August 3, 2016

Meet Santa Clarita Fitness Trainer: Alwyn & Rachel Cosgrove

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alwyn & Rachel Cosgrove.

Before their paths crossed, the owners of Results Fitness were growing up on opposites sides of the world. Alwyn Cosgrove in Scotland, and Rachel Cosgrove in Newhall, California, where Results Fitness would eventually come to life. Although far apart, their lives were running parallel stories. Both were competitive and active, drawn to fitness to improve their performance, Rachel as a competitive and professional dancer, and Alwyn as a Tae Kwon Do World Champion Fighter.

They also both came from families who struggled with their weight and both had to combat their genetic predisposition for obesity, wanting to find a solution for themselves and those closest to them to be healthy and fit long term. Through their own trial and error, experiencing the on and off diets and frustration they witnessed with their own families, they were gathering data on their journey to one day become known as experts in the health & fitness industry.

This journey led Alwyn to earning his degree in Sports Science from the University of Chester, along with a Masters in Sports Psychology. Rachel earned a Bachelor of Science in Physiology with an emphasis in Exercise and Health from The University of California at Santa Barbara. They had an absolute passion to learn more about the human body, what it is capable of, and how to help others reach their potential physically and mentally. While in college, Alwyn offered to write his Mum a plan to lose weight. The plan was based on exactly what he had learned in college. Low impact aerobics 30 minutes a day and a menu of low fat foods. She began following the plan and, shortly after she had been following it consistently, Alwyn received a phone call that his mother had died suddenly of a massive heart attack at the age of 56. The exact plan he had learned in college had completely failed.

After this Alwyn was driven to figure out why the plan he had given his mother didn’t work and what the real answer is to change your health & fitness long term. His focus went from performance to fat loss and seeking the answers of why the traditional fat loss recommendations fail most people, most of the time. Graduating from college they continued to seek knowledge earning a number of certifications. Rachel with her dance background was teaching aerobics, step and spinning. Alwyn was teaching Tae Kwon Do and weight lifting at a summer camp in upstate New York. After graduating from college Rachel decided to move to New York City to follow her other passion, dance and performance. Little did she know the real reason she was being pulled to New York was to meet her soul mate, her partner in business and life. Together they would change thousands of lives. In New York City they were both working as personal trainers and met when Alwyn, who was working as the fitness director of a brand new gym opening smack dab in the middle of Times Square, brought Rachel in for an interview and she was hired. The gym ended up being bought out, so the two never actually worked together and, as Rachel puts it, “he was never my boss.” Their friendship grew and eventually Rachel asked Alwyn out and the rest is history. Both working as independent trainers, they’d start their day with clients at 4:30am and train clients through ‘til 10:30am, then have their dates in the middle of the day and start training clients again from 5pm – 9pm, grab a bite to eat and then start over the next day. Ah, the schedule of a high in-demand personal trainer.

These years were very formative for both of them, working full-time with so many clients, honing their skills and philosophies, Alwyn as a mentor to Rachel. They would host different experts to teach seminars at the gym where they were training and would always find a way to scrape together the money to invest and learn from whoever it was. They both shared a hunger for knowledge and learning. These seminars were a huge influence on their training philosophies, exposing them to ideas that were being used at a high level with athletes, and starting to look at applying them to general population clients. At this point “Cosgrove Fitness and Sports Training Systems” was born, already following systems that eventually led to the model they use to this day at Results Fitness. After spending a few years in New York City working as personal trainers, they were both ready to move on and eventually ended up in California where they were married and worked for a short period of time at other big box gyms. Being a coach is something that you do because you love it. Rachel & Alwyn both absolutely love coaching people. They love designing a plan to get a person from point A to point B. They love the coach-client interaction, being able to pull their clients through their journey to reach success, believing in them more than they do. They love seeing the light bulbs go off for their clients as they realize they can do something they never thought they could before. They are both coaches. That’s who they are first and who they will always be. Opening their gym was about this passion and love of helping people. They had both worked at a number of gyms, had seen it all, and knew there was a better way than what was out there. They felt strongly about personal training becoming a career path and being taken seriously as a profession. Up until then, most trainers would get burnt out within 2-3 years and move on to a “real job.” Most people had negative experiences when they joined a gym and eventually gave up. They had worked alongside trainers who were more worried about their own reflection in the mirror than their clients’ results. At most of the gyms where they worked they wouldn’t feel confident having any of their fellow trainers cover their clients or train someone they knew because of their lack of professionalism. This was the beginning of their mission to change the way fitness is done.

Frustrated with the standards in the industry they wanted to create something better, a place that put the clients first and created careers for people as passionate as they were to help people. They wanted to change the way fitness is done. They found a space that would work with enough room for the two of them to start training clients. The plan was that Rachel would continue working outside; at the various gyms and with in-home clients she had, while Alwyn got started at the gym. People who they worked with began to bad mouth them when they found out they were going to leave and open their own place, trying to discourage them, but Alwyn & Rachel were on a mission. They had no money when they opened, in fact they were in debt and lived in a tiny, one bedroom apartment in an area about 30 minutes down the freeway with the cheapest rent. Cheap rent also meant not such a nice neighborhood, in fact, about five months after opening the gym their apartment was broken into. They came home to a smashed back window. The intruders had torn apart every drawer; clothes strewn everywhere and everything gone through, but they literally had nothing so there was nothing to steal, except for their laptop that had everything for their business on it. It was all they had. They would have to start over creating all of their templates and marketing. Almost immediately they were both full with clients, coaching back-to-back hours from early morning ‘til late at night. They were offering something different than what people were used to, changing the way fitness is done, and people wanted it! They were one of the first small functional training gyms of their kind.

As their business grew quickly they had to shift their continuing education from fitness, health and nutrition, to learning on the fly how to run a business! They made many mistakes along the way and had a hard time making ends meet in the beginning, but they continued to look for solutions to their problems, which led them to a number of revolutionary ideas in changing the way fitness is done. They also began to attend seminars on business management and marketing while also investing in every business book they could find. They put systems into place and hired a team, starting with Donna as their office manager, who is still with the company 16 years later. They hired their team of coaches, creating a place providing a career for personal trainers including health insurance and retirement benefits, something they had never been offered at any of the gyms they worked. Things were going great, they were starting to make money, and were able to reinvest in the business as they grew.

They were through the first three years when most businesses go under and weren’t slowing down anytime soon until… In 2003, Alwyn started to feel run down and sick all the time, and he noticed a lump in his groin area. He went in to have it removed and was told it was most likely a harmless Lipoma, a non-cancerous lump of tissue. Rachel waited in the waiting room and their life changed when the surgeon came out and explained to Rachel that Alwyn had what appeared to be cancer of the lymph nodes, Lymphoma. They would be sending a sample off to find out what kind of Lymphoma, but he would need to get a scan to see if it had spread beyond that Lymph node. His scan showed that he was in Stage 4. He underwent chemo for six months and was pronounced in remission. As the following year passed he was not himself and was having severe back pain. The cancer was not gone. Within a year he was once again Stage 4. This time he was admitted to UCLA for a stem cell transplant. They both lived at the hospital while Alwyn underwent a stem cell transplant where they gave him high-dose chemotherapy, taking his immune system down to nothing, rebooting him with new cancer-free stem cells, and then waited for his immune system to build back up before he could leave. He was finally discharged and was in remission once again in 2006. This time for good!

The period of time from 2004 – 2007, while all this was going on, because of the way Rachel & Alwyn had built their business based on systems, it continued to run successfully without them, letting them focus on Alwyn fighting this life threatening disease. Their team was able to continue changing lives and changing the way fitness is done without them. After taking a year off they had a new mission which was to change the way fitness is done on a bigger scale. What if they hadn’t had the systems in place that they did? What if their business depended on them to be there? They would not have been able to survive. As time went on Alwyn & Rachel had multiple books published by major publishers, became known by the magazines as the “go-to” experts on “everything fitness,” became high in-demand speakers traveling around the world presenting on their philosophies and what they do at Results Fitness, were hired by Nike as consultants, featured on BBC World News for their philosophies, and named one of the top ten gyms in the US by Men’s Health Magazine, four times! Rachel was named IDEA Personal Trainer in the year in 2012. Trainers began contacting them to learn how they run their gym, wanting to shadow and be mentored by them and, after what they had been through, they realized they had a bulletproof model that worked and now, more than ever, they felt obligated to help other trainers to build a business that runs without them. This gave them the idea to host their first mentorship where they had trainers fly in from around the world to spend three days with them and showing these trainers how they run their business.

This was the start to their second business, Results Fitness University, where they currently have close to 100 trainers from around the world running their gyms based on the Results Fitness model, and being coached by Rachel & Alwyn Cosgrove. Results Fitness, now open for 16 years, has been a work in progress since the two met almost 20 years ago and has grown to close to 300 members who all feel as if they are part of a family by belonging to Results. It’s like no other gym atmosphere. The team care immensely about every single person who walks through their doors, always putting members first and working closely as a team to be the best part of their members’ day every day. There are members who have been there since “Grand Opening Day,” there are employees who have been there for over 10 years, building a career for themselves and supporting their families, and there are trainers around the world changing lives in their towns because of the mentorship of Results Fitness. Results Fitness is truly changing the way fitness is done and is still going strong after 16 years as one of the original and best small functional training gyms. Alwyn & Rachel have a perspective not many people do after what they have been through. They realize that life is too short to not take chances, to not do what you love or to hold back from following your heart to accomplish whatever you want in life. And above all always, always, always take what you do very seriously, bringing 100%, but never take yourself seriously. They continue to grow their two companies with an unquenchable hunger to always grow, learn, and become more. Anyone who has ever been a part of the Results Fitness team knows that within the company everyone endearingly likens it to being on a rocket ship because they are constantly reinventing, applying new ideas, moving very fast, and never afraid to change direction quickly. They will always be seeking the most cutting-edge methods and techniques for faster and even more effective ways to help their clients reach their goals, continuing to lead in the industry. Results Fitness is setting the standard for what a gym should be and Rachel & Alwyn will not stop on their quest to change the way fitness is done until there are gyms in every city where people can feel comfortable working out, achieving results in a supportive atmosphere with trusted personal trainers who are viewed as professionals, and are an integral part of their healthcare team long term. They are on a mission to continue changing the way fitness is done!

Pricing: