“Fitness is the foundation,” Leone says. “Once you have that, you can build anything you want.”
A Multi-Faceted Role
Within Elite Amenity Management’s multi-unit residential buildings, gyms are a hugely popular amenity, and nearly every property is equipped with some level of dedicated fitness or health-and-wellness space.
That may be one reason why Nick Leone finds his role as Elite’s Fitness Director a little hard to sum up in just a few words.
“I guess I would say it’s multi-faceted,” Leone muses. “From the micro level to the macro level, I oversee pretty much everything that has to do with the fitness end of the company. So, anything involving the gyms.”
That can include many things — from compliance, to insurance, to making sure everyone is up to date on their certifications, on down the line to tax paperwork and hiring and firing instructors within the fitness team. “We have an HR director, and she’s responsible for hiring just about every other department and position,” Leone explains, “but I’m specifically responsible for hiring the group fitness instructors and personal trainers.”
Finding the Right Fit…ness Instructor
Leone is responsible for figuring out which instructor is the best fit for each building – a task that is sometimes simple, but at other times… well, it’s a bit like solving a Rubik’s cube.
“Not all of our buildings have group fitness calendars,” Leone says, “but many of them do, so I oversee those. We have over 100 group fitness instructors in the company, spread out across 20 buildings, give or take.”
Ensuring that members get the best experience and that fitness spaces are optimized in each property is not always as simple as it sounds. There is an element of strategy involved.
“For example,” Leone says, “for a strength class on the Upper West Side, when I do the hiring process, I’m not just looking to find a strength instructor, but the right strength instructor for that specific building.” Leone must consider the typical tenant profile to understand what kind of program and instructor will work best.
“The buildings are all different,” he says. “Some buildings have a lot of young families and young children. Some condominiums cater to an older crowd, where owners are maybe a little further along in their careers. That’s going to be a specific type of instructor, versus a Lower East Side rental building filled with early-career 20-somethings and 30-somethings.”
So how does he assess a new candidate? “A lot of times I’ll have them do a demo class just to get a feel for how they teach,” Leone says.
Safety is as much a priority as keeping tenants happy and interested: “I don’t want the hotshot Instagram influencer trying to do boot camp with the Silver Sneakers crowd — and having everybody pass out from their first experience with high intensity interval training,” he says, laughing.
“As I’ve grown into the role, I’ve realized a lot of it is understanding the different approaches that different trainers take. Through the interview process, and maybe watching them teach, or even just checking out their social media pages and seeing what their philosophies look like, I can figure that out, and then position them in the right buildings.”
A Role that Grew with the Company
When Leone started at Elite, the position of Fitness Director didn’t exist. “I’ve been with Elite for 11 years now,” he says. “I started with them fresh out of college, actually.”
Leone, who is originally from Astoria, Queens, left home to Exercise Science at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, intending to stay in Florida after graduation. But life had other plans.
“One thing I learned very quickly is that just because you have a degree, people are not lining up to just give you a job,” he recalls with a laugh.
Fresh out of college in 2013, he began interviewing at the big box gyms. “LA Fitness, Equinox, 24 Hour Fitness, they were all saying the same thing: We’re really looking for someone with more experience,” he recalls. So, he headed back home to Astoria, where an interview with Elite quickly led to a role that would put his degree to good use. Ironically, he initially worked at a property without a gym.
“There was a pool, though,” he recalls, “and they said, we’ll put you on the pool, see how you do, and we’ll go from there.” The rest, as they say, is history.
Game Changer: The Elite Lifestyle App
One recent event that had a dramatic impact on Elite and its fitness programs was the COVID-19 pandemic. During lockdown, building amenities became a lifeline for residents, and the company rose to the occasion with a thoughtful approach to meeting new demands.
“We’ve always offered personal training, swim lessons, and massage therapy,” Leone says. “Those were the big three.” But enhanced offerings kept stir-crazy residents active and happy. During COVID restrictions, contactless payment and in-app bookings became the new standard, and those changes lasted after restrictions were lifted.
“So, coming out of COVID, we developed the Elite Lifestyle App,” Leone explains. “Before the app, residents would go to the front desk, and ask the receptionist, hey, uh, I’m looking for a personal trainer… And the staffer could look in the directory, find a personal trainer, maybe find the contact information, and write it down on a Post-It note,” Leone laughs.
“But here’s the issue with that,” he adds. “You have now put the onus fully on the members to do the legwork. All you have is a name and a phone number.”
The app changed all of that: “Now, all of our trainers are on the app. So any time of the day or night on the app, you can see all the personal trainers, swim instructors, and massage therapists that are available for your location. You can see their picture, you can see their bio, you can see what they specialize in. They put in their own availability, so you can see if the times match with your schedule. And you can book them on the app, and you can pay right through the app.”
“Everything’s there at your fingertips, and all the legwork has been done for you. All you need to do is find who matches your needs, book them, and pay right in the app.”
The Next Big Thing in Fitness is… Sleep?
A fun and rewarding part of Leone’s role is keeping up with what’s new in the world of fitness, health and wellness, and bringing that knowledge to Elite staff and residents.
“What’s big right now is recovery,” he says. “Improving your sleep score with wearable trackers, better sleep hygiene, blue light blockers and so on.”
Leone links this to a larger trend: “In the fitness world, it used to always be, what am I doing in the gym to get the best results? But think about it: You’re only in the gym for maybe an hour, hour and a half a day. What about the other 23 hours?”
Recent studies show that investing a little time and attention in recovery can enhance the results of that daily workout – and make you happier and healthier overall, Leone explains. “So now the focus is, what are you doing to recover from that session that you just did? So, recovery is really huge.”
That means tricks, techniques, and technology that have been standard recovery protocol for elite athletes for years are now making their way to the mainstream. Leone mentioned red light therapy, infrared saunas, cold plunges, targeted compression during and after workouts, routines to target and break up deep scar tissue, strengthening the resilience of the fascia, and once again, sleep.
“It’s not just, is this going to help me build more muscle?” he says. “Now people are thinking beyond that. Because it’s also about overall health and injury prevention. A big part of recovery is making you more resilient to future stresses, more resilient to injuries.”
As always, he cautions, it’s essential to know your own health and fitness profile, and talk to your doctor before beginning any new exercise program. “There is so much information out there right now that it’s very easy to get overloaded,” Leone says. “You should be very selective, and you should do your due diligence.”
A good professional trainer can help you with that, since an essential part of personal training is assessing you individually to develop a regimen that is tailored to your needs.
“No matter what type of exercise program you’re about to embark on, whatever nutrition program you’re about to do, whatever recovery protocols you’re interested in trying, do some research and talk to your physician. Don’t listen to just the first thing that some influencer says online,” he cautions.
Your Time is Your Life
Besides personalization, and real, vetted expertise, is there any other major incentive to work with a trainer? Absolutely, Leone says, and it’s a big one: Your time.
“Your time is so precious! Your time is literally your life,” he says. “Hiring a trainer or nutritionist is not only going to get you better results, but it’s also going to do to shorten the time horizon to getting to those results.
He uses cardio boxing as an example: “If you watch enough YouTube videos, you may learn how to box eventually, but I promise you, working individually with a professional trainer, you can cut that time by an order of magnitude.”
That means you’re not only reaching your goal more efficiently, but freeing up time for other priorities. “That’s time you can then reallocate to other things in your life,” Leone says.
Fitness is the Foundation
While his role has evolved well beyond personal training, Leone says that forging personal connections with members is still the most meaningful part of his job. It’s also one more way Elite strives to give members that little bit extra, in contrast to those impersonal big-box gyms where he’d interviewed fresh out of college.
“I’m also a personal trainer, so this is part of my day-to-day,” he says. “To see someone improving at something is so satisfying. When you see someone physically making progress on their goals, and you can see that transformation right in front of your eyes, there’s something very visceral and real about it,” he explains.
“I think of fitness as kind of a foundational thing,” he continues. “If your health and your fitness is not in order, anything else you try and put on top of it is going to crumble over the long term, right?” Social life, career and family life, and other priorities can be imperiled if your health and wellness are not in order. “Fitness is the foundation,” Leone says. “Once you have that in place, you can build anything you want.”
Having a fitness program onsite makes that easy for residents. “The biggest thing people always say is, I don’t have time,” he says. “I say this to everyone: you can feel like garbage before you go into the gym, you’re tired, you’re lagging, but 95% of the time when that workout is over, you will feel better, physically and mentally. You’re going to feel amazing.”
One thing Leone has seen time and again is how fast good habits become self-reinforcing: “You start to feel better, and then you start to look better, and then you want to feel even better so you keep going, and it just kind of snowballs,” he says, laughing.
“As a habit it kind of becomes its own reward. It gets easier and easier to keep the habit, because it has so many good effects in the rest of your life.”