Business: The Gym Newtown

Address: 57 Church Hill Road

Owner: Kosta Hatzikostas

What is your business background? “I’ve been in the gym industry for going on a little over 20 years now. I was a personal trainer with Bally Total Fitness for quite some time … [I] then moved into the fitness management … [I] proceeded, at that point, to get an opportunity and moved into opening my own business. That’s when Southbury came into play. [Catalyst Training Gyms] started as a small basement gym and since then we added about 15,000 square feet to it.”

What is your business’ focus? “Our tagline, so to speak, we tell people it’s Fairfield County’s first gym that specializes in fitness over 40. Our concept is simple: a lot of the industry specialize in those that are already fit and are already pretty familiar with the gym, or at least comfortable with it. We focus on everyone else. You know, 80% of the population out there does not feel like they belong to the right facility and so does not participate but obviously needs assistance. We work with those individuals, we personalize the service, it’s a coaching only facility. You do come here for an appointment. It is not kind of a ‘do-it-yourself’ kind of place. We take the guesswork out of the equation and if there’s one thing that we’re extremely good at, it’s getting people consistent because we provide a realistic way to continue to train no matter the age.”

What is something important to you that readers should know about your business? “I hear a lot of times that people think that they’re the exception, [and] something like this would not work for them. They have too many injuries, their health is too regressed, their schedule is too busy, they don’t know enough, they’ve never participated. And honestly, we meet every single person where they are. We go slow and then we go slower after that. There is no workout we try to fit them into and hope for the best. We personalize it around them, and that is the case whether we’re working in a very small group or an individual basis. That’s why we keep the sizes of our training intimate … Because we work with the demographic that we work with, our programming and everything we do is catered around them. So we take a lot of the noise and the things that I like to say have a very low reward to risk when it comes to movement … There’s just better ways to do things.”

Hours: Monday-Thursday, 6 am-7 pm; Friday, 6 am-6 pm; Saturday 7 am-noon.

Website: thegymnewtown.com

Phone: 203-491-2069

E-mail: info@thegymnewtown.com