MINDY KING

I fell in love with traditional high-impact aerobics when I was 17 (yes, I wore leotards and leg warmers). As a child, I never felt very athletic, and team sports were never an interest of mine. I can’t remember what led me to join that fitness club and venture into a group exercise studio, but I remember feeling welcomed and encouraged. The next year, I went off to college, and then moved five more times over the next 10 years. Everywhere I went, finding a fitness community was my priority. I knew that was the way to find “my people” in each new community.

By the time I moved to Bloomington in 1998, I had been teaching group fitness classes for a decade. At UCLA, I also worked as the Program Assistant for the Group Exercise Program at the Student Recreation Center, managing their program schedule and training events. I also taught classes at local gyms in West Hollywood, Santa Monica, and West LA. After UCLA, I moved an hour south and started a Ph.D. program in Health Psychology at UC Irvine. My dissertation focused on how exercise blunts the effects of cognitive and emotional stressors, especially in people who are prone to be most reactive to psychological stress.

I met my first friends in Bloomington working as group exercise instructor and personal trainer at the IU Student Recreational Sports Center (SRSC). During my first year in Bloomington, I finished my Ph.D. and became pregnant. My fitness interests soon needed to take a back seat while I found a full-time job and learned how to be a mom. During this time, I always made sure that I taught at least one fitness class each week (sometimes more). That was “me-time”.

As my children grew up, and I worked to develop a career path, I never strayed far from a fitness community. I taught indoor cycling classes at the YMCA for a few years, taught indoor rowing classes at the Bloomington Body Bar, and found myself drawn to yoga. In 2019, I completed my 200-Hour RYT (Registered Yoga Teacher) certification and started teaching yoga. It would only be a few months until I was teaching classes from my basement, broadcasting through Zoom.

There must have been at least a few others who found the same comfort in that community, because we practiced yoga, rowed online, and hooked TRX straps to outdoor fences for 18+ months before we could all come back together in person. My children had already moved away to college (or were getting ready to do so), and as much as I loved my “day job” as an evaluation consultant, that work often took me away from Bloomington rather than keeping me grounded in a local community. It was easy to see that my “fitness community” was more important than ever. The re-opening of Ethos Fitness was an opportunity to continue to heal from the isolation of the pandemic, and it gave me the opportunity to experience co-ownership of a women-owned community-based fitness studio.

While some people dream of owning their own business, I never saw that for myself – until it became apparent that the community and the vision were both already there. All I needed to do was create the space. Limestone Fitness grew organically from the community that already shared the same values and goals. I feel honored to be a keeper of this space.