The former Yale University strength and conditioning coach built his Ranfone Training Systems from a 4,500-square-foot, two-person operation more than a decade ago to a sprawling 17,000-square-foot fitness facility in Hamden, CT, about 90 minutes north of New York City. But even with this successful expansion, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Ranfone and nearly every gym owner to face a new challenge over the past year and a half: either adapt or fold.
With this week’s launching of his fitness brand’s latest evolution — Ranfone Personal Consulting — the well-regarded personal trainer has adapted beyond app-based fitness workouts and into results-based customization training programs. The new project not only focuses on coaching and personal accountability for his clients both in-house and online, Ranfone has now begun offering full medical screening for clients, including blood work, sleep analysis, stress analysis, capped with an extensive, personalized fitness package once thought to be only a perk to elite athletes or deep pocketed clientele. Now every weekend warrior can have a clear science-based assessment that can identify genetic or nutritional roadblocks that may have been blocking fitness gains.
Luis Benitez
“It’s really easy to say, I want to lose 20 pounds. I want to, you know, sleep better. I want better stress management,” Ranfone says. “I think objective is really to get a handle on what health really means to each client on a longer time horizon.”
With Ranfone Personal Consulting, clients clients can track their food and water intake (broken out by calories, fat, protein, fiber, etc.), sleep intake, weight, steps, etc. While its results-first program, the new platform is a way to promote accountability as well as have clients get a little deeper understanding their bodies.
“If you look at a metabolic profile from a blood panel standpoint, it’s looking at things like glucose A1C, C-PAP things of that nature, but superficially it’s really about body transformation.” Ranfone says. “This will give people more information on how to lose weight, or acquire muscle mass. So we’ve been doing this for a long time, but we just never really had these constituents in place to show what else is being done for [clients].
Since opening in 2010, Ranfone has helped countless New England residents blow past their fitness goals. He’s worked with college and pro athletes establish new PRs, while also helping everyone from teachers, nurses, single moms even construction workers transform their bodies through weight loss and muscle gain. With his new features, including the addition a full-time physician to the facility, Ranfone is offering a professional athlete attention to every weekend warrior.
Luis Benitez
“One thing in fitness is to see an aesthetic result, but we want to make sure that it is a byproduct of the process and that the process is not harming the inner workings of the metabolism,” says Marko Lujic M.P.H. M.D. at Ranfone Personal Consulting. “The only way to check on the status of this chemically is through lab data.”
What does this mean for both both gym attendees and those who participate in Ranfone’s program online? Lujic says the details of the analysis will include metabolic markers relative to pancreatic function and glucose control, inflammation, muscle recovery, even nutrition. Now clients will get a full readout on what foods in their system may be causing inflammation or other types of imbalances that are stunting gains.
Ranfone says the plans to go digital had been in the works, but was forced to accelerate implementing his new launch after COVID the States early 2020. So far, COVID has had a crushing impact gyms, as a recent report announced that nearly 25% of gyms nationwide closed permanently.
“COVID wasn’t actually really good for us. but we had in our back pocket the intent of going online and become like a local remote service business,” he says. “So we had this playbook ready to go.”
