Now and then, Craig Keaton gets personal training clients who tell him, “I just want to get my butt kicked.”
They want more than a good sweat and some nutrition tips. They want a workout that hurts, one that punishes.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Keaton says.
His philosophy on fitness and nutrition is not so severe. Keaton abandons exercise ideology and focuses on biology, which he says results in more effective workouts that are not painful or difficult.
Keaton and his wife, Bonnie, started The Movement Dallas, a personal training studio, about two years ago. Since then, The Movement has grown to include independently owned studios in Minneapolis and Modesto, Calif., with a fourth expected on the East Coast soon.
The studio mostly trains professional athletes, coaches and personal trainers, but they also take everyday clients who are serious about their fitness.
Earlier this year, Entrepreneur magazine listed The Movement Dallas as one of its “100 companies to watch” because of the studio’s unique “recess” class that encourages clients to have fun and replace a gym workout with playground games occasionally.
With a background in kinesiology and biochemistry, Keaton set out after college to find the best, most logical ways of working out. And he thinks he’s found it.
The Movement’s trainers, Craig Keaton and Brian Johnson, constantly assess their clients’ range of motion to determine “what the body wants.”
“Nothing is forced,” Keaton says. “Just because a magazine says something is good, or your best friend’s trainer say it’s good, doesn’t mean that’s what your body needs.”
They take a more scientific approach, and they keep their minds open — they’re not trying to prove themselves right, Keaton says. They’re working to do what is right.
In fact, the goal with all their clients is to make them independent athletes who don’t need personal trainers.
The Movement client Alaina Brooks started working out with Keaton this year after attending the studio’s recess workout at Glencoe Park, where she got involved in playground games like four square and dodge ball. And Brooks was intrigued by The Movement’s ideas.
The 36-year-old lawyer has worked with at least 15 trainers over 20 years.
“A lot of trainers think that to really get results, they need to make their clients miserable,” she says. “Some of them even seem to take a certain pride in making their clients throw up.”
Some trainers want to become “buddies” with their clients, some are more interested in a gym’s social scene than working out, and many of them are flaky and cancel at the last minute, she says. At The Movement, that never happens.
Brooks’s workouts there are 45 minute instead of the hour she’s paid for at other gyms, and they don’t feel as difficult. But she says her muscles often are sore afterward, and she’s in better shape now than before her two kids were born.
“I have never felt like I didn’t get a good work out,” she says. “It’s a much more efficient use of time and money.”
The Movement isn’t just trying to break the status quo for exercise; they’ve adopted a different way of thinking about nutrition as well.
They’re not into counting calories or fat grams.
“Believe it or not, there are times when you might actually need to eat some French fries,” Keaton says.
Of course, not all the time. But if you’re stranded at Love Field with a flight delay, you haven’t eaten breakfast, and McDonald’s is calling you, Keaton says to eat the dang fries if you want them.
The most important thing about nutrition, however, is to eat “real food”, he says. Avoid the processed, pre-packaged stuff, and know where your food comes from.
But otherwise, eat what you like, he says.
“If I have to so much as smell another skinless chicken breast,” Bonnie Keaton says. “I ate so many chicken breasts with steamed vegetables that I can’t even look at one.”
Now, she eats steak and potatoes, strawberries with cream, and whatever else she wants. As long as she eats what she wants and doesn’t deprive herself, she says she’s healthy and fit without worrying about it.
But The Movement does tout organic, hormone-free food that is local and in-season. They work with farmers in the region to find the food that they want, and they’ve recently added a personal chef and catering service to their business. —Rachel Stone
• For more info: themovementdallas.wordpress.com, 214.521.9200
