Chris Rombola
I was the skinniest kid ever. I had to run around in the shower just to get wet. One day, I decided I wanted to become a professional wrestler. Everyone laughed at me. I was more of a candidate to get swept away by a gust of wind than to ever end up on television lifting someone up over my head. Well, my father didn’t laugh, and although he didn’t want to see his son become a professional wrestler, he did want to see him get some confidence and feel better about himself. He introduced me to weightlifting, and I’ve been hooked ever since. I spent high school and college lifting weights, reading about lifting weights, dreaming about lifting weights, and lifting some more weights. I started getting more muscular, and my whole life changed.
But it turns out you can’t just lift weights and eat whatever you want. I went from being puny to weighing over 306 pounds. That’s when learning nutrition became my priority. On March 30th of that year, I weighed 306 pounds. On July 30th, four months later, I weighed 230 pounds and had a six pack for the first time in my life. I could look at myself in the mirror again. After college, I was hired by World Wrestling Entertainment. Can you say dream come true? Then I woke up one day and realized I didn’t want to get hit in the head with a chair for a living anymore.
I quit and moved back to Buffalo, where I got a job at a commercial gym. For the next few years, I ran the training departments at different commercial gyms, and after a while, I started to see just how awful commercial gyms are. I developed a deep, festering, endless hatred for commercial gyms. That’s when I knew it was time to open my own studio. My clients needed better, and so Fit House was born. At Fit House, we help people get strong so they can live long. That’s a mission I can stand behind, and it’s a mission that makes me proud, every day, that this is the work I do.
Want to know more or work with Chris? Send him an email at chris@myfithouse.com.
Gina Rombola
I was overweight my entire life. I always wanted to make a change, so I looked and felt better, but I didn’t know where to start or what to do to achieve the results I was looking for. Then I had an epiphany in April of 2014. I woke up one day and decided I was done being lazy and miserable. In the span of one week’s time, I joined a gym, started a nutrition program, quit my job as a paralegal, and ended a toxic relationship.
I am a firm believer that happiness is a choice. I fell in love with fitness not only because of what it did for my body but what it did for my mental health as well. I felt revived. I started my fitness journey about 8 months before I met my husband, Christopher Rombola, in January of 2015. I fell in love with him almost immediately. Christopher introduced me to structured strength training. I soon fell in love with strength training, too.
I love the weight room because of what it can do for you; I love how lifting weights makes me feel, and I love how it makes me look, but my ultimate passion is helping people with their nutrition. In August of 2017, I quit my job yet again to follow my true passion of training and nutrition coaching at Fit House alongside my husband.
I struggled my entire life with finding a healthy balance of a how to eat properly while not feeling restricted, and I genuinely understand why it is difficult for so many people. There is nothing that makes me happier than when I see someone who has never lifted weights or eaten properly before completely change his or her life both physically and mentally for the first time.
Want to know more or work with Gina? Send her an email at gina@myfithouse.com.
Kristen Perillo
I hated anything athletic when I was a kid. Except for street hockey and fumble rumble, which we played often in South Buffalo, I did nothing sports-related. I preferred eating, reading, and writing to running, jumping, and lifting, and so I got to be thirty-some years old and realized I knew nothing about how to take care of my body. Despite all my time spent making my brain strong, my body was weak.
Within a few years of beginning strength training, I was in love—with lifting and with my body’s growing power. I jumped from teaching high school English to personal training to a Master’s degree in nutrition to health coaching. I started writing about fitness and nutrition, eventually documenting my transition from teaching to training and nutrition coaching on my blog. That transition forced me to reevaluate everything I thought I knew about myself, including my career and my relationship with food. I struggled with my identity and, as a result, with binge eating for several years, gaining 40 pounds in the process. Seven years later, I no longer struggle with my relationship with food, but it is now my responsibility to help my clients get over that struggle in their own lives. Last year, I published my writing from that blog as a full-length book, hoping to help as many people as I could who might also be struggling.
Today, my career path has finally settled down at Fit House, and I am a teacher by day, trainer and nutrition coach by night. I’m also a Star Wars nerd, writer, dog (and cat) mom, peanut butter junkie, and Seinfeld devotee. Fitness has done nothing but make my life better, and I am privileged to show other people that it will do the same for them.
Want to know more or work with Kristen? Send her an email at kristen@myfithouse.com.
Molly Lanham
My success and learning process as a trainer began when I gave someone the opportunity to help me. I was never an athlete in high school and didn’t participate in college sports. The extent of any physical hard work that I had done came from the upkeep involved in living on a horse farm. Imagine living in a partially underground solar house with no central heating or air conditioning and having wells instead of town water. There were many advantages in terms of skills and work ethic that I developed from living so primitively. These same values carried through when I began strength training.
It was 10 years ago when I finally decided the kind of woman I wanted to be. I had been on the opposite side of the spectrum, living with a poor mindset and equally bad lifestyle habits. I had my own preconceived notions of who I thought fitness enthusiasts were. It took courage for me to step outside of my comfort zone and seek out a trainer and teacher. Months into my training, it became a lifestyle that I loved. I felt how good it was to be more mentally, spiritually, and, of course, physically developed. As years went by, I continued to pursue knowledge from school, fitness organizations, and occupational experience. I can honestly conclude that my lifestyle now is only the beginning of my happily ever after.
Want to know more or work with Molly? Send her an email at molly@myfithouse.com.