The TUF Club x The Nelle
By: Maggie Laubscher
Jabari Washington, founder of @thetufclub, with @brittanylynne during a training partnership.
Get ready to get TUF, Nellies! We are over-the-moon excited to announce our athletic club partnership with The TUF Club, a Kansas City fitness brand. The TUF Club, led by owner Jabari Washington, will bring its fitness expertise and empowering vibes to The Nelle, spanning the entire third floor of our HQ building. The TUF trainers are bringing a diverse range of classes and personal training as they power The TUF Club x The Nelle.
The TUF Club workout is typically high intensity and challenging, using a mix of weights and cardio. They’re bringing a tailored version of the TUF mindset to The Nelle, with a variety of classes for all skill levels. Expect a range of yoga, innovative dance classes, boxing from our very own Nelle boxing ring, and more.
The TUF Club owner Jabari Washington brings several years of fitness training to The Nelle. A respected local personal trainer and instructor, he’s worked with countless members of the KC community, among them Brittany Matthews. For his part, Jabari is bringing all the enthusiasm to The Nelle partnership. ‘I’m excited and anxious and eager, all at the same time,’ he expressed. We couldn’t agree more.
Read on to learn more about The TUF Club and its founder, Jabari Washington...
How did you start The TUF Club?
Before The TUF Club, I was a banker. I’d been in the financial services industry for, like, 12 years of my life when I left it. Corporate America and me just didn’t agree. I needed something to do while I was choosing my next step. A buddy of mine had a gym and I went down there one day, and I never left. I worked with him for a year as a sort of apprenticeship.
After that year, I ended up starting my own thing. I didn’t have a name for it at first. Then in 2017, I thought of TUF, a quasi-acronym for Total U Fitness. So 2017 became the birth of The TUF Club. I offer a lot of high intensity classes. I set up our classes as pretty tough - that’s why it’s called TUF! I set it up so you’re constantly overcoming something, being challenged mentally and physically, at max capacity for that day.
I’ve built it completely on my own. This venture with The Nelle will be the first time I’ll have trainers that represent The TUF Club - we’ll be the TUF team. I’ll have three trainers that will work at The Nelle. It will be personal training and a lot of group classes.
How did you get connected with The Nelle?
I’ve been training a friend of Lauren (Merriman, Nelle founder) for a little over two years now. I was looking for a new space and Lauren was looking to collaborate, so we connected.
Lauren wanted a social club with an athletic club attached to it. She wanted someone that had experience with fitness to come in, someone who had experience working one-on-one with clients.
Come to find out, she’s exactly what I was looking for in a collaboration and I’m exactly what she was looking for in a collaboration. So it appears at this stage, we have the perfect marriage.
What type of classes will you offer at The Nelle?
For The Nelle, we’re going to incorporate different workouts. We’ll have different styles of yoga, a boxing ring, Afro Caribbean dance classes, one-on-one training options. It will be very unique.
We’ll have classes included in the member packages, and we’ll also have a la carte classes on top of that. We’re going to bring in other brands in the community to teach classes, too. It’s going to be a good community that we build and grow over the next year.
I’m excited and anxious and eager, all at the same time. But you know, I’m confident in what we offer at The TUF Club and I know Lauren is confident with her vision. And when you put two confident people together, then magical things happen.
What does fitness mean to you?
Fitness is a bridge to the true version of yourself. It helps you find out how to get better at things and see what you’re already great at. That’s really how I use fitness, to truly become the best version of myself.
It’s all about bridging the gap between where you are and where you want to be. I think for most people in life, that’s where the challenge lies: in how you bridge that gap. Generally, whatever you’re struggling with in your personal life, I’ll find that you’re struggling with it in your physical life as well. Most people don’t have someone to keep them accountable -- daily, weekly, monthly, yearly -- to be the best version of themselves. Most people get lost in translation. So I help people get over that threshold.
Once we can do that, then we can get you to where you really want to be, whether that’s to be the CEO of your company, upper management, a more understanding husband, a more caring wife, a more intune mother. Whatever it is, I can figure that out about a person. And then I start to build their workout around where they want to be in life.
What drives you in your career and in your personal life?
The success of people. From a business perspective, I like to get a person from Point A to Point Z. I’m really driven by that. When I see a person, I want to have some level of relatability with them, some kind of rapport with them, and make them feel like family. And ultimately, I want to make them become the best version of themselves.
What drives me personally is being the best version of myself and creating a legacy for my four children. I want to be an example as a husband, a father, and a person from the community I grew up in.
A lot of people don’t get the opportunities that I’ve been granted, so that’s what drives me personally. I wake up every day and want to be the best version of Jabari.