Time Crunch: Fitness professionals work big benefits into small windows
May 2026
Maybe you’re a busy executive who’s looking to get in shape but needs to get the most out of your already limited free time.
Maybe you’re a worker bee (or stay-at-home mom, or anyone, really) who for one reason or another needs the same thing: a plan that will maximize results in relatively small windows of time.
While no local trainers or fitness professionals exclusively specialize in executive or leadership fitness, plenty of them work with people in both categories and have learned to provide services and programs that fit those needs.
More with less
Several years ago, Sebastian Garbsch was at a gym he belonged to at the time when he overheard a pointed request.
“I remember one day this woman came in. She was the president of a company in town and she'd been working with one of the owners,” he said. "And she goes, ‘I got 30 minutes, give me whatever you got.’”
That idea stuck with him when he started Formative Fitness, a gym on State Street in Traverse City. While Formative didn’t exclusively offer condensed, time-efficient
Garbsch and Boothworkouts, they became quite popular.
“We ended up really resonating with people who liked the efficiency of it because they were busy and they have a lot going on,” Garbsch said. “They had families, they had careers they were focused on and they loved the efficiency of it.”
Garbsch is the first to admit that there’s only so much a person can do in short or infrequent training sessions, but he really dedicated himself to figuring out the most he could give them in those tight windows.
“We can all talk about what we should be doing in a perfect world, but realistically, if it's between someone doing nothing and doing something, how can you find a way to give them 80% of the benefits and 20% of the time, or at least the highest percentage of benefits with the least amount of sacrifice?” he said.
Garbsch still works at Formative Fitness as he transitions to a real estate career. It’s now owned by his friend Brenden Booth, who has maintained a lot of the founding ethos. Booth says another great thing is that clients often take what starts at Formative Fitness and use it as a springboard for more activity throughout the week.
“As we talk with our clients, that routine and that plan really grows and evolves,” Booth said.
Different strokes
It’s not all about lifting weights or hitting the treadmill. Some busy folks gravitate to yoga, spinning, Pilates or other disciplines. At Pure Pilates, owner and instructor Jennifer Cutler says she works with a lot of business leaders who appreciate how much they can get out of their classes there.
Cutler“You're getting balance, you're getting strength, you're getting stretch and length, you're getting that mind-body connection,” she said. “You’re getting (a lot) of wellness in a small amount of time.”
For busy, somewhat stressed people, their time at Pilates has them feeling looser, Culter says – mentally and physically.
“Some of these people come in, and I’d swear they leave three inches taller,” she said.
One of Culter’s clients is Kate Greene, who owns and runs a human resources company in town. She’s been running her own business for more than 25 years, and has regularly done Pilates for 17. She appreciates that her time there touches on so many aspects of her well-being, and it's also a really nice mental break.
“In my job, I think for a lot of executives, we are creating the work, we're directing the work, and so we're always kind of ‘on’ in that way,” she said. “So it’s nice to come in and still have to focus, but not have to lead and focus.”
Fit in 20 minutes per week?
An extreme example of the “more with less” phenomenon is the Fit20 gym on Cass Street in Traverse City, where co-owner and physical therapist Roger Karsten promises results with 20 minutes per week.
Karsten, a PT of nearly 30 years who still runs a separate PT practice on Front Street, wasn’t sold on the idea when he first encountered it in Europe.
“I saw it first there, and I was really skeptical,” he said. “I know you can get a good training in 20 minutes, but is once a week really enough to move the needle?”
But data from more than 150 locations in more than a dozen countries shows that a year of Fit20 can result in strength gains of 40 to 50%, Karsten says, which is particularly important for people who are already experiencing natural reductions in strength.
“We don’t get fit young people. That’s not the idea. Most of our clientele is in their forties, fifties, and older, and they’re not looking to get buffed,” Karsten said. “What
Karstenthey're looking for is to be able to keep doing what they're doing with their grandchildren.”
Karsten has about 130 clients who work on a very slow, very high intensity workout each week in which they push their muscles quite literally as hard as they can. Karsten uses compound exercises to target several muscle groups.
“(You want to) train the largest volume of muscle tissue in order to improve overall strength and overall health,” he said. “We’re hitting 80 to 90% of your muscles in six exercises.”
Ultimately, Fit20 is about maintaining vitality and ability into old age.
“For a fit person, this translates into being a little more fit. But if you've seen some decline, this may be the difference between you walking up the stairs and feeling fine and walking up the stairs and being totally winded,” he said.
It takes a village
Doug Petersen has been a personal trainer for almost 30 years, and he’s a familiar face in northern Michigan circles. He also tries to make the most of his workouts for his clients, but adds that almost all of his most successful clients treat their time with him as part of a larger regimen of activities for their well-being.
Petersen“All we can do in an hour or two is be a catalyst for change,” he said. “If people aren't doing anything else besides what I have them doing here, they're not going to have any success. There’s a pattern where successful people are doing a lot of other things, and I’m just one part of what they’re doing. I always say it takes a village.”
It’s not an easy mindset for many trainers, Petersen says.
“There's a lot of ego in this business, and there’s a lot of trainers that want to force everyone into the way they do things, and they think they can do everything for these people,” he said. “But you’ve got to drop your ego and be very humble about who you are. You're just a tiny piece of someone's success.”
