who want to lose weight, people who just wanna get more active, people coming off injuries. We’ve just run the gamut on all this stuff.” 

They know what has worked and what they believe in. 

Scott guarantees anyone who decides to spend their money on Out West Training will get their money’s worth.

“The big difference between us and a rec center or a big-box gym is that people come here to be coached,” he said. “They don’t come in here just to try to pick out what their workout’s gonna be for the day, the old ‘stare at the treadmill for 10 minutes and leave the gym, because you don’t know what to do.’ We guide people along the whole time.”

If a member schedules an hour for training, they’re getting an hour of training.

“We start on time, everybody works out for at least 57 minutes. There’s no 10-minute workouts,” Scott said. “We really try to honor people’s time and get in as much as we can out of their time here.

“That’s what we did with a lot of our other stuff, and it just really works. People really like it, the strict part of that.”

Bittle can vouch for that. As Lauren trained her during a recent noon-hour session, Bittle went from one exercise to another, always under Lauren’s watchful eye. Bittle was standing on a balance trainer while holding a medicine ball with both arms extended. Then, came a few minutes on an exercise bike, followed by a few minutes on a rowing machine, then lunges while carrying a dumbbell in each hand, followed by a side lunge with a kettlebell. And on it went.

“It’s worth every penny,” said Bittle, who discovered the gym was open when she went to see her chiropractor in the same commercial building as Out West Training.

Bittle said she was four days into a free week to determine if Out West Training was right for her, “and I signed up on the fourth day.”

MORE ABOUT OUT WEST TRAINING

CONTACT INFORMATION

Want to visit Out West Training’s facility and meet the coaches before you commit? Book a time for a tour and programs presentations with the coaches and owners, Scott and Lauren Jones.

Call 970-230-3101 or email contact@outwesttraining.com.Visit their website at outwesttraining.com.

TRAINED TO BE TRAINERS

Scott has a master’s degree in exercise physiology and sports performance.

Lauren has a bachelor’s degree in exercise science and sports medicine, and she’s a certified instructor for pilates and paddleboarding. She’s also a trail running coach and hiking guide.

“We both have just been coaches forever,” Scott said. “It’s what we studied in school. We’ve always been entrepreneurial ever since I met her. We started a business a few weeks after we met each other.”

THE SUV WILL WAIT

Starting a business comes with risk, and that doesn’t scare Scott or Lauren Jones.

For Out West Training, Scott said the up front cost to start the business wasn’t bad.

Actually, he put it this way: “It was like buying a 5-year-old car. That was our investment. … We’ve been joking about that a lot at the house, like, we can go buy a 5-year-old SUV or we can go start a business. What do you want to do?”