We were lucky to catch up with Charles Grundas recently and have shared our conversation below.

Charles, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

For many years, I was just an accountant by trade, but I was also a heavy smoker, heavy drinker, heavy person. I was living a life that was going downhill fast, and I knew I needed to change.
My first risk was small: I quit smoking and became a runner. But that led to numerous injuries of my knees and ankles because I was still carrying so much weight. Plantar fasciitis is no joke. Those injuries led to yoga. I figured I could use it to help recover, but a yoga class with weights kicked my ass so bad I had to leave the room. I returned, but 10 minutes later, I was right back in the lobby, keeled over. I failed so badly, it led to curiosity of why it was so hard. I joined the studio, but I couldn’t afford classes, so I cleaned the studio to be able to continue attendance. A year later, I completed several teaching certificates and was still working full time as an accountant. Now what would drive a person to go this far?
I thought about my own family. I watched my step-grandfather waste away, essentially catatonic toward the end of his life. He would just stare, mouth dropped open, at the television for days at a time. He wouldn’t or maybe he couldn’t acknowledge or notice others in the room. My father and I would visit him to shave his face and help him bathe. I looked at that and said, I don’t want to become that. I wanted to be strong enough to never get stuck on the toilet. I wanted to be sure I was capable.
Years later, I was working at a food manufacturer and teaching maybe 5-6 classes for a studio and another 2-3 for another. I had ballooned up to 250lb. I figured all the work I was doing was going to keep me healthy, but it wasn’t. I didn’t know what I was doing. So I took another risk.
I quit my high-paying job to get a NASM-CPT and Sport Nutrition certificates. I had begun to study bodybuilding and powerlifting. After I completed these studies, I applied them to myself. I would read and watch everything I could to find out what the body was capable of. I started linking my lifting routines and yoga routines with an educated diet plan and lost 50lbs. I shared my story as much as I could, but still felt I could do more. I wanted to build a community.
I looked around my community and realized I couldn’t find a single place that combined the essential heavy, disciplined resistance training and mobility/yoga and genuine community care.
So, I took the leap. I decided to build it. We, The Collective Fitness. A friendly neighborhood wellness hub.
The risk was terrifying. I had never run a business like this. I had found a business partner and took on another accounting job to cover the start-up. After a while, the partner was just a bad fit and they left. It left me with all the debt and struggling to make ends meet. The bills piled up. I spent a lot of days and nights scared of what to do or if I should bother staying open.
But the terror became easier to manage when you realize you become the people you spend your time around. I needed to be surrounded by driven, smart, healthy, and ambitious people. Every person working with WTCF loves the work of helping others and genuinely wants to better the community. The members are all powerful, driven, supportive people. That decision to surround WTCF with high-quality people made the whole terrifying risk so much easier to take. It was about creating a place where you feel safe, feel strong, and can set the standards for your own life.
WTCF will continue to look into the community and offer the best of ourselves and will change with the community. We partner with local business and non-profits looking to make their communities stronger. So we partner with companies like Special Strong to help people with disabilities live fulfilling lives. We partner with non-profit organizations like Rescueber to help them raise money for animal transport. We partner with Thunder Soccer to give local kids a chance to learn and play soccer. We partner with Silver Fit to offer the older population an affordable program to help stay strong and not become someone like my step-grandfather.
How did the risk turn out? It’s still terrifying every day. But when I see a member hit a life-changing PR, or when they tell me amazing things they all do, I know the risk was worth it. The goal isn’t just success; it’s building a foundation strong enough to ensure we all live our best lives until the very last possible second.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

For folks who may not have heard about us before, We, The Collective Fitness is your friendly neighborhood wellness hub. But we aren’t just a place to sweat; we’re built around a philosophy of functional purpose and stronger communities.
We focus on strength training, yoga, Pilates, and Barre. The reason we offer that is because we hire instructors who are qualified, genuinely great at teaching, and love to do it.
Our instructors have the full autonomy to teach what matters, to get to know their clients, and to make real-time adjustments. We don’t believe in boilerplate fitness.
Let me give you an example of a person starting up. Say someone comes in head over heels in love with pickleball. Wonderful! That’s an amazing thing to spend your time on. We aren’t going to ignore that. We’ll work on things like proper core rotation and solid shoulder mobility. Or maybe you’re into Jiu-Jitsu and need to focus on the specialized grip strength. When people share that information, it becomes incredibly helpful to the entire group, allowing us to specialize our training even in a group setting.
The goal here is for you to set the standard for your life. Your standards are the only ones that matter. When I wake up tomorrow and don’t run a marathon, it’s not a big deal. I never wanted to run one. But if that ultramarathoner woke up and couldn’t run one, that’s a problem for them. We focus on making sure you feel strong in what you personally set out to do.
A few stories I’m proud of
• Seeing people who never believed they were strong suddenly deadlift well over their body weight. Someone clears 220 pounds in a deadlift, or squats 200 pounds, or benches their body weight.
• The most powerful stories are the functional ones: “Man, I had so many knee problems, but I went for a run for the first time, and it didn’t hurt.”
• “My shoulder has been bugging me for years, but now I can finally reach the top shelf.”
• “I struggled to get my suitcase in the overhead bin on the plane, and now it’s not a problem.”
I could hear those stories non-stop forever. They are my absolute favorite thing in the world because they prove we are making people healthier, smoother, and more active and involved in their own lives. The best part is all the instructors feel this way. They all want the best for members and for everyone to meet their own standards regardless.
If your goals change, we change. I loved playing basketball in my teens, but that’s not my focus now. Now, I focus on having a strong heart and the ability to lift and carry things that I expect of myself. We are here to help you do the same: focus on what matters to you right now. Your health is a living thing, and your training should be too.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

-Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations
This book was a massive catalyst, serving as my re-entry point into serious reading. It’s more than just philosophy; it’s a manual for self-governance. It emphasizes that internal control is the only true power we possess. I once read a single sentence that hit me so hard I had to put the book down for hours to simply contemplate its weight.

-Eliyahu Goldratt’s The Goal
The Goal provided the framework for efficiency and outside the box thinking.

-Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power
The 48 Laws of Power offers unvarnished insight into interpersonal dynamics and strategy, which is crucial when leading a business and community.

-Peter Attia’s Outlive: A go-to resource for modern, science-backed thinking on health span and longevity. Look up Centenarian Decathlon.

-Dr. Aaron Horschig’s Rebuilding Milo (Squat University): This is vital for our emphasis on mechanics. It underscores the importance of proper movement and mobility to avoid pain and lift safely, directly supporting our integration of movement and strength training.

I like to address the mind (through Stoic self-mastery and internal reflection) and the body (through science-backed lifting and mobility), ensuring that the training our members receive is meaningful, sustainable, and directly focused on maximizing their health span and daily functional dignity.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Understand the team as people first. They have a whole life of experience they can tap into. Try to meet them where they are and learn what is important to them first. Showing that interest creates trust. Then allow them to learn from their mistakes and be supportive or oppressive to create a learning environment. Give them the credit when it works and accept the blame if it fails.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://wethecollectivefitness.com/
• Instagram: @wethecollectivefitness
• Facebook: wethecollectivefitness
• Youtube: @wethecollectivefitness
• Yelp: we the collective fitness