Revive Strength & Wellness — Local services in Cincinnati

For me, dance is life. It was my escape. It was my love. It was my inspiration. It was my creation. When I wasn’t dancing, life had a way of becoming so dark.

On Valentine’s Day in 2018, I was driving home from Lexington after performing at a charity dance show for a women’s shelter. It was midnight and raining and I was cruising on 80 mph, blasting Egyptian music through my subwoofer while dancing like those hamsters in my Kia Soul. Fast forward and I’m hydroplaning and spinning in circles on 71N until my back end hit the median wall and my car flipped over…in…slow…motion. After regaining consciousness, I walked out of my shattered sunroof with a severely bruised left side. I had a big show and several more gigs coming up, so I ignored the pain (and my friends’ advice) and kept dancing, which of course included back bends, splits, drops, and whipping my hair back and forth. Three months later, my hip seized up, I couldn’t walk, and my left arm was completely numb. I had to stop dancing. I didn’t have a choice. How could life be so cruel?

After several months of physical therapy, the feeling in my arm finally came back, but I still had chronic pain in my hip and neck and a chronic muscle spasm in my back from a pinched nerve at c5/c6. I resigned myself to living in pain and tried to manage with weekly massages. Every time I tried to dance, the numbness returned and the pain flared up, so I became afraid to dance and eventually resigned myself to never dancing freely again. Since I stopped dancing, my muscles started to atrophy and I became very weak. Life seemed so hard and my light started to dim with every failure until I found myself in utter darkness.

Four years after my accident and a pandemic later, cue Sanjay, my lucky rabbit foot. He helped me overcome my dreaded fear of weirdo chiropractors and facilitated my VIP treatment with Will Cornett of Mt Lookout Chiropractic. I just wanted relief from the pain, so I was in disbelief when he said he could get me back to dancing. That’s when Sanjay told me that Revive had a similar philosophy of not just getting people to feel better or stronger, but to get them the ability to do the things they used to love, or never thought they could but always wanted to. Here we go with the fear again… I saw the pictures on the website…how was I going to overcome my fear of gyms and all that big, industrial-looking equipment that everyone but me learned how to use decades ago? Well, I wanted to be a magical unicorn, so I psyched myself up and asked to meet Luke and check it out. Best. Decision. Ever.

How do I write about Jonathan? I feel like I can’t do justice to a coach who has helped me transform my life in just a few short months. He challenges me to be my best every day without pushing me over the edge, in life and in workouts. He learned my unique needs and tailored my workouts to build the strength I needed to do all the wild and crazy dance moves I love. One day in the not-too-distant future, I’ll be strong enough for him to lift and spin me overhead like Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Gray in Dirty Dancing; in the meantime, I’ll just take his giant hugs. All that aside, the biggest lesson I learned from him was how to tell the difference between pain that should make you stop, and pain that you should push through, emotionally, and physically. It sounds so simple, but this is the very big problem that prevented me from doing what I love. And Jon was there to see me do it! He has a very busy life outside of being a coach and personal trainer, but he showed up. He came to my big show at BLINK to see me dancing again. It means the world to me to have his support. Fittingly, I was glowing with LED lights on the outside to express my bright new light on the inside.

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. - Albert Schweitzer

Thank you Revive for...

As part of an overall weight loss journey, I requested sessions with a personal trainer from my husband for Christmas this last year. Having already lost 20 lbs in 3 months, but doing it with the Keto diet, I knew I wanted to change up the way I accomplished an overall weight loss goal of 70 lbs. I didn’t feel healthy and was only making modest strides with improving my cardiovascular health, not to mention on-going pain in several areas. The pain issues included a right shoulder that hindered me from raising my arm above said shoulder or reach behind my back; pain in both knees simply going up/down a few steps or trying to walk distances greater than a half-mile; and lower back pain. My husband researched several individual trainers and gyms that offered training services and gifted the list to me to talk to each one and make the final decision.

Revive Strength and Wellness was the first one on that list, and after meeting with Luke, there was no need to talk with anyone else. I quickly learned about the Revive approach of individualized plans, the team’s experience with helping clients manage and overcome all levels of physical challenges, their training philosophy as practiced through a medically aware yet holistic approach and could just “feel” the positive energy in the building. I marveled watching a woman who looked about my age deadlift a sizable barbell over her head and heard a small voice inside me say “You know what, maybe you can do that too”. I signed up and met Coach Jonathan.

Jonathan – I swear he can power an entire city block with his positivity and radiant smile. He listened to my goals, my fears around my health and physical well-being and what my current state has done to my self-confidence. Then he proceeded to reassure me in his calm and authentic manner that he was there for me, not as a trainer, but as a coach. He follows through on those words every time I’m there, and even when I’m not and we’re texting each other. Even though Jonathan is my coach, Steve and Luke are just as involved and will help guide and instruct if Jonathan is helping someone else. It is truly a team effort, and every client is known.

Accomplishments after only 5 weeks: down another 12 lbs utilizing a new nutrition plan of tracking calorie intake and macros in the everyday, healthier food that I eat. Shoulder is pain-free, which occurred within 2 weeks of sessions and overall, I’m feeling so much stronger. It’s strange, I never thought I was ever weak, but the simple act of standing still and upright now feels so much more “solid” and stable. And can I just say ENERGY – there are times that feel like my metabolism is unlocking and leveling up.

With each session, my initial goals and reasons for starting are evolving into something more – transforming into a new mindset and passion for being the best version of myself and BELIEVING I will get there. That small internal voice is so much louder and confident now. Although I’m at the beginning of my journey with so much road ahead, Jonathan is my navigator and I completely trust him (& the rest of the Revive team)...

I came to Revive Strength and Wellness with a hip and low back injury from a wrong way drunk driver accident in 2016. I worked with a prior trainer whom made the original injury worse by pushing high weight on Olympic exercises and not focusing on the root cause of the issues. From there my daily pain was increasingly uncomfortable. I tried everything I could; yoga, cryo, deep tissue massage and Advil many times a day. It got to the point that I gave up hope and accepted I’d be in pain every day. Having known Jon from prior work he suggested I come check out the gym with confidence that it would help me. His exact words were “give it three months”. Within those three months my pain subsided and began to disappear all together because of Steve’s focus on the root cause of my pain. The community within the gym is a blessing, it’s a support system unlike any other and a family. I have now been pain free for just shy of a year- I gave it well more than 3 months because of the help Steve provided me and as mentioned the community. I am moving about pain free and able to do functional and compound exercises by myself with ease. Working out is like a diet, you can’t drink protein shakes and take vitamins or do strength training and run on the treadmill to be healthy it takes a balance and time to see improvements. You need functional training and exercises that work supporting muscles, I can’t stress enough this gym is different. If you’re looking to improve and be pain free give it three months . Steve, Jon and Luke are the utmost professional trainers in the Cincinnati and thank you for Sanjay for creating such a special place for...