New Spin On Exercising

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The wheels in Amen Iseghohi’s gym make you less round and round.

Iseghohi’s gym franchise, Amenzone, doesn’t use traditional exercise equipment such as treadmills and barbells. It primarily uses car tires for equipment. Sledgehammers and boxing equipment are also used.

The gym’s business model also is a bit unusual. Members don’t come to the gym any time for an individual workout. Instead, they attend classes, where they might go through a regimen in which they jump in and out of tires and lift them. However, trainers can be hired for personal workouts. A membership for one of Amenzone’s corporate-owned gyms in Arizona runs $125 a month.

Amenzone’s first L.A. gym will be a franchise and it will open about mid-September in Manhattan Beach. It will be the chain’s first expansion out of Arizona, where Amenzone has three corporate-owned gyms. Iseghohi is planning to bring six more locations to Los Angeles County by 2014, mostly on the Westside. Brandon Haber and Randy Ying will run the Manhattan Beach gym.

Amenzone was inspired by a trip Iseghohi took from Europe when he was 8 to visit his grandmother, a former javelin thrower, in Nigeria. There was no modern exercise equipment around her farm, so she made Iseghohi and his cousins exercise by jumping in and out of discarded car tires.

After coming to the United States and working a few years in sales, Iseghohi realized he wanted to start a fitness program based on his grandmother’s tires. He told friends, but they were skeptical: “They asked me, ‘Have you completely lost your mind? You’re going to use tires to do what again?’” He started his first gym in 2008.

In addition to the gyms, Amenzone organizes events for corporate clients such as Quicken Loans Inc. and is in talks to do so with Boeing Co. Amenzone gives the company employees an exercise session and motivational talks.

Like many fitness buffs, Iseghohi said he thinks of the gym as more of a lifestyle. He wants to prove it is not about fancy equipment; it is about results.

“The tires are a basic concept of life,” Iseghohi said. “It’s not about how you start, it’s about how you finish.”

– Justin Yang