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TAKING FITNESS IN STRIDE


Lisa Druxman is changing the way women bounce back from pregnancy, one stroller at a time

By Carey Rossi | Photos by Michael Darter












Sitting at my local Starbucks in Santa Clarita, California, I see a gaggle of women walk in with children in tow. Their cheeks are rosy and drops of sweat cling to their skin; some grab bottles of water, others stand in line, and they all chat with each other energetically. They've just come from a Stroller Strides class, a total fitness program for moms that, in a unique yet simple way, involves their children in the workout.

This upscale suburban enclave of Los Angeles isn't the only location you'd find this scenario playing out. In fact, Stroller Strides is one of the fastest-growing franchises in the United States — ranked No. 17 — with new outposts cropping up on a regular basis.

But the idea wasn't born out of the marketing department of a sprawling health club chain or from the business plan of a corporate behemoth. Nope, it was the brainchild of fitness professional Lisa Druxman, who went on maternity leave in August 2001 and soon found herself in a very foreign situation: wondering how to keep fit with a baby in tow.

When I speak to Druxman by phone in January 2008, she's in her home office, recounting a career spanning everything fitness, from group exercise to personal training to fitness management. "I loved working in this industry, but was totally distraught throughout my pregnancy because I didn't want to live only to work or have someone else raise my son," Druxman says. "Living here in San Diego, we needed two incomes. I really had no idea what I was going to do after my maternity leave was up."

BIRTH OF A MOVEMENT

Druxman knew she wanted to get back into shape, because it had been such a big part of her life before baby and is a passion she knew wouldn't dissipate even with the responsibilities of a family. So she created a workout that she could do with her son Jacob. After a lot of trial and error, she crafted something that she found worked for both of them.

"I would run or walk and stop every few minutes to do what I call a 'body toning station,'" she explains. "I'd use the environment, doing wall sits and push-ups and triceps dips at benches. I brought exercise tubing along and found that if I sang to Jacob and interacted with him during my workout, it was one of our best hours of the day. He was happy, and I was getting a workout in. It was a total win-win."

Then came her "aha" moment. One day during her workout, Druxman realized her inventive training could be more than just her workout — she could share it with others. "Every mom I know wants to get back in shape after having a baby, and if they're like me, they probably want to meet other new moms, and have questions about sleep deprivation and nursing and all the other things that go along with new motherhood," she says. So Druxman decided to start a class with just a few moms in her neighborhood, even though she still had every intention of going back to work. "I was just kind of doing it selfishly, and thought it would be a nice extra for my life," she explains.

In short order, a great opportunity fell into her lap. A local news station called Druxman asking her to fill an open segment, so even though she wasn't quite ready to promote her neighborhood fitness group, she did. "I gave my home phone number and e-mail address on-air and announced we were going to do a big grand-opening class at Mission Bay — I just picked a location and date," she says.

Sure enough, when she got home there were 75 e-mails waiting. "It knocked me out of my chair, because I had done segments for [the local news] for years and never got more than three e-mails on a segment," she recalls. When Druxman arrived at the grand-opening class, there were 40 moms and two news crews there, and at that moment she knew. "I asked my husband to take this leap of faith with me, because we just had one of those very lucky breaks and came upon something amazing. And that's what it has really been for these last six years — something amazing."

There were 228 Stroller Strides franchises in January 2008, but by the time you read this there will surely be more, as an average of 6—10 franchisees a month join the mommy fitness movement. And it is a movement.

Druxman has created a fitness business that supports motherhood. For one, her home office has five workstations with computers and is open to the 11 members of the Stroller Strides corporate team. "They all have keys here so they can come and go," she said. "We built the office so they'd have everything they need to get things done as in a traditional office, but at the same time we have a nanny who watches the kids. It's very nontraditional." The average franchisee owner reports she works an average of 3—4 hours a day at a job that is, as Druxman describes, "incredibly rewarding, incredibly stimulating, and they get to bring their kids to work every day. It's pretty cool."

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