Taking fitness personally

With the New Year nearly upon us, many people have replaced thoughts of sugar cookies and gift giving with real pounds and post-holiday stress. Brandy Kramer would like to help you shed those unwanted leftovers at her aptly named well-being business, Orchids and Iron.

Whether bound by a resolution or simply looking to relieve pent-up tension, January has long represented a potential turning point for positive change. Orchids and Iron in downtown Coeur d’Alene, is the perfect place to start. There, the massage therapist and fitness trainer-turned-entrepreneur has combined fitness, nutrition and massage therapy into one wellness center to help anyone live a healthier life.

“I’ve always been involved in fitness. I believe that health and wellness is a lifestyle,” Kramer said. “It’s so important that is needs to not be set aside. People are so busy and so stressed that they kind of leave their bodies and they are on auto pilot.”

Through combining the areas of fitness and a proper diet, she works with each client to create a personal program, complete with body measurements, fitness history and, most importantly, encouragement, that’s tailored to their lifestyle. Clients can choose from six- or 12-week online programs, which include a weekly in-studio session and then several more workouts at home and cost between $120 and $180, and everything from exercise routines to meal ideas can be scheduled in advance.

While the one-room suite in the Healing Art Building operates as the primary workplace, where Kramer also offers 50-minute private training sessions and a variety of massages, clients can take their workouts anywhere as long as there’s an Internet connection. The Orchids and Iron Web site features a personal profile page for each client, including video and pictures of each exercise and a training log, as well as nutrition information and a comment column.

“When you write it down, it makes it real. … It holds you accountable for yourself, as well as to me, even though you’re not seeing me on a daily basis,” said Kramer, a graduate of the Inland Massage Institute in Spokane and the Kenmore, Washington-based Bastyr University’s exercise science and wellness program. Kramer has also spent time as a strength and conditioning coach at the collegiate level at Montana State University and the University of Washington.

About the fitness journal, she added, “It would just be like we were interacting at the gym, only they have the capability to do their program anywhere.”

After managing a private massage practice in the Spokane for four years, Kramer said, “I realized that I wanted more for my clients. I just had it in my mind that I would create a wellness center to help educate people and kind of be their guide.”

Looking at exercise as a routine beyond the weight room, Kramer has taken fitness training to a new arena through virtual in-home interactivity. Her business is also far removed from the machine-bedecked confines of most gyms; instead focusing on body-resistance techniques using just a few simple tools, including resistance bands, a stability ball, a floor mat and free weights.

“I’m providing them the tools that they need – the basic tools – so they don’t have to go to the gym,” she said, though quickly adding that she doesn’t have anything against the larger fitness centers, but rather wants to help out those who might be intimidated, overwhelmed or just too strained to go in every night. “I want to make it accessible, and I want people to learn that it’s OK to do a 20-minute workout and do what they can to get fit.”

For one Orchids and Iron client, Morgana Samora, a 31-year-old married mother of one who works in the same building as Kramer, her five-week workout regime has fit well into her busy life – to the tune of 15 pounds and counting.

“Going to the gym is pretty difficult, because I’m busy like everyone else I guess,” Samora said.

Facing the holiday rush with a family at home, she still found time to continue her body makeover. “Of course things are a little more difficult during the holidays,” she said. “The great thing about Brandy’s program is she makes it tailored to my lifestyle, so I can do it at home. With the Web site it’s great because it keeps track of my progress.”

Even though it’s been somewhat difficult to launch a new business in a dreary economic climate, and made even more challenging as Kramer and her husband, Vinny, have a toddler at home, watching someone like Samora take the reigns for a healthier life is inspiring in return, she said.

“To know that it came from something that I created, I guess the only word I can say is amazing,” she said. “It makes me realize that all the planning and education I went through, it’s what I’m meant to do.”