Meet Evan Pohl, owner of Forge-RX, a gym in Winder GA, with a second location recently opened in Braselton, GA.
Evan is passionate about health and fitness and together with his family, is working on educating and inspiring the community on how to improve their overall wellbeing.
We’d like to thank Evan very much for sitting down with us to discuss his experience working in Barrow County.
Enjoy our interview with Evan
Tell me about your background.
Long story short, I grew up in Grayson, Georgia.
I went to Grayson High School. The fitness bug hit me when I was 16 and I started lifting weights. I didn’t play baseball my junior year and that’s kind of when things took off and I started gaining weight and realized I had a passion for it.
I was reading all the muscle magazines. I played baseball my senior year. I actually had opportunities to go play in college but the importance of strength training was much more important to me.
After coming home from college, my Dad basically told me, you need to go get a job or I’m going to kick your butt. And my first instinct was to get a personal training certification so that’s what I did. I really went through the grind for a couple of years.
Working at BodyPlex in Athens, I met Teddy Neal who became a mentor of mine. He really showed me the ropes — what training really should look like. He got me going in the direction of science based training, as opposed to the stuff you see in magazines. Because unfortunately, many bodybuilders aren’t super knowledgeable but are gifted genetically.
A few years in, I found myself as the head trainer of the BodyPlex in Grayson.
At the time, I started talking about my career to my dad, who is a physician (OB/GYN). He was so sick and tired of telling people they were sick and tired because of their unhealthy habits.
With so many of his patients putting themselves and their babies at risk due to their weight, we decided that we wanted to tackle this problem head on.
And that’s why we opened Forge-RX. The mission is to provide a place where fitness and nutrition equals wellness. Here we have fitness classes with some of the top trainers in the area who love to teach about wellness through clean eating and an active lifestyle.
We’re really excited to grow that into something pretty special.
What is the long term vision for Forge?
Well right now we are in two locations — Winder and Braselton. And right now we’re just trying to make both gyms and our clients super successful.
We’ve made every mistake under the roof. We’ve played with stuff and experimented with some things and in the end we keep coming back to the basics, which is an overall healthy lifestyle for our community.
We’re our own concept.
We host our own classes that are programmed by our trainers. It’s our nutrition coaching concepts. My dad does a wellness program. He does blood work for our members. We also have a nutrition education aspect with Hannah. She has a culinary background and her own meal prep company.
So literally everybody can come to the gym for whatever they need health wise right now.
So what else are you working on?
So we’ve got some other ventures that we’re working on. We have a company called JuicePlus where we teach people how to eat more fruits and vegetables.
We also do workshops, getting people in a room and just building a community. We did one a couple of weeks ago where it was basically a lecture, exercise, Yoga and teaching people how to cook.
We also create a lot of free content online.
We have a private nutrition page on Facebook where we post something at least every day. And I tell people if you just follow the tips and tricks that I give people, you can get great results.
We also have a podcast called Take Control Radio. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I like to rotate between fitness, business, and nutrition. My dad is a big part of this one as well. He’s got a great voice. He’s a great talker.
We have made it a routine that either Friday afternoon or Saturday morning we talk about taking control of your health. It’s a lot of discussion around the topic of weight loss and nutrition. We’re 53 episodes in.
What’s it like working with your dad?
It’s a great thing. We fight every once in a while, but if you don’t then you should probably be worried.
So why Winder, Braselton, and Barrow County?
Well I used to live 10 minutes down the road from the gym in Winder.
So I’m from Grayson, I was living in Bethlehem for a while and my dad works at Gwinnett Medical. We also have a lake house at Laker Lanier. So the decision to create the home base here was strictly a family decision.
But we’ve really loved the community here in Barrow County. It’s clearly a growing community with a great mix of different types of people. We have a ton of police officers, firefighters, etc. as well as some people who wear a suit and tie to work.
We’ve also been involved in Habitat for Humanity.
So this idea of total wellness is really important to you and your family?
Absolutely! So many health problems that we see are nothing more than a weight problem. If you’re overweight, losing just 10% of that weight will make most of your health problems go just go away. Even if you don’t even lose any more weight.
Okay, now for some lighter stuff. So if you could take somebody out to eat for lunch where would you go and why?
So, actually my girlfriend Hannah is an amazing cook. I would lean on her to cook a meal for us. She’s opened up multiple restaurants in California. She’s worked for Thomas Keller. Michelin Star restaurants.
Who would you nominate to be the next Face of Barrow?
So Hannah Burchfield is absolutely someone to interview. She has a company called Premier Palate.
She’s so passionate about teaching the young people about cooking and how to have a healthy lifestyle. That’s exactly what Barrow County needs.
What are some words or phrases that come to mind when you think of Barrow County?
The first thing that came to mind is the word community.
It really is cool. You know, seeing the people that come in to our gym and just in general, I mean, these people have been friends for years. It is home to them. I’ve had the privilege of being welcomed with open arms and it’s been great.
We hope you enjoyed learning about Evan and his story.
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