Hero5 Fitness’ Story

Hero5 Fitness- Personal Training and EMS Performance Coaching located in Greenwood Village, Colorado

My name is John Foster, and I founded Hero5 Fitness. In this post, I am going to share my story and background in personal training, as well as what led me to begin Hero5 Fitness.

As a young boy raised in the South, I thrived on junk food, buffets, and TV dinners. The prospect of cultivating one’s fitness was anathema to most people unless you were playing or training for a sport. Therefore, I grew up an overweight kid who was mostly picked last for kickball teams. Needless to say, the idea of becoming a personal trainer for my adult vocation would have seemed ludicrous or just way out of left field.

It wasn’t until I graduated high school and gained an additional 80 or so pounds that the circumstances that would lead me to become a personal trainer would transpire. After high school, I delayed going to college and acquired a job at Sports Authority. It was also during this time that I began drinking and partying. Burgers and fries were my go-to meal during breaks and working out was not even on my radar. Within a fairly short period, I began pushing close to 300 pounds on the scale.

While I had always been slightly chubby growing up, this was a whole new territory of obesity that I had never thought I’d reach. It was around this time that my brother and his wife took part in a 90-day challenge with Bill Phillips’ Body for Life Program. When I saw what my brother could do in 90 days, I enthusiastically picked up the book and was hooked by the real-life results that I read about in the introduction.

I decided to take part in the challenge and commit to my 90-day journey. I did weight training on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and cardio interval training on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. During the week, I ate perfectly and I cheated quite a bit on the weekends. What can I say, I was young and could get away with way more than I can now. Over the 90 days, I dropped quite a bit of weight and decided to keep going on my journey. Over the next year, I dropped below the 200-pound mark.

This transformation changed my life! College turned out to be a different experience than high school. Where before I couldn’t get the girl, I now could. Where before I was socially awkward, I became the life of the party. I also made a strong mental connection between feeling great about myself and working out. I even remember missing some special events for my girlfriend because I had to go to the gym.

These are the events that led me to become a personal trainer in 2004. My brother had moved to California and became a personal trainer for 24 Hour Fitness and offered for me to come and train at his gym. Initially, I thought personal training would be a short-term gig until I figured out what I wanted to do with my life. However, it turned out that I was quite good at it and I also had a special connection to most of my clients because I had faced the same obstacles and struggles that they had.

Fast forward 20 years in the fitness industry, and I thought I had done and seen pretty much all of it. I specialized in weight loss and functional fitness for individuals 40 and over for most of my career. I had just gone through COVID-19 and seen my fitness studio decimated in business and attendance. I was pretty much ready to hang up the fitness towel and try something else when I was contacted about this new modality called EMS (electro-muscular stimulation) whole-body suit training. It looked like a total gimmick to me. After all, I had been primarily focused on body weight and minimalist functional training for the past two decades.

As it turns out, I tried out the workout and found myself totally destroyed in less than 20 minutes. I had never experienced anything like this! What is this suit? How in the world could it be such a challenging workout?

I then took a job as an EMS performance coach for a company that had opened a mobile training division during COVID-19. As I went deeper down the rabbit hole of EMS training, I fell more in love with the modality. Not only were the workouts intense, but they also seemed to solve knee and back pain issues that I had been having. Up until my late 30s, I thought I was indestructible but age taught me otherwise. Despite being a big functional fitness “guru”, I still had developed pain and imbalances from a crooked spine and never rehabbing from a broken foot in high school. EMS solved these issues for me while also taking the place of a majority of my strength training regiment, allowing me additional time to focus on running.

The company that I was an EMS trainer for ended up going out of business, so in April of 2023 I bought my own equipment and kept the dream alive. I also named the company Hero5 Fitness-not QuickFit or Fastfit-because I wanted to build an inspirational brand. A brand that was not just about EMS personal training but also about teaching people how to be superheroes in mind and body. As you watch this company grow and evolve, you will see more than just personal training services emerge. You will see a tribe of coaches trained and determined to make their clients fit in every possible way.

I hope you’ll join me and Hero5 Fitness on our journey of creating something new and exciting in the fitness industry. Here’s to activating the superhero within all of us! Sincerely, John Foster, founder of Hero5 Fitness, head EMS performance coach and personal trainer.

Please reach out to me here or contact us about visiting our studio in Greenwood Village, Colorado to learn more or try your first session for free!!!