Thanks in part to local business owners, La Grange Park’s flagship park will be getting a new fitness court next year.
The Community Park District of La Grange Park announced that the district’s board of commissioners approved Sept. 14 an Outdoor Fitness Court as part of a comprehensive capital improvement plan that brings improvements to existing tennis courts and the multi-purpose courts in Memorial Park.
“We’re excited to be able to renovate that whole area,” Park District Executive Director Jessica Cannaday said in a recent telephone interview.
The cost of the renovations to the entire park will be $300,000. The fitness court alone will run from $100,000 to $150,000. Tentative plans are that the court be ready by July 1, 2021.
The Outdoor Fitness Court will be modeled after the prototype created by the National Fitness Campaign, an organization that started in 1979 in San Francisco, California.
The campaign spread through the Western United States and by 1990 had expanded to more than 4,000 communities. Its website describes how the organization decided to “reinvent NFC for the 21st Century, and to build the world’s best outdoor gym.”
NFC has designed outdoor fitness courts for schools and municipalities across the country. The courts typically consist of concrete pads overlaid with rubber matting, various workout stations where workouts can be completed in as little as seven minutes, and stationary pieces of equipment.
The equipment includes stations for jumping, pull-up and push up stations and rings and other areas for stretching and body weight training.
Cannaday said that Strive 4 Fitness, a boutique fitness studio that recently opened a facility in La Grange Park, was critical in making the plan a reality. Strive 4 Fitness has been conducting informal fitness classes for La Grange Park residents in Memorial Park since 2013, in the early days of the business’s existence.
The plan had its beginning when the NFC awarded the park district a $30,000 grant to get the fitness court up and running.
“They approached us with the idea of the grant,” Cannaday said, “and we said, ‘absolutely.'”
It looked like all things were go on the project when disaster struck the same way it struck every other community in America.
“Everything was looking pretty good,” Cannaday said. “Then COVID hit.”
With revenue falling from cancelled programs—Cannaday estimated about a 50 percent drop-off from the crisis—the park district didn’t have enough money to get the project completed, and was was in danger of having to return the grant to NFC.
That’s when the owners of Strive 4 Fitness stepped up.
Shawn Groll and his wife Victoria pledged an additional $25,000 to keep the project alive.
“I figured, why not give back to the community,” Shawn Groll said in a telephone interview. “The $25,000 was what the district needed for this to happen.”
Strive 4 Fitness has grown over the past decade, now having facilities in four different locations. The original center was in Brookfield, followed by facilities in Riverside, Chicago and now in La Grange Park.
The Outdoor Fitness Court will be available to residents free of charge when Strive 4 Fitness isn’t conducting its classes there. The park district is currently selling Strive 4 Fitness punchcards and Bootcamp passes through its website. Strive 4 Fitness has pledged 50 percent of the proceeds from these sales to support the project.
Strive 4 Fitness takes a four-part approach to fitness that focus on weight training, cardio fitness, nutrition/sleep and mental health.
In its programs, the boutique club doesn’t employ much in the way of high-tech equipment, instead employing workouts with battle ropes, kettlebells, tires, dumbbells and barbells. The cardio workouts also involve running and spin classes.
Groll emphasized variety in the company’s approach to fitness, pointing out that a workout might focus for up to an hour on one piece of equipment.
“We have virtually all walks of life attending, from teenagers to seniors, and all levels of fitness,” he said. “Everyone gets to go at their own pace.”
Like the rest of America, the COVID crisis has affected Strive 4 Fitness.
“We took a hit in the beginning, but then we began virtual and outdoor sessions,” Groll said. “Now we’re having a little fitness boom.”
Groll stressed the importance of physical fitness in the COVID era.
“We saw how some people’s mental health was deteriorating rapidly,” he said. “If people come here it will give us the opportunity to help them not only physically but mentally as well.”
Further information on the new fitness area can be found on the park district’s website, communityparkdistrict.org.
For information on Strive 4 Fitness, visit the boutique’s website, striv4fitness.us.