An award-winning volleyball coach and personal trainer has opened a new fitness studio in North Staffordshire.
Flo Owen is expanding her aptly named Go With The Flo training company and has ambitions to attract a new audience of people who want to improve their health but may feel anxious about attending a traditional gym.
Aged just 26, Flo, from Stoke-on-Trent, has built up her savings and has used them to build a well-equipped fitness studio in part of the garden at her home.
It’s a family enterprise, with Flo’s brother Rob, a property business owner and designer, working to design the new studio to Flo’s specifications.
The building has an ample gym floor space, with gym mirror, a squat rack and weightlifting platform, with multiple free weights, kettlebells, and dumbbells, and by-fold doors opening up into a grassed area for outdoor exercise.
The Penkhull-based studio opened for fitness sessions on Monday.
Flo said: “Alongside a passion for fitness and sport, I have been entrepreneurial since my teens and that’s helped me to build a business and savings to invest in my new studio.
“Go With The Flo was founded three years ago but opening the studio is a major step forward.”
With higher level personal training and nutrition qualifications, together with qualifications in sports massage, Flo can offer a holistic training experience to clients.
She combines her own Go With The Flo work with one-day a week as a health, nutrition and lifestyle practitioner at Swan Health and Rehabilitation, a well-established practice in Keele.
She is also the head volleyball coach at Staffordshire University, winning the accolade from the university of Coach of the Year for the 2023/24 season.
Flo said the intimacy of her new studio, combined with its position in a residential area, will help her to encourage more people to work on their health and fitness needs.
She explained: “There are many people who find the idea of working out at a corporate style gym, on a business park, daunting and perhaps even intimidating. Go With The Flo studio is tucked away in a garden and caters for small groups and one to one training sessions.
“I’m confident that I can attract a new audience and help them to thrive, providing benefits for their physical and mental wellbeing.”
