We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nathan Blohm and Derek Wing a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Nathan and Derek, thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Lonomi CrossFit is a gym in Cadillac, Michigan that focuses on coach-led functional fitness. A typical workout for a member includes a warm up, work out, and cool down. The class is run by a coach who can scale movements and give direct feedback when needed and all participants are moving through each phase of the class at the same time. Lonomi lovingly got its name through a conversation over dinner and is an abbreviation of “Lower Northern Michigan.” Our co-owners and coaches have all been raised in Northern Michigan and are proud to call it home.
My name is Nate and I have been involved in athletics at some capacity my whole life and joined the United States Marine Corps in 2017. While on base, I learned a lot about high intensity interval training, also called H.I.T.T. The Marine Corps uses these style workouts in order to condition us for whatever lies ahead and while H.I.I.T workouts were great, it wasn’t until I came back home to Michigan that I found I was missing something: community.
I decided to stop into a CrossFit gym in Northern Michigan and was instantly hooked. I enjoyed the programming and the challenge within the workouts but it was the community that helped me continue my fitness journey and push myself to new limits I hadn’t previously explored. After doing CrossFit for a number of years and developing relationships inside the gym, CrossFit began intermingling with many other aspects of my life.
Derek is thirteen years older than myself and you wouldn’t necessarily expect us to be “friends” in the social normality of life. We live different lifestyles, have different hobbies, and are parts of totally different friend groups. Yet, through CrossFit, we were able to bond through hard work and sweat. He joined CrossFit after never doing any sort of competitive athletics in his life. Over the span of a few short years, Derek managed to not only lose 40lbs, but also gained strength and aerobic capacity he had never had before. Through a clean diet and the CrossFit community caring for and holding him accountable, Derek is in the best overall shape of his life.
Derek and I both had a similar experience with CrossFit. We both wanted something more and found it within our community. The idea of building a tight-knit community of like minded individuals wanting to get better really resonated with both of us. After some of our garage workouts together, we casually joked around about some day opening our own gym and those jokes soon became a reality. In September of 2023, after a year of late night ideas and a lot of hard work, we officially opened Lonomi CrossFit to the public and have not looked back since.
Through our shared experiences, the story behind our mission at Lonomi CrossFit can be summed up in four words: helping others get better. This may sound cliche or overdone but it’s the truth in our gym. We strive to see people improve in all areas of their life. This may look like lifting more weight over a period of months, finding a new friend in the gym, or simply walking through the door. It might also mean honing in on your diet or increasing your self-esteem through movement. The beautiful thing about CrossFit is that each member can work to define what “better” means to them. For experienced athletes getting better might be joining a competition or smashing a big personal record. For our beginners, getting better could look like making it to the gym three days a week or trying a new movement. We help people to set attainable goals and surround them with a strong community to encourage them as they grow…and we see the results! We’ve watched people (who later became full time members) walk in off the street having never done CrossFit or been in a gym before thrive because they’re able to find success at Lonomi. Why do we choose to make this our goal? Our own fitness journeys started with people around us helping us to get better and we want nothing but the best for those around us now.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

We got into the CrossFit business after experiencing the beauty of it ourselves. We help our members became healthier as a whole through coach-led classes and personalized training. We are able to meet the people who step into our gym wherever they are in our fitness journey and are committed to helping celebrate their victories (big or small) along the way! We are passionate about empowering people in our community to improve their health and we love having a strong community of people to support each other along the way.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

The heart of Lonomi CrossFit is its members. We would be nothing without the people who show up day in and day out. At Lonomi, we work hard to treat our members as human beings instead of numbers. By focusing on building strong relationships and growing our community, the clientele have naturally come through word of mouth referrals. One of our members loves coffee and so we brought in a coffee bar after a Saturday partner workout. This led to us making a connection with another local business in town where we created our own specialty blend of coffee called The Lonomi Brew. By listening to the interests of our members, we were able to create new business relationships in our local community and bring more people together. Building authentic relationships has been our most effective strategy.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

Derek and I met in a CrossFit gym and worked out in the same class for months before our friendship really started. When COVID hit, a lot of gyms were closing and we started doing workouts in Derek’s garage. Over time, we realized there was a strong friendship forming and we spent a lot of time together. We went on family camping trips and had countless dinners together. A couple years after we met, Derek was actually the officiant of my wedding!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lonomicrossfit.godaddysites.com/
• Instagram: @lonomi_crossfit
• Facebook: Lonomi CrossFit