Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan Second Wave's On the Ground Battle Creek series.

BATTLE CREEK, MI — Troy Huggett has been debunking and demystifying myths about exercise and fitness for 40 years, the majority of that time in Battle Creek at his Fitness Pros facility.
 
While he enjoys a steady client base, he says he thinks people, in general, are exercising less for a variety of reasons, among them, lack of time and some confusion about what exercise regimens best fit their needs.
 
“In the hectic world that we live in time is more of an issue than anything else,” Huggett says, “and they don’t know what to do. There’s so many options out there like weight training, weightlifting, or barre. They get conflicting information and think they have to do hours of exercise. Same thing goes for dieting. They may try one and if it doesn’t work, they give up.”
 
Social media, he says, doesn’t help.
 
John GrapTroy Huggett stands in the workout room of his fitness business.“If you’re spending all of your time on social media, you’re not being active. There’s also the mental issues with that as well because you’re watching all of these people putting their best lives out there which may not really be their best life and you think you could never achieve that or look as fit as they do, so you watch them and don’t exercise yourself.”
 
Less than 1/3 of U.S. adults meet suggested benchmarks for aerobic and muscle-building activities set out by health officials, according to the results of a 2022 study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention.
 
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends healthy adults spend at least 150 minutes per week — roughly 20 minutes a day — doing moderate-intensity aerobic exercise and at least two days per week doing muscle-strengthening activities. Only 28% of people in the U.S. are actually following those guidelines, according to the CDC study
 
Huggett recognized the benefits of exercise and fitness while playing football for Battle Creek Central High School. He weight-trained with his teammates and his coach who was working with him to become a bodybuilder. That endeavor stopped when Huggett, a Type 1 diabetic, learned what he’d have to eat to bulk up.
 
Though the bodybuilding was pushed aside, a focus on the importance of exercise was not and he parlayed that into a job with a local health club.
 
“I just got such good results from the training program my coach gave me and everybody wanted to be fit back then and they weren’t getting the results I was getting,” he says.
 
John GrapWhile with the health club, he pitched the idea of offering personal training which was a relatively new concept and one his bosses couldn’t see taking hold.
 
“They said, ‘No one’s going to pay an 18-year-old to personal train,'” Huggett says. He negotiated to provide this service on a commission-only basis where he would rent space using a per-person payment plan. At one point he was training 20 people three times a week.
 
For 15 years he remained Battle Creek’s only personal trainer and says he and his employer were both making a lot of money.
 
A trendsetter before it was a trend
 
In the United States, approximately 340,000 certified personal trainers are working professionally, according to the PTPioneer website.
 
“This number has increased by 21.5% from the 2012 number of 267,000 which indicates a healthy growth in the number of opportunities and the amount of competition,” according to an article on the website.
 
John GrapTroy Huggett works with client Chuck Crider on various stations.The appeal of personal training as a career includes the potential to be your own boss.
 
Huggett left the health club to become his own boss working with people in locations he opened in Urbandale and on Columbia Avenue and in their homes, also a relatively new concept at the time.
 
He was lured back to the health club by friends who were still training there. Then he decided to try his luck as a personal trainer in Florida where he initially found that it was going to be “tough” to make money because there were so many others doing the same thing.
 
Not ready to give up, he would travel between Michigan and Florida for a few years, the last time when he took a job running the fitness center side of a club.
 
After earning a Bachelor’s degree in Physical Education from Northern Michigan University in 1992, Huggett decided to move back to Battle Creek and open Fitness Pros in an office suite at Oak Ridge Office Park on South Shore Drive. After renting for 21 years, he recently purchased the space there. He also has a Master’s degree in Physical Education which he earned from Emporia State University in Kansas in 2002.
 
John GrapTroy Huggett works with his mother Shirley Huggett on a cycling machine.“I had no interest in buying, but the owner of the building was selling the space and it didn’t make sense for me to move again,” he says.
 
What his clients are able to accomplish in this space is a revelation for them and him.
 
The training program he offers has its foundations in what his high school football coach taught him and from what he learned during his time in Florida.
 
“In my world today, I’m usually the last resort for people who aren’t getting results from dieting or working out six days a week.”
 
He offers a 15-minute workout two or three times per week which eliminates traditional cardio with an emphasis on high-intensity training. An average female working out for 30 minutes per week with him loses eight to 10 pounds, he says.
 
In addition to weight loss and building body strength, many of his clients with Type 2 Diabetes have been able to cut their medication use in half or stop taking them altogether.
 
John GrapTroy Huggett works with client Chuck Crider on various stations.The results are from the techniques Huggett works on with his clients who engage in one exercise per major muscle group.
 
“We’re trying to get to the point of resistance where they can’t do anymore. It’s a 14-minute workout, but it feels like an hour or more,” he says.
 
An 80-year-old female client referred by her physician told him she could do a third day of training with him, but he says he asked her why she’d want to put in the extra work if she didn’t need to.
 
“My tagline forever has been maximum results with minimum time,” Huggett says. “They get all that they need from the short cardio workout that we do. I have one machine that gives you the benefits of a 40-minute run in 40 seconds.”
 
When people ask him what the best cardio exercise is, he tells them “It’s the one that you’ll do.”
 
Initial meetings with clients include discussion about their fitness goals and creating a nutrition plan that doesn’t involve dieting or consuming copious amounts of protein bars or smoothies.
 
The majority of his clients are between ages 47-70, many of whom have been with him for more than 20 years. The youngest client he ever had was a six-year-old gymnast.
 
John GrapTroy Huggett stands in the workout room of his fitness business.In his work with youth clients, Huggett says, “We address all of the same things as I do with adult clients, but I’m mindful of preventing them from having mental health issues because their parents want them to be more active or lose weight.”
 
In addition to his in-person training, Huggett also offers online training that offers individualized training programs.
 
“I’m delivering something that nobody else can through a proprietary training method,” he says. “Clients get all they need to achieve their goals through the short workouts I offer.”