A red laser flits on my knee. Bike pedals spin. Larry Foss, founder of The Fix Studio in Minneapolis, adjusts a camera and aims a light at my leg. “Kick it up a notch,” he shouts. It is a Saturday morning, quiet in the city’s downtown warehouse district. But upstairs at Fix, where Foss and his wife, Sophie St-Jacques, opened shop in 2008, rock music rings from speakers mounted on the walls.
As exercise studios go, Fix does not fit an established mold. The facility, a loft-like space with high ceilings and varnished floors, contains curtained massage rooms, a treadmill, yoga mats, fans, and bike trainers aligned in front of computer screens. There are rubber gloves in a box. Cotton balls in a jar are ready to swathe blood after Foss pricks your finger in a threshold test. “They have a very holistic approach to fitness,” said Bob Trench, 51, an amateur bike racer and Fix client.
From joint alignment to bike shoes, Foss and St-Jacques — who have respectively coached and competed for years in pro-level athletics — attempt to focus on the entire system that makes up an athlete, from nutrition to fitness regimen to gear.
Their tools range from high-tech to tried-and-true, yoga poses to a virtual-realty race course displayed on a computer screen. Services, which are purchased a la carte, include running-gait analysis tests, video-based bike-position fitting, blood-lactate threshold tests, indoor cycling training classes, nutrition plans, therapeutic massage, stretching classes, and race-strategy techniques.
“They have a great understanding of all endurance sports,” said Carolyn Bramante, a Minneapolis biathlete who competed in the 2006 Olympic Games. She began working with Fix (www.thefixstudio.com) for massage, stretching and nutrition consultations while preparing for Olympic trials last winter.
