A first-of-its-kind health club promising workouts that tax both the body and brain is coming to Greater Cincinnati this year, targeting an affluent suburban population of clientele with plans to grow its concept rapidly in the Midwest and beyond.
Activate Brain & Body will open in Montgomery by the end of 2021, culminating nearly a decade of planning. The science-based brain health club — which is backed by a team of fitness and brain health experts — aims to slow the mind’s inevitable decline through exercise.
Workouts will include both physical and cognitive circuits as well as dual-tasking activities that work the brain and body simultaneously. The center is specifically designed for people age 45 and up — and Montgomery will be the first of many, Martin Pazzani, chairman and founder, said.
Pazzani, an entrepreneur, author and former chief marketing officer for Bally Total Fitness, a health club chain, said Activate Brain & Body is based on almost a decade of research, development and trial programs. He and Marie Stoner, Activate’s chief science officer and a clinical psychologist, both based on the East Coast, had worked on three prior versions of the concept that failed to make it to market.
Adding John Spence, the company’s Cincinnati-based CEO, was key, Pazzani said. Spence, at one point, owned 23 Anytime Fitness locations in the Tri-State, until he sold his chain of centers in late 2018.
Science also advanced, Stoner added, to more strongly support the team’s long-held beliefs: Exercise not only enables you to live longer but also helps keeps the brain alive.
It’s a white space currently left unsolved by the traditional fitness industry, she said.
“Absolutely the best thing you can do to keep your brain healthy as you age is moderate, physical exercise,” Stoner said. “There’s no drug. There’s no computer game. There’s no crossword puzzle you can say the same thing about. That’s really our core DNA.”
Brain training
Activate Brain & Body will open its first location in about 5,000 square feet at 9301 Montgomery Road in Montgomery, the former Eddie Lane’s Diamond Showroom (Eddie Lane’s moved into the nearby Montgomery Pointe Plaza earlier this year). Renovations of the space are expected to begin in October.
When complete, it will look much like a typical high-end fitness studio. Activate will offer functional exercise and strength training equipment. Clients will receive a physical — as well as a cognitive — assessment to start with follow-up assessments to track progress.
Personalized workouts, which will last around 45 minutes, will take place in small groups of four to six. "There's pent-up demand for social experiences," said Stoner. All activities will be guided by trained brain health coaches, certified both internally and through an external company. The Montgomery location will have three on staff, Spence said.
But the health club will also curate high-tech equipment, like a 6-foot digital touch board made by Smartfit, a California-based tech company. A driving simulator will also be located on site. The Smartfit boards are traditionally used in medical and rehabilitation settings, and Activate will be one of the first to utilize it in a gym setting. Clients, during the middle of a workout, will perform timed activities at its screen while their heart rate is elevated.
Once those tasks are complete, the workout continues.
Aerobic exercise, Pazzani said, creates a hormone called BDNF, considered Miracle-Gro for the brain, and supports the growth of new blood vessel formation. Both have been linked to enhancing memory and learning networks. The goal is to improve attention, processing speed, strength and more.
“When you challenge your brain and body at the same time, you do a lot of good for both,” Pazzani said. “The worst-case scenario is to have a physically healthy person in cognitive decline. That’s an expensive drain on the person, on their family, on society. When you put the brain first, the body follows. We think there are a lot of real-world benefits to making people fitter and sharper.”
Based on the company’s projections, Activate hopes to have 200-300 members by mid-2022. Membership rates are still in flux, but pricing will likely run a couple hundred dollars a month.
Activate will be taking appointments and accepting memberships starting Nov. 1. The goal, Spence said, is to open later this year.
Activate Brain & Body worked with broker C.J. Judge with Edge Real Estate Group. Its contractor is John Stewart with Encompass Develop Design & Construct, based in LaGrange, Ky.
Activate Brain & Body has not taken any outside funding to launch its first center. Startup costs, including construction, equipment and marketing, will total around $1 million, Spence said. The business is being built to scale, with initial expansion plans centered around the Midwest.
“We’re ambitious," Pazzani said. “The timing is perfect. The population is getting older, and the science is all going in our favor. Exercise not only enables you to live longer, but it keeps your brain alive. We want to grow fast because we think we can really help a lot of people.”
As far as Montgomery, the suburban city met many of the metrics the team will consider for future locations, particularly age range and discretionary income, Spence said.
Ideally, future locations will be slightly smaller, Spence added, around 3,500-4,000 square feet, but located in similarly affluent areas.
“For our first location, we wanted some extra space and flexibility,” he said. “This is a prototype. We feel like we’ve got our model about 90% dialed in and that will evolve. Cincinnati is a wonderful market to really fine tune and test our business model.”
