A superfit Buddy the Elf gives a pep talk in front of a heap of new toys, while we members try to ignore the snacks on the table. We know from experience that Orangetheory workouts are not easy, and having a cookie sloshing around in your gut makes sprinting a million times harder.
“I want you to think about who you came here for,” says Buddy, whose real name is Lyle Feigenbaum. He co-owns Bloomington’s two Orangetheory locations with his wife, Kerry, who’s a certified Orangetheory coach and will lead our workout today.
“Maybe it’s someone who can’t be here with you today, someone you miss,” Lyle continues, his voice carrying across the crowded lobby. He points at the heap of toys, which were the price of admission to the workout today.
“Maybe it’s the person you brought that toy for. Maybe it’s the person next to you, who’s having a bad day and needs inspiration, maybe they need a high five and a ‘hi’ from you. Because that’s what we do when we come here. We inspire each other!” People whoop and clap.
“That’s what we do when we come here. We inspire each other!”
This might seem cheesy now, but in the moment it doesn’t feel that way. Instead, I feel glad I showed up on this freezing Saturday morning.
Kerry and Lyle dole out high fives on our way into the gym, and the workout begins. About midway through, one woman on a treadmill decides she wants to go for a “PR” (Personal Record). She wants to run the fastest she’s ever run at Orangetheory.
When the timer goes off and everyone on the treadmill starts sprinting, the trainer encourages us to start cheering. “Diane is crushing her PR!” Kerry says, and those whose hands aren’t occupied by a rowing machine or weights clap as Kerry seizes a “Nice!” sign and jumps up and down behind Diane, angled in the mirror so Diane can see her.
Diane’s feet pound on the belt, and when the 30-second sprint is over, she slows and puts her arms in the air, and a cheer erupts for her victory. I’m smiling so widely my face hurts.
After the workout, we hang around in the lobby and drink beer and eat snacks. My neighbor, with whom I will share chili and movies a week later when traveling to Tampa for Christmas seems too risky in the snow, appears and gives me a hug.
No one is more surprised than I am that Orangetheory has become my most consistent habit and my most supportive community since I moved to Bloomington. I’m grateful that circumstances led me to join what I was convinced was a soulless franchise (I was wrong).
And it’s a good thing, too: research shows that one of the best ways to stay active is to find a fitness community. Mine has dragged me through my worst weeks, kicking and screaming, knowing that after eight hours glued to my laptop the thing I need most is to hear my own name, spoken by someone who knows it.
More exercise & less self-judgment
Ellen Latham opened the first Orangetheory studio in 2010 in Boca Raton. Ellen used her background in both business and fitness to expand from one studio in Florida to 1300 studios today, with over one million members worldwide. And like the recent date I had a few weeks back, you might have seen one and wondered what’s up with the orange lights.
“Are they a punishment?” he asked as we walked past the studio on our way back to the car.
“No,” I said. “In fact, they hide the redness and sweat, so you can work really hard and not feel self-conscious.”
And actually, that’s part of what makes the workouts so easy to love. Going to the gym, especially when you don’t have the “right” body or skin color or age or ability, can be an exercise in self-loathing. You don’t look right; you’re not thin enough, you’re actually trying, which is antithetical to the performative effortlessness that looking gym-sexy requires.
“Are the orange lights a punishment?” he asked as we walked past the studio.
But in my experience, Orangetheory’s emphasis on community attracts people of all ages and body types.
“Orangetheory is customizable to the fitness level of the person doing it,” Kerry Feigenbaum told me, the jingle bells on her elf shoes audible over the post-workout crowd. “You could have an 80-year-old, next to a 16-year-old, next to a football player, next to somebody who's doing their first workout ever.”
Even at the Orangetheory I recently visited in Sunnyvale, people who look like professional athletes row next to folks who seem to be in the midst of the kind of retirement I someday hope to enjoy. That goes a long way towards transforming something our bodies evolved to resist into a pleasure you look forward to.
By contrast, a coach at a martial arts gym I attended in Tampa once said, “Well you’re certainly the oldest person here, so you can do whatever you like!” I was 39. That was the first—and the last—time I cried in a gym parking lot.
The Orangetheory brand as a container for connection
The cynic in me has been shocked to discover that the corporatized scaffold of Orangetheory seems to have created genuine community—at least in Bloomington.
“I think it starts with Orangetheory corporate,” Kerry said. “When you go through franchise training, they teach you that community is the glue that holds your studio together, and they teach you exactly how to create it.” Corporate explains everything, she said, from how to greet members when they walk in the door to how to make sure the studio’s packed on its official opening day, which is critical to its success.
“You could have an 80-year-old, next to a 16-year-old, next to a football player, next to somebody who's doing their first workout ever.”
Kerry also told me that from a personal perspective, she wanted to create a space for adults to meet people that wasn’t centered on parenthood. This resonated with me: I joined an improv 101 class when I moved to California for this very reason. (You can read more about my experience with improv here.)
Orangetheory corporate provides the container, but it’s up to the franchisees to fill it. In Bloomington, staff credit Lyle and Kerry Feigenbaum, who have owned several successful local businesses over the years, with creating the kind of culture that translates into something special.
“Nobody here is anonymous”
It helps that the staff has deep roots in the community, too: Jean Evelyne Sherfick, Head Coach and Director of Operations at Orangetheory Bloomington, is the great-grandaughter of a former mayor of Bloomington.
“I met the Feigenbaums when they were yoga students where I was teaching, and over the years we’ve become like family,” said Jean. "Coach Jean," as she's called by members, recently spearheaded a weekly, “No Shower Happy Hour,” where sweaty post-workout members staggered en masse from the studio to a local pub. This event was so effective that it’s being replicated all over the country. Unsurprisingly, Coach Jean was also nominated for Orangetheory Fitness Coach of the Year in 2022.
“That ‘family’ relationship in the leadership team—Lyle and Kerry are like my brother and sister—trickles down to how we run our business,” said Jean. “That, ‘We’re not just your jeweler or your grocer, we’re your family,’ component is not foreign in the Midwest, and that's how we’ve approached Orangetheory since the beginning. Nobody there is anonymous. Everyone is someone we know, someone we're invested in personally.”
Investment in members and staff
The sense of personal investment in people also governs the staffing decisions at Orangetheory Bloomington. MC Webb, a former varsity athlete on Indiana University’s women’s rowing team and currently the studio manager of the Kirkwood location, explained how Orangetheory came along at a time in her life when she most needed what it could provide.
“I graduated in December of 2019, and then COVID hit. I had no community anymore,” MC told me from behind a stocking-bedecked front desk at the holiday party. “I found Orangetheory through my boyfriend’s sister, who was working at the Eastside location. Right away I thought, ‘Wow, there's something different about the people here, the community, the owners.’”
MC described how she joined as a member, then was hired on. “It was such a fun environment that I found myself looking forward to waking up at 5am to get to work!” she recalled. “So when the Feigenbaums asked me to be the studio manager of the new location downtown, I said, ‘Let’s go! I love it.’”
When I asked MC if she was considering making fitness management a career, she said, “Absolutely—I sure am now, anyway!”
“The key is one word: ‘fun’”
When I asked Lyle Feigenbaum about his management philosophy, I was expecting something complex and serious. Instead, his answer surprised me.
“The key for me is one word: fun,” he said from his office, still dressed as Buddy the Elf. “I like to have fun, and I like our staff to have fun, because I know it's good business.”
“Fun” seems like a flimsy concept on which to hang a leadership philosophy, but another word for “fun” in this context? “Joy.” That’s lacking in many of our lives, and it’s definitely lacking at a lot of gyms, where workouts can feel like a penance for the sin of enjoying our food.
Lyle also explained how his history in the restaurant industry taught him that passion is key to sustaining the long-term effort it takes to make a venture successful. “In the restaurant business, it’s always two steps forward, one step back,” he said. “It's exciting to have an idea, but we’re in it for the long haul. And that takes passion.”
Getting stronger from the inside out
Lyle’s oblique reference to resilience made me think of something he said in his pep talk earlier that day. “This workout is going to be hard,” he assured us. “You’re going to want to quit. Trust… that you will recover.”
“Everyone is someone we know, someone we're invested in personally.”
It’s easy to be cynical about whether megabrands can provide us with anything meaningful. After all, much of advertising is devoted to connecting something we truly need—like a sense of closeness with loved ones—to something we truly don’t, like a brand new car. Therefore, it’s hard to trust that something as ubiquitous as Orangetheory could be anything other than hollow.
But there’s no substitute for experience.
2022 brought me a lot of things. It brought me love again after the dissolution of my marriage, and then it brought me heartbreak when that love was lost. It exposed me to the possibilities for where to go next in my career, then forced me to sit with the fact that I’m not there (yet).
It brought me a lot of things I’ve been seeking, and took away a few too. There were many, many days when I just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other and telling myself, often out loud, “Just get through it. It’s not forever. Just keep going, and you’ll be fine.”
And it was on my worst days that I most looked forward to Orangetheory. When I hadn’t slept because I was worried about my job, when I was filled with rage from dealing with something I didn’t think was fair, when I felt powerless or sad or lost, going someplace where people reminded me that my present pain was temporary—even if that pain was ostensibly from rowing really hard or doing a million squats—connected me to my faith in myself when nothing else could. I could show up however I wanted, and folks were just glad I showed up.
Far from a thing I needed to force myself to do, each one-hour workout, pouring sweat and flushed under orange lights that always hid my exertion, was the hour each day I knew I was not alone.
You can visit Orangetheory Bloomington here. You can also find their Instagram—and the silly videos that convinced me to finally give OTF a try.