Anthony Moses, 48, understands what it means to look adversity in the eye. At an early age, Moses was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, an inflammatory bowel disease that affects parts of the gastrointestinal tract. The disease completely changed Moses’ life at 11 years old. Previously, he had desired to play football, doing push-ups and sit-ups every night beginning at age 8. “When I got Crohn’s Disease, it took everything away.”
Moses began to look into fitness in his late 20s. As a successful chef in the Detroit, Mich., area, he left one passion for another and left the hospitality industry for the fitness industry, and began competing in bodybuilding at the age of 31.
In 2006, Moses left bodybuilding to open up his own club, A.M. Total Being Fitness that was focused on fitness and introducing people to Moses’ belief in total being, which became his focus after being diagnosed with Crohn’s. Now, A.M. Total Being Fitness is moving to a new location and changing the name to Creating Balance.
“The Creating Balance concept has been around for 15 years,” Moses said. “I was a personal trainer at Bally Total Fitness for approximately 12 years, and I opened my own gym because I wanted to be able to help people balance their spiritual, emotional, physical, social and intellectual being.”
Moses believes in staffing his club to reflect the desires he has for clients at Creating Balance. “The trainers all had a lot of learning and personal growth to go through to be able to live what we preach, which helped overcome some of the challenges,” Moses said. “Also, delivering a consistent message to the client, we lost a lot of clients due to inconsistencies with the trainers and how they relayed — or didn’t relay — the message.”
A.M. Total Being Fitness was started in 2006, near the beginning of the recession in America. In its infancy, it was in a basement without windows and approximately 2,500 square feet of space. “We overcame this by lowering our prices considerably, and by doing so we gave our clients the ability to afford more sessions per week.”
As the club has evolved and grown, Moses has strived to make the new Creating Balance club one that is unique in its environment, to the way clients are engaged with trainers. “All of the trainers know all of the clients personally, and that helps create a family-like atmosphere,” Moses said. “We believe that the currency of wellness is connection, so we thrive to connect genuinely and authentically. Our main focus is providing our clients with what they need on an individual basis, and it’s driven by the mutual goal and specific need of a client’s well-being.”
Moses has a strong belief in empowering his employees and his clients. Originally, Moses was in the culinary field, but decided to leave that field and move into fitness. “I did this because I have experienced a lot of adversities in my life and having Crohn’s Disease, being the youngest in a household with 16 kids, and an environment that wasn’t the most positive, I learned how to cope with adversities differently.”
Life trials taught Moses how to empower his employees, clients and anyone around him. “I want clients to walk in needing something and walk out with the hope and inspiration to do what they need to do. I empower my staff and inspire them to create balance within themselves and to succeed in their own personal lives, which allows them to spread inspiration to clients.” -CS
