Local Gymnasium Offers New Breed of Training With Mud Run Academy

If you've driven down Interbay Blvd in recent weeks, you may have noticed some strange activity in the parking lot of The Facility Fitness Center.

With the addition of the Mud Run Academy, the South Tampa gym is creating a new class for a gymnasium to offer, geared toward accomodating fanatics of the newest fitness craze, obstacle races.

"I've done about 30 of these obstacle races and what we've done here is incorporate a lot of what you encounter at these events," owner of The Facility Vince "Scoot" Fountain said. "We've always been people who believe more in functional fitness. You don't encounter situations in regular life where you bench press 300 pounds directly off your chest, but you might have to throw an 80 pound sand bag in the back of your truck. These are the kind of things that you can use to work out here."

Mud Run Academy is headed up by Eric Scola, a trainer at The Facility over the last six months. He has partnered with Fountain and co-owner Whitney Lasseter to create a course that trains the competitor psychologically as well as physically.

"You can do a whole lot of exercises and running on Bayshore, but the first time you get to that rope climb or wall you have to go over, you need the mental stamina to be able to put yourself through that," Scola said. "Once you hop over that wall once your muscles now know how they need to work to do that again. Strategy plays a part in it too, and that's something you can work on with this academy too."

In it first class on Wednesday night, a handful of participants crawled under ropes, scaled walls, traversed a shaky set of monkey bars and ran over giant sized tires, essentially replicating the kind of events they'll see at mud run obstacle races like Tough Mudder and Spartan Race.

"I was in the military for years so I used to do this stuff for my day job," South Tampa resident Blayne Smith said. "I'm trying to do get into some of these really challenging mud runs, so I'm hoping this will help. It's good all around too, I think it's great training even if you're not a mud racer."

For the business, Fountain is hoping that the new training will attract some attention and bring in new business to a gym that he has had to revitalize completely since buying it. Having built the equipment just feet from the stretch of road his gym calls home, Mud Run Academy is already doing just that.

"We bought the facility as an existing gym and we did a lot to refresh what it was," Fountain said. "We're always trying to do group fitness and diversifying what we have to offer. The Mud Run Academy will obviously enrich what we have and we looked around and there isn't much south of Bay to Bay for this type of stuff. I got a call from a trainer at the YMCA just the other day saying that some of his clients are talking about this after they drove by."

For more information about prices and class times, visit www.mudrunacademy.com. Interested participants may also call Scola at (781) 267-4587 or e-mail him at ericscola@live.com.