April 28, 2005

Childhood friends aim to make Almaden fit

Optimum Results owners offer personal training and other services in two locations

By Diego Abeloos
Sports Writer

Seven years ago, longtime friends Spencer Belideau and Jason Maass decided to put their knowledge of fitness to good use.

Optimum Results owners Spencer Belideau, left, and Jason Maass want to give their clients a place to work out on their own time. The pair opened their new Optimum Results location in the Via Valiente Shopping Center in January of 2005. Photo by Diego Abeloos

Growing up together in Simi Valley, the two men spent much of their time on soccer fields and in fitness studios. The culmination of their athletic feats came when both men attended San Jose State University and competed on the men’s soccer team while studying business and fitness in the classroom.

Although their soccer careers ended upon leaving SJSU, Belideau and Maass were not ready to give up on their other passion for fitness. In 1998, the two men quickly became business partners and established Optimum Results, a one-on-one personal training studio in the Old Almaden Shopping Center on the corner of McAbee and Almaden Expressway.

“I think the way it developed is that we were trying to provide a service that fulfilled the needs of the clients in the community,” said Maass.

With the dot-com era well underway, the two men quickly realized that busy people in the Almaden area had the means financially but lacked the commitment needed to get healthy. To that end, Belideau and Maass set out to establish bonds with their clients and offered a variety of times that were more convenient and useful than traditional fitness centers offered at the time.

“We found that people had a lot of money on their hands and at the same time, with the rise of the dot-com, they were very interested in their health, fitness and well being,” Belideau said.

“They were caught up in the rat race, working 12 hours a day and at the same time, they’re still finding themselves out of balance. So we became the turnkey solution so they could just set that appointment up with a trainer, not even think about it, and just make sure that they show up for that session. We eliminated the guess work for them and took them through the process.”

The financial landscape soon changed in Almaden with the dot-com bust, and clients soon found one-on-one personal training to be cost prohibitive. In response, Belideau and Maass changed their Optimum Results studio (now called Fit Vibe) to include group personal training in 2002, offering the same one-on-one attention needed, but at a significantly lower cost.

“We got to the point where we wanted to have that additional offering because people couldn’t necessarily sustain it long term from a financial standpoint,” Belideau said. “So, by doing it in a group method, we can make it a lot more affordable yet still provide most of the benefits you get from working with a personal trainer, from a expertise standpoint. There are some other benefits in the group method. The energy, the synergy, the support of other participants.”

To complete their task of offering the benefits of fitness to Almaden, Belideau and Maass recently opened a new location, once again called Optimum Results, in the Via Valiente Shopping Center, offering basic gym memberships.

New strength-training equipment can be found in every corner of Optimum Results, located in the Via Valiente Shopping Center, where Almaden community members can now purchase basic gym memberships. Photo by Diego Abeloos

“There was still a segment out there that was blocked out from being to participate in our services because of price, to some degree,” Belideau said of opening the Via Valiente location. “We wanted to open it up to where there were so many permutations. So you could be doing one day a week with your personal trainer and have a gym membership in conjunction with that.”

The two men visualize a place that is not just a run-of-the-mill fitness center. Along with setting up personal training regimens for clients, Belideau and Maass have also taken the guesswork out of proper nutrition with balanced meal schedules for their clients.

Belideau and Maass also plan to utilize their Via Valiente location as a place to continue their strong bonds with clients, while offering the personalized care in a gym atmosphere.

“We definitely saw that there was a need for some sort of gym setting, way down deep in the Almaden area,” Maass said. “We wanted to be the provider for that. It just seemed like a natural transition since we had the private training already up and running and we had Fit Vibe up and running. It made sense for us to make that move … it’s been nice to see a lot of new faces in here.”

Optimum Results is located in the Via Valiente Center, 6928 Almaden Exp., phone (408) 927-6387, and FitVibe is located at the corner of Almaden Exp. and Mc Abee, 5965 Almaden Exp. #130, phone (408) 927-5173. For more information, visit www.optimumresults.com.