We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jordan Elkins. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jordan below.

Jordan, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a time you helped a customer really get an amazing result through their work with you.

I met Orlanda because I was her grandson’s hockey coach. She would bring him to my first studio location to participate in a yoga for athletes class. One day, I noticed she was there and she was going to stay in the lobby during the class so I invited her in to do the class with us…5 years later Orlanda is a personal training client, does every class we offer at Innergy and has completed 2 – 200 hour yoga teacher trainings and a spin instructor training with us. Orlanda is 75 years young. She is a true example of “age is just a number.” She always believes she can learn something new, try her best and get better. She believes I changed her life…she has no real clue the impact she’s had on mine.

Jordan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have been an athlete my whole life. I began playing ice hockey at the age of 5 in Wasilla, Alaska, and finished my hockey playing career as captain of the Division 1, Quinnipiac Bobcats, in Hamden, Connecticut. I started my first business (GRIT Alaska Hockey Camp) when I was 19, it was a summer hockey camp back in my hometown. I graduated from college with a degree in broadcast communication but chose to stay on ice and took a job coaching AAA travel hockey for the Dallas Star’s Youth Hockey Association in Dallas, Texas.

Getting into the fitness industry may seem like a natural path for me but it was actually quite serendipitous. I was working out at a gym and approached by the manager. He asked if I was a trainer because he could tell I knew what I was doing, I said no but filled him in on my sports history. He said if I ever did become a trainer I could work there. Major light bulb. After receiving my personal training certification I began training at that very same gym and then while working 2 jobs also worked to obtain my first yoga instructor certification.

I lived in Dallas for 5 years (all while still going home in the summer to run my hockey camp) and then one summer it all hit me like a ton of bricks…”everything I do in Texas, I could do right here at home.” It was a shock to me, and many people I knew because for a long time I wanted to get as far away from home as I could. But for whatever reason…I needed to go home (if you’ve ever been to Alaska, or you’re from Alaska, you get this).

I thought finding work back home would be easy. I had all the right credentials, I was well known, I was going to take the town by storm…until I didn’t. I think it was a bit of weird timing, some places already had enough trainers, some gyms I knew weren’t really places I wanted to work at and other places never even called me back. I decided I would teach yoga and started coaching hockey again but thought maybe it was a sign that I wasn’t suppose to be a personal trainer anymore. Little did I know at that time, not fitting in, and not being hired anywhere were going to be some of the best things that could have ever happened to me.

Amidst all of this, trying to somewhat “find myself” again in Alaska, I ended up needing major back surgery for a herniated disc in my lumbar spine (most likely an injury sustain many years prior while playing hockey). It had gotten so bad my entire right leg felt like it was stuck in a fire and I have permanent nerve damage. Through the process of feeling my own body shutting down, having to undergo surgery and build my own confidence and strength back up I was really able to understand and see first hand what some people might experience when they start out in their fitness journey. I was NOT use to NOT being able to do things. I was not use to having to restrict my movement decisions or “modify” things to allow my body to build strength without totally exhausting myself. I had always been the athlete that would run through a wall if the coach said so…and at this time in my life, learning to build strength while also learning to respect my body was critical.

Once I was able, I began teaching yoga again and had such an incredibly new perspective on movement and limitations. It totally changed who I was as a teacher and trainer. I never would wish the pain I had when my back was hurt on anyone, and I am not ever wanting to undergo all of that again, but I really wouldn’t change a thing about the trajectory of my life and the insight it has given me. While teaching yoga and coaching hockey people kept asking me where/if I was going to train people. I kept dodging the question, kept giving gentle no’s, until one day I had an idea (and a very supportive mom). I converted the downstairs of my moms house into a gym and began taking clients. In less than 2 months I had enough clients that it was time to take myself a little more seriously. I open the first Innergy studio location in 2018. We moved to a new location and expanded in 2021 and grew again with an addition of a separate spin room later that year.

Innergy is unlike any other fitness studio I have been a part of, anywhere I’ve lived. It’s not just workouts lead by highly certified and caring instructors, it is the most supportive, physically inclusive, understanding and positive place I have ever worked. I feel incredibly grateful to get to have such a big part in it’s creation, but everyone else who has chosen to get involved has allowed it to be more than I could have ever dreamed of. We are located here in Wasilla, and offer yoga, barre, and Spinning® classes as well as group and personal training. Not only is it a space where I get to live out my own dreams, but where other instructors get to find their place and share their craft and where people get to learn how to love, respect and be proud of their own bodies. It’s one of a kind.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Post COVID we ran in to a really bad issue with our landlord of our first location. He was asking things of me, to ask of my instructors and clients that I just didn’t feel was right. I consulted with a few lawyers and they all felt I was right with my decision. Well, a month later our lease was up for renewal, he terminated the contract and a week before Thanksgiving I started trying to figure out where we were going to go, we had to be moved out December 31.

We found a new space and started renovations right away, we thought we had at least a month to get things together, it wasn’t ideal but it was doable. The relationship with the landlord decided to go way south however, to the point where I didn’t feel comfortable being in the space anymore. A space that meant so much to me as an individual, as a business owner and to us as a studio community. I had to get us out of there and I had to get us out of there immediately. I made the decision on a Friday we would start moving everything we could to the new space (even though renovations weren’t 100% complete. We were moved in by Saturday afternoon. It wasn’t perfect, but it was necessary and through it all I learned so much about myself and our people. The walls we were in, were just walls, the energy we were filling them with, that was the special stuff.

The amount of community support we received during this time was amazing and it was an incredibly huge moment for our studio community to band together, move everything and make it happen.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I pretending like Innergy was something before it even was something. My own yoga classes that I taught around town, the posts I started to make, I made an Innergy account and if it was me talking about fitness or like topics, I posted it on Innergy. It was almost like I was using Instagram and Facebook to manifest what I thought Innergy was going to become. And because of that when I did have a brick and mortar location, I could easily get that message out to people and they already knew who I was (in that regard) before Innergy had walls.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.innergyalaska.com
• Instagram: @innergy__
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/innergyak

Image Credits
Julia Wallace Photography and North Photography