Hardcore Fitness opening location in Winter Garden

Fitness enthusiasts in the West Orange area soon will have a new gym to get their workout.

Come October, a new 8,200-square-foot gym named Hardcore Fitness (HCF) that specializes in boot-camp group training will open in the Beulah Commerce Center. 

The gym is co-owned by a couple – Nick Buzetti and Alexis Linares – and it will be HCF’s second location in Central Florida, although the gym’s concept originated in California.

"I'm from California, and my best friend is the one who started Hardcore Fitness back in California about nine years ago,” Buzetti said. “There are about 11 locations throughout southern California. … So I worked in the fitness industry for a really long time, and that's actually what brought me to Florida with my previous job. I was working at a 24 Hour Fitness when I met Alexis."

The pair soon quit their jobs and opened their first location in Winter Park three years ago, Buzetti added. They’ve since watched it grow into a success, with more than 600 members to date. They hope to see the same success in Winter Garden.

“We’re really excited to get to Winter Garden,” Buzetti said. “I actually never went over there until we signed the lease, so for the last couple of weekends, I’ve gone around the downtown area and some other places, and everyone is really friendly. It’s a really cool city, so we’re excited to get over there to bring the results we’ve brought to our Winter Park members to Winter Garden.” 

The gym, which will be open seven days a week, offers eight one-hour group training classes every day with two options to choose from: boot camp or fight camp, resulting in 16 classes total. 

The boot camp mostly features resistance training and weight-lifting, while the fight camp is a more cardio-based boxing class where participants wear heart rate monitors, Linares explained. But, even although the gym primarily focuses on group training, its workout methodology is akin to a personal workout routine, Linares said.

"We're different because we do a lot of isolated muscle training, which you don't normally see in a group setting," she said. "So we kind of take a commercial gym setting and put it into a group style. We do leg day, back day, shoulder day, chest day – we actually target muscles during our group training and focus on aesthetics, sculpting, trimming and toning."

The gym also offers its members an optional 60-day Fat Loss Challenge for those aiming for a radical change in their health and looks.

"We do a lot of different things,” Buzetti said. “We do our 60-day transformation challenges, which we're kind of famous for. We just had one that ended a couple of weeks ago, and in the award ceremony, the winners get cash and prizes. They do before and after pictures and there's a really detailed nutrition program they follow and there's a cardio program.”

Linares and Buzetti believe their gym’s approach to health and fitness brings its members the results they want, and the culture and positive atmosphere is something that sets them apart from other gyms.

"A lot of the group-training facilities we've visited focus on full-body workouts every single day,” Linares said. “And I think what really makes us stand out is we really do a lot of weight-lifting in a group setting. So you will be doing heavy squats, bench presses, and we have people aged from their high teens to their 60s and they're all working out right next to each other. So every workout is scalable depending on your level of fitness. We're all just one big sweaty family."