DARLINGTON — Wanting people in Darlington and the surrounding area to be happy and healthy, Kyle and Taylor Thuli are looking forward to opening up their gym, The Bar, and pair it with the venture Taylor has with Kelli Ritchie, Foundation Fitness & Nutrition, preparing pre-made healthy meals.

During the pandemic, Kyle and Taylor opened a gym in their garage, having more free weight based training and exercise. Soon others were asking if they could use their at home gym.

“Because a lot of people like to do specific sports or training but are having to go to Argyle or Platteville, we’d rather have them be here in town. So we wanted to provide that for people to keep people here,” Kyle said.

In April 2021, the Thulis purchased the old Tarrell building at 325 Main Street in Darlington. The downstairs hasn’t had a permanent resident in the building since the early 2000s, only having several renters up until now. 

“From what I was told, there were a lot of questions about knocking this building down at some point. It was in terrible condition when we moved in,” Kyle explained discussing the water damage from the top floor all the way down to the basement due to the roof falling in. 

But they put a lot of time and effort into the building, making it structurally sound and bringing it back, trying to restore it to help get more foot traffic on Main Street.

“Now hopefully it is here for a long time. I know that it makes the older generation happy to see what we have done.”

Thuli commented about the older buildings on Main Street and hopefully the city is able to keep these type of older buildings alive and thriving.

The building was built in the 1850s. The upstairs had really never been touched since sometime in the mid to early 1900s. At one point it was a Steil Furniture & Undertaking so when they were finally able to get into the upstairs, they found a space in the floor where caskets were lowered down, a viewing room, old carpeted floors, dropped ceiling, dark, walled off rooms, and smaller additional rooms. 

Their design for the space changed with every new discovery or obstacle. They have done all of the work, demolition to construction themselves.

“We made it work,” Kyle said.

The downstairs portion will have free weights along with men’s and women’s bathrooms and showers. The upstairs will be more cardio based equipment and classrooms. The Bar is a 24/7 gym with key fob access to either the front or back doors.

They use two cell phone apps to help with memberships and access to the building. Glofox allows you to pay for your membership over your phone without having to sign up in person. The Kisi app helps get members into the building. If you forget your fob, the Kisi app will unlock the doors. It also tracks the amount of time you spend in the gym. 

“Some health insurances give you rebates as long as you spend X amount of time getting fit. You just need to show them that information which is all time stamped and use that for money off your insurance,” Kyle explained.

They have a yoga instructor who will give classes. Jodi Tuescher will also be teaching movement classes for older women. Both Kyle and Taylor are certified nutrition coaches and Kyle is also a personal trainer. He will be available to help anyone and everyone on how to use free weights properly.

“My big thing is getting youth classes,” Taylor said, hoping to get more youth interested in karate or martial arts programs or just something to get kids active.

They stated that if there is someone who is an expert in a certain type of exercise class and have enough people interested to learn such skill, they are open to have them use their classroom area.

For memberships, for an individual for one month it is $35 or $350 for a year, getting two months free. Families are $45/month or $450/year, students and seniors (55 and older) is $27/month or $275/year. They have a 10 percent discount for all police, military, firefighters and EMTs.

As members come in the building from the backdoor near the stairs, they will have a refrigerator stocked with smoothies and meals from Foundation Fitness & Nutrition meal-prep.

Taylor and Kelli began tracking the macronutrients in the foods they would eat. All the foods we eat have macro (big) and micro (small) nutrients. Micro refers to things like vitamins, iron, calcium, potassium and other small vital nutrients found in food. These are found on nutrition labels under the macronutrients. Macros are large categories of nutrients, mainly fat, protein and carbohydrates, which are the building blocks for all food. People began asking them how they would macro track to keep themselves healthy and the idea grew from there.

“We started making these portioned meals to show people how to track your macros and what to eat for portion sizes,” Kelli said.”

“We break down everything for them so it makes it so much easier. Everything is weighed and measured and they don’t have to do any of that,” Taylor said.

They started discussing meal prep in January 2021, a few months before the Thulis began their gym journey. They began plotting out the numbers and ideas for a couple of months and launched the meal plan idea in April 2021.

“It was Easter, the first Sunday in April. We didn’t do very good planning,” Taylor joked.

But the idea soon caught on. Kelli’s husband Andrew owns Avon Locker so they supply the meat for the meals. They also have a certified kitchen where they do all their prep and put together all their meals every Sunday. They take them to six different refrigerator pickup points throughout southwest Wisconsin, Darlington, Mineral Point, Platteville, Shullsburg, Monroe and Dodgeville.

“We make the same meal in five containers in one bag. You can eat the meals whenever you want, dinner, lunch or give them to your kids,” Taylor explained.

They have a family style option, which is just the same amount of food but on a pan that you can stick in the oven and then make your own serving sizes.

They average about 600 to 800 meals a week. The highest they have ever made in a week was 1,300 meals.

Apart from making hundreds of meals and creating an inclusive gym space, all have full time jobs. Kelli is a sign language interpreter in the Mineral Point School District, Taylor is the DEMS secretary and Kyle is the shop foreman at Darlington Dairy Supply.

“We really want to teach people that they don’t need to be here to get yourself jacked. You are here for a healthier, better life,” Kyle said.

Both Kyle and Taylor are available to help with tips on how to use the weights and what would work best for your lifestyle.

“I don’t want people to be intimidated by weights. We want to make this a community area that kids with their parents, elderly people, moms, dads, anyone can come in here and be comfortable.”

They don’t want to be competitive with the other gym in town.

“The more people we can get active the better. We try to do our job and get people to realize that this isn’t like their number one priority in life. This is just helping and supplementing life to make it more enjoyable,” Kyle said.