For Rob Oshinskie and his wife Jackie, running a health club is more than just buying some free weights and telling people to wipe their sweat off the treadmills. For them, its about creating a community.
Rob and Jackie are co-owners and managing partners of Victory Sports Performance and Fitness, 178 Rolling Ridge Dr. When Rob walks into his club it’s not long before he’s making the rounds through the gym, asking how everyone is doing. Everyone knows Rob and everyone speaks to him like a friend.
“We wanted to build a sense of community,” Rob says. “It makes the work environment much better. People who exercise in a place where there are no relationships are not as apt to go.”
Before opening Victory Sports 10 years ago, Rob and Jackie were both physical fitness contractors who went to people’s homes or worked out of rented spaces to train people. Rob was training people for nearly twelve hours a day, either as a personal contractor or at Camp Woodward.
The idea was to duplicate the kind of personal attention the two gave as contractors to a wider audience, with better equipment and a centralized location.
The building where the club is housed was once a coffee shop, Jackie says, and the idea was to have a health-oriented tea and coffee shop. The problem was there were no health-conscious people coming through the shop. So the business changed, as all good businesses do, to suit first the clientele they wanted and second to suit what the owners knew well.
“If you look at the State College community, the market is over served [with health clubs],” Rob says. “We had to have a niche.”
What made the company viable was a program called SilverSneakers, a group exercise class for people 65 or older that is subsidized by many insurance plans. Insurance companies believe that insurance holders who are exercising are less likely to get sick. In turn, these people spend less on their health care.
Jackie says Victory Sports now has about 500 people signed up for SilverSneakers.
“Some are intimidated by gyms, but we foster an environment where everyone can come,” Rob says. “Here it doesn’t matter whether someone is 85 or eight, it matters that they are goal-oriented.”
Being goal-oriented is an important philosophy at this gym because most people come to Victory Sports not primarily to build muscle or become the fastest runners, but just simply because they want to become healthy.
“We make it fun here,” Jackie says. “We have music playing and we have jazzercising and if we see someone having trouble, we will find a way to help them.”
Rob says the club does have some students who come to exercise, but not many. They made an attempt in the beginning to market toward students, but it didn’t work, mainly because the business is located too far away from campus.
Rob says the students who do come to Victory Sports come because they want to get away from the crowded gyms on campus or in town. They may only have ten students at a time who are looking for more of a personal atmosphere.
No matter who wants to come in the approach at Victory Sports is results driven.
“People are more willing to pay a little more money for what they are coming here for,” Rob says. “Most people look for the cheapest gym cost and they don’t get results.”
For their tenth anniversary, Victory Sports will be holding a party for all members, both present and past, on Oct. 18, which will include music, dinner and drinks.
On Oct. 19, they will host a wellness fair that will have local vendors coming in with free samples.
At Victory Sports, they almost never leave new members to figure it out themselves. Rob and Jackie say that all of their employees know how to use both the equipment in the gym and their own bodies to maximize their workouts.
“We empower members to be healthy,” Rob says.
