It's Not a Cult, It's a Tribe

If you happen to see a group of sweaty Main Liners dragging car tires up and down a Wayne parking lot, don’t be alarmed. They’re just getting a good core workout at Tribe Fitness, a group personal training local gym at 396 West Lancaster Avenue in Wayne (across from the Lancaster County Farmers Market).

Tribe Fitness offers intensive 30-minute workout sessions to its clients that are a blend of personal training and boot camp styles. Owner and founder Bill Abbott used to be a personal trainer and used to own a boot camp franchise, but he is finding that his “small community gym” offers the personalization of the former and group dynamics of the latter.

Abbott creates workouts for his groups, and in some cases personalizes them for different ability levels. At the Tribe gym, the person at the top level is lifting weights next to the newcomer. And that’s okay, he said.

“There can be a feeling of intimidation by people coming in and not knowing anyone,” Abbott told Radnor Patch. But “It’s the nicest group of people. We’re very welcoming.” Tribe’s Facebook page is filled with activities and comments from clients to Abbott and to each other about activities and workouts. 

Membership fees range from $140 to $197 a month. Most Tribe clients are in their mid-thirties to late fifties, but there are also some younger and older. There is an approximate 60 to 40 female to male ratio, Abbott said.

Classes are offered from early morning until evening and are only 30 minutes long. “People can wrap their minds around 30 minutes,” Abbott said. And it’s a very intense 30 minutes. No time is wasted because all the apparatus are set up beforehand.

They set up goals and monitor how each client performs. The records are kept so that clients have data of how they have progressed over time.

“I don’t think people are intimidated by the upper echelon athletes. After a month or two, they are proud of their own accomplishments,” Abbott said. “Competition makes everyone better, but you’re primarily competing against yourself.”

In the last decade the fitness industry has seen a focus on “micro gyms” and community, he said. There is socialization before and after workouts (don’t even try it during class) at the gym, which has about 90 percent of its members from a three-mile-radius.

“Some people call it a cult. We call it a tribe. It’s like a family,” Abbott said.