Marlow Hicks just wanted to play basketball. As a freshman in the Chicago suburb of Mundelein, he made the varsity squad but rode the bench all season. he asked the coach what he could do to get some playing time. The answer was obvious — the self-described “string bean” would have to bulk up. To that end, the coach suggested he joined the school’s rowing team. Just one season pulling the oars made a significant difference, and he stuck with both sports.
Crew wasn’t the most diverse, of course.
“Our teams at the time were like 70 or 80 men and it was me and one other brother,” he said in an interview for the 365 Amplified podcast. “Then he ended up leaving after freshman year, so it was just me.”
Listen to the whole interview here:
He got a few offers to play college basketball, but at the behest of his coach also visited UW-Madison, where he was recruited for crew. The campus won him over and he rowed for Wisconsin from 2000 to 2004.
After graduating, opening his own gym was the farthest thing from his mind. In fact, he thought he was done with fitness entirely.
“I remember my last stroke at the last race at IRAs (Intercollegiate Rowing Association), and I’m like, that’s it. I’m done, never working out again,” he said. “I was so burnt out at the time … I thought, I was like, at the time, you know, 20-something years old, I know everything. I did the most workout I’ve ever need to do in my life. I don’t need to do any more.”
He moved to Chicago, got a job, and stayed out of the gym for nearly three years. It wasn’t until his then-girlfriend, now wife, got tired of his complaints about feeling bad and lethargic that he found his way back.
“She literally was like, ‘I’m tired of hearing this,'” he recalled. “She signed me up for a CrossFit class (and) was like, ‘Hey, you’re going.’”
That was the turning point. “I walked in, fell in love,felt like I was part of the team, felt back.”
It was hard at first getting motivated to work on fitness for its own sake. As a competitive athlete, he said, “I was moving and I was doing fitness, but I was doing for a purpose, and someone telling me, right? I lost all that structure the reason for it, but realized that (not working out) was holding a lot of stuff back, from a mental capacity, not just from a physical capacity.”
After moving to Waunakee with his young family in 2018, Hicks began fitness coaching on the side while working in business development. In 2020, the pandemic created an unexpected opportunity. They gym where he was coaching part time shuttered in the summer, when COVID-19 closed most indoor activities down.
“Took me like 12 hours to think about, and I was like, I think it’s about the time to open the gym,” he said. “If any time is the time, this might be the time. If I don’t do it now, I’ll probably never do it.”
He purchased the gym’s equipment and took over its facility at 315 Raemisch Road. Fortify Fitness Collective opened in July 2020, right in the middle of COVID restrictions, when it wasn’t allowed to have more than eight people at a time.
“We had little boxes taped on the floor. People had to stay in those boxes,” he recalled.
But people showed up, not just for workouts but for connection. “It wasn’t even like the workout, but like that they got to see other people,” he said. “This hour was the hour that they got to get out of their house, see other people, other than the grocery store, somebody not on a screen.”
Now, Fortify Fitness Collective is preparing to celebrate its fifth anniversary with a community event on Friday, July 12, starting at 11 a.m. at 315 Raemisch Road in Waunakee.
“We’re gonna have food. We have bouncy house for the kids. We’re gonna celebrate the members who let us get to this point,” he said.
For Hicks, fitness is about more than just exercise.
“We always talk about having an anchor of what brings you back, your why, why you’re doing it,” he said. “And it’s different for everyone, but, and it can change over time as well as mine did. But what is it? What is this that you’re truly doing for yourself, but why?”
That anchor might be your kids, your health, or your future. And when making decisions about food or activities, Hicks said it’s beneficial to take a “binary” approach.
“Is this going to get you close to your goals? Yes or no? There’s no maybe. There’s no kind of. There’s no sort of. Yes or no. And no is okay, as long as you have a reason behind it,” he said.
Hicks and his team are ready to keep building community, one workout at a time.
“Give yourself some grace, but at the same time, keep yourself accountable,” he said. “That’s part of the culture here.”
