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Barry's Bootcamp Gym Opens New Outlet On Halsted

By Ted Cox | February 24, 2017 5:35am | Updated on February 28, 2017 11:41am
 Barry's Bootcamp CEO Joey Gonzalez keeps his hand in the business by regularly teaching classes.
Barry's Bootcamp CEO Joey Gonzalez keeps his hand in the business by regularly teaching classes.
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Barry's Bootcamp

OLD TOWN — Barry's Bootcamp is opening a second Chicago outlet, in Lincoln Park, in what amounts to a homecoming for Chief Executive Officer Joey Gonzalez.

"Chicago boy, born and bred," Gonzalez said on the phone from the Los Angeles headquarters of the high-intensity gym company.

While Gonzalez allowed that technically he grew up in Arlington Heights, he immediately added that Lincoln Park was his stomping grounds as a youth when his brother and sister both lived there after graduating from the University of Notre Dame.

"That would be where I would go to experience Chicago," Gonzalez said. So after working his way up to CEO in July 2015 after starting with the company a dozen years before, "Lincoln Park was at the top of my list of where we would go to next."

 Barry's Bootcamp opens in Old Town on Saturday.
Barry's Bootcamp opens in Old Town on Saturday.
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DNAinfo/Ted Cox

Located at 1937 N. Halsted St. and opening Saturday, it's the 29th Barry's Bootcamp outlet globally and the second in Chicago after one in River North at 11 W. Erie St., which opened late last year and Gonzalez said has already registered "incredible growth."

While Barry's Bootcamp has a reputation for its intensive workouts, Gonzalez said he still considers it a "boutique" brand, and that suits Lincoln Park as "there are a lot of boutique concepts in the surrounding area."

The Old Town location, he added, has been taken in "a different direction" from other Barry's outlets, stressing the "brownstone brickwork" so common to the neighborhood.

"It will look and feel different from the River North location, which I think people will enjoy," Gonzalez said. "It just sort of mixed the outdoor-indoor feel of Lincoln Park."

Otherwise, however, the 4,500-square-foot gym, with a capacity for a class of 40, will still emphasize the classic Barry's Bootcamp approach, with an instructor leading a group in a one-hour workout divided evenly between weight and resistance training and cardiovascular.

"Efficacy is definitely what sets us apart," Gonzalez said. "It's a combination of true strength training on the floor and interval cardiovascular on the treadmill."

The instructor monitors class members for speed, weight, repetitions and form.

"The way it's different from a big-box gym is that you're guided through the entire 60-minute workout," he added. "Of all the options out there, it's the one that seems to work best for people."

Each class is $30, although there are package deals and memberships available as well.

It opens Saturday, but Gonzalez will be in town next week for a grand-opening party Wednesday night, and he figures to be instructing a class as well during his stay. That gives him a chance to monitor the customer experience as something of an "Undercover Boss" in addition to keeping him fit.

"I'm going to be teaching, actually. I love it. Totally, once a week, that's the minimum," Gonzalez said. "That's a very important part to me to stay dialed into."