Vernon Hills Performance Center Follows Holistic Path To Wellness

VERNON HILLS, IL — When Brian Hansen and Ryan Lefever teamed up to open their first physical therapy and sports performance center in Chicago, they knew they wanted their brand of wellness to stand apart from the rest of the field in terms of the quality of services they offered.

Given their respective backgrounds, Hansen – an Olympic silver medal-winning speedskater — and Lefever, a former physical therapist with the Chicago White Sox, understood how crowded the wellness space can be. So, when it came to creating space between themselves and other businesses operating on the same health-driven landscape, Hansen and Lefever knew quality had to be at the forefront of everything they did.

After finding success with a 6,000-square-foot flagship location on Chicago’s North Side, Hansen and Lefever have launched a new 5,600-square-foot TFI (formerly the FIT Institute)facility in Vernon Hills, expanding the footprint of a wellness center that is proving to be a one-stop shop for athletes and non-athletes alike.

Like the Chicago facility, the Vernon Hills location (701 N. Milwaukee Ave.) offers a variety of physical therapy and sports performance services in addition to a state-of-the-art Pilates center and the latest in recovery technology such as cold-plunge tubs, sauna, and compression booths that provide a pathway between physical therapy and services a personal trainer could provide to clients.

“From the very beginning, we wanted to separate ourselves a little bit and be more unique in terms of just not providing rehabilitation but also, we wanted to bring that gap between rehabilitation and sports performance,” Lefever told Patch on Tuesday. “We’re just trying to merge those two as much as possible.”

While the Chicago location has more “old-school” services and technology, Lefever says that the business took the next step forward with the Vernon Hills location. The new facility offers a recovery room that includes two cutting-edge cold tubs and other amenities that not only provide customized care to clients but does so at a much higher level than they may find elsewhere.

After working with professional athletes during his tenure with the Sox, Lefever has witnessed how state-of-the-art performance techniques and training can bolter not only care for injuries but also prevent injuries from happening by following a specialized regimen of training.

While many treatment facilities offer one set of services or another in terms of either physical therapy or sports performance, TFI provides what Lefever calls a “full spectrum of health and wellness”.

“We wanted people to feel like they were walking into something different and a something a little more special and wholistic than just individual rehab or just a training gym,” Lefever said.

Lefever said that the emergence of pro athletes such as Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, and LeBron James who have continued to perform at a high level despite being older has changed the way that everyday athletes and non-athletes like tend to view their own performance abilities.

The fact that people are experiencing more longevity in their respective athletic endeavors has opened the doors for facilities like TFI. More and more, however, clients of these wellness centers are discovering the link between wellness and injury prevention in a different way than ever before.

That’s where the expertise brought by Hansen and Lefever has helped to differentiate TFI’s wellness approach from others in the field. Hansen, a Glenview native who won silver in team speed skating at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics before also competing at the 2014 Sochi Games, said that he first discovered a dual approach to physical therapy and wellness in his career.

Hansen said he always appreciated facilities that provided complimentary services in one space, where clients could shift and consult with a variety of experts seamlessly. Now that he has transitioned into working with athletes himself, Hansen has found that while some clients walk into the facility seeking out a variety of wellness services, others discover how the two disciplines can be linked in a completely different way.

Hansen said that he found a similar offering at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, which, he said, may have extended his competitive speedskating career by pairing performance and physical therapy in the same way TFI attempts to do now at both its Chicago and Vernon Hills locations.

“There’s just a lot more collaboration than you’d see in a typical (physical therapy) setting,” Hansen told Patch. “I think a lot of people come and actually find something that will steer them in a positive direction whether that is they came for (personal) training or they came for (physical therapy) and found something else.”

The two facilities have also provided a learning opportunity for clients and athletes who may not have experienced an injury that required physical therapy before. Lefever said that many TFI clients have had a bit of a lightbulb moment in discovering the connection between wellness and performance in ways they hadn’t thought of previously.

By passing clients who may have started at TFI in physical therapy over to the personal training side has allowed many people to experience that holistic approach to wellness that has become part of the business’ mission and model.

“We’re not here to get you back (to full health). We’re here to get you back, but to prolong your longevity in your sport,” Lefever said.

He added: “But this isn’t just for athletes. I like to tell people that everyone is an athlete in their own mind. If they’re playing a sport or not, things they might want to do … this isn’t just tailored to one person. It fits the whole demographic of people.”

The duality of the approach to wellness and performance has also expanded the demographic TFI serves. While many of the facility’s clients are full-time athletes, many are not but find themselves benefitting from the services they can find under the same roof.

The new Vernon Hills facility offers an expanded slate of services both in physical therapy and athletic performance that is geared toward a variety of clients. It also includes a larger space for group Pilates classes and a certified Pilates therapist who incorporates both sides of TFI’s business model. Because of the two sides of the clinic, the non-athlete can be served just as more (if not more so) than the full-scale athlete who may be accustomed to a certain level of training and physical therapy sessions.

But because TFI caters to both groups, it ends up offering an upgraded level of services that creates distance between itself and other competing wellness centers.

“Helping athletes in a holistic, full-spectrum (approach) to health and wellness is what we value,” Hansen said.

But Lefever says it goes a step further, which can not only be found in himself and Hansen, but in head athletic trainer Luigi Degirolamo co-owner and physical therapist Isaac Lai.

“People feeling like they’re part of a family when they come into our space is really important to us,” he told Patch. “We kind of go with that mentality that we want to treat every individual there like they are a relative. We want to give the best quality service to everyone who steps through the door. We want to feel like they’re welcome and that they’re coming into a different atmosphere than just a normal rehab space.

“So it’s kind of cool that everyone who has this core value of beliefs in this spectrum all kind of found each other.”