Leah & Ron Pelshaw - 820 Club

“We took over the gym from the previous owner in 2019 and then the pandemic hit—what a great time to own a gym, right? Then the business owner next door stopped us in the hallway and said, ‘I'm done. Do you guys want my space?’
We were barely staying afloat. But for some reason we said, ‘Yeah, we'll take it’. It was a scary time to grow, but we did. The gym community here—you couldn't stop them—so it was really the community that supported and encouraged us.
Now, we’re busting at the seams. We’ve added more and we still want to add different things. When we bought the building, we knew we wanted to stay in Lapeer because this is a community that supports us. We are here for them. We’ve looked at growing other places, but we're not leaving Lapeer because of this community.”
– Ron and Leah Pelshaw, Eight Twenty Club
 

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“When you are part of a gym community, the people you work out with become your friends. We have seen it happen here at Eight Twenty Club: members are at each other's weddings; they're going to kids' graduation parties, they’ll go on bike rides together outside the gym. It can become your core group of people, and along with the health benefits, that’s something that people who don’t work out at a gym miss out on. Places like Planet Fitness like to say it’s a ‘Judgment-free Zone,’ but I am telling you, when you have a gym family like this family, there is no judgment.
We have everything from group fitness to state, national and world-record powerlifters working out of this gym. You can walk in and get a great group workout done in 45 minutes, or work out by yourself for two or three hours. We can also write the programs for you, where we rotate body parts, types and styles of workouts, and we provide all the nutritional coaching. It's all included in our membership, and nothing is ever extra, ever.
Sometimes gyms can be intimidating and scare people away. But we think what makes us unique is that we are both in our 40s, ‘normal’ people. A lot of my clients say things like, ‘I see these gym bodies on Instagram and I don't look like them.’ And we are like, ‘We don't look like them, either.’ We're not looking to make you into the people you see on Instagram—we're looking to make healthy human beings who feel like they’re part of a community and good about themselves.
That's exactly what this gym is.”
– Ron and Leah Pelshaw, Eight Twenty Club