Photo credit MIKASI
By Jodi Diedrich
To say that Mary Gardinier enjoys teaching fitness classes is to say Cookie Monster enjoys the occasional cookie. Cookie Monster loooooooves cookies and Mary loooooooves helping people meet their fitness goals. You know it from the moment you walk in the door at JAM Fitness. The music is loud, almost alive. Bodies in bright pinks and sweaty grays take up every inch of the floor. Moving to the beat, they do their best to mimic Mary’s moves as she brings the room to life. Like a drill sergeant, she orders her troops who respond with weary smiles and a little more speed or a little more lift or a little more of whatever she’s asking for. Soon, the music goes down and the class heads outside for a run. Jen Lindsey, another instructor at JAM, explains that they will either go around the condos (three times around is a mile, she says) or around a nearby parking garage where they can find hills to climb.
When they return from their run, someone opens a closet and hands out mats. One might think they are going to do a little cool down and go home, but no, there is more. Nikes, Reeboks and Sketchers go up into the air, and Mary, sounding more like a cheerleader now, encourages them. Love it! Party with me! Eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Again! Eight, seven six…and so on. Amazingly, when the last ‘one more time’ has been said and everyone has put their mats away for another day, nobody hurries out the door. Instead, people hang back to catch up, conversing about work and life and coming back next time.
Mary is a life-long resident of Kenosha. She’s worked as a fitness instructor for twenty-five years at various places, including the YMCA, the Kenosha Athletic Center, and the Racquetball Club (no longer in business). For a time, she also worked as a sales person at Peterbilt. It was being laid off from Peterbilt that gave her the opportunity to get more involved in fitness training. For a while, her classes were informal, held in her garage, but eventually, her group outgrew the space and she knew she had to find a bigger location.
President of JAM Fitness is Mary’s husband, Jason. He handles the financial aspect of the business while Mary and Jen Lindsey manage the fitness programs, tailoring them to fit their members’ needs. Aside from her and Jen, there are six others instructors who teach a variety of classes, including yoga, kickboxing, weight training, and fitness/exercise programs. All JAM’s instructors, Mary, Jen, Ashley, Jason, Debbie, Pam, Niki and Theresa, schedule their classes to accommodate members’ needs. It is this commitment to meeting members’ needs that makes JAM Fitness different from other programs in the area. Mary also credits JAM’s success to Jen Vargas, the graphic designer who assisted with the creative aspects of building the business, including creating their logo.
Having grown up in Kenosha, Mary is fiercely loyal to the area and its residents. When asked what was good about Kenosha, she was quick to applaud the pioneer spirit of the people in her downtown community. The people who open businesses downtown are great people, she said, who are willing to work together to build it up, to make it a better place. When asked if there were things she thought were not so great in Kenosha, it took her a while to come up with any kind of response. Finally, she said she would like to see more effort put into attracting visitors to the lakeshore. She also hopes some of the older buildings that are abandoned will be refurbished and made available to others interested in starting businesses in the downtown area.
During the interview, Mary was quick to reiterate the old adage, ‘there is no I in me’. Although she was happy to report that the recession has had little effect on her business, she made it very clear that any success she and JAM Fitness have experienced is due to a combined effort. Not only is she grateful to her husband and JAM’s employees for their hard work, she is also grateful to the students who bring their can-do spirit to JAM, and to the other business owners with whom she shares the vision of an ever-thriving downtown Kenosha.
Jodi Diderrich received a BS in Elementary Education from UW-Whitewater in 1996 and has since worked as a teacher at a number of Kenosha schools. Most recently she has been working for St. Mary Elementary School in Kenosha as a part-time middle school language arts teacher. In her spare time, she writes stories and articles, takes photos, gardens, tutors for the Kenosha Literacy Council, and hangs out with her husband and
two dogs.
