Jeff Bergholtz
Fifty-five years under a bar, 25 of them running this studio. He is not the owner who sits in an office: he holds more personal training clients than any coach here, and he still runs the first assessment on every client himself.
- 55 yrs
- Under a bar
- M.S.
- Exercise physiology
- 4+
- State titles
- 63
- Age at his last win
What it is built on
“When you pair individuals in strength, spirit, and mind with a coach and mentor, they are 90% more likely to reach their fitness goals.”
The founding principle, from the studio's own About page- M.S., Exercise Physiology
- Graduate-level, and the licence the programming is written under.
- B.S., Kinesiology
- The study of human movement.
- Western Kentucky University
- College football, before any of the rest of it.
Fifty-five years of it
- It started with somebody else's weights
- He was eight years old. An older brother came home from college swimming, put a set of weights in his hands, and showed him what to do with them. Nothing since has moved him off that floor for long.
- Western Kentucky, then the science
- College football at Western Kentucky came first. The degrees came after: a B.S. in kinesiology, the study of human movement, then an M.S. in exercise physiology. That graduate work is the licence every programme in this studio is written under, and it is the reason the assessment comes before the training and not after it.
- Twenty years of competition, then twenty-six years off
- His first show was Mr. Southern Kentucky in 1983. Mr. Kentucky followed, then Mr. Tennessee, more than once, in 1997 at thirty-six. Then he stopped for twenty-six years and built a business instead. At sixty-three he came back and won Mr. Tennessee again, in both bodybuilding and classic bodybuilding, in the sixty-and-over class.
- Hospital wellness before it was a category
- Between the competing and the studio he built the strength programme at a Bowling Green sports centre and ran hospital wellness for HCA in Nashville. Then he wrote exercise prescription beside physicians at a Cool Springs practice that paired an executive physical and full blood work with a training plan. That was the 1990s. The rest of the industry arrived at that idea about a decade later.
- Why it is called Takes 2
- He and his wife named the studio the night they watched A Beautiful Mind. John Nash does not get to the Nobel Prize without his wife. It takes two people to be successful at anything, and that is the entire business: one client, one coach, and nobody doing it on their own.
- Three studios, and what work-from-home did to two of them
- For eighteen years there were three: this one, one downtown in the Truist building, and one at Roundabout Plaza. Both towers went work-from-home after COVID and both of those studios closed with them. West End is the one that carried the business through, and it is the one that got rebuilt.
- Still on the floor
- Unlike most club owners you will not find Jeff in an office. He carries the largest personal training roster in the building, performs the initial evaluation, writes the exercise prescription, and case-manages every client's programme after that. He leads from the front because the alternative is asking somebody else to.
- 1983
- Mr. Southern Kentucky, his first show
- 1980s–90s
- Mr. Kentucky, and Mr. Tennessee more than once
- 1997
- Mr. Tennessee, at 36
- At 63
- Came back after 26 years and won Mr. Tennessee, bodybuilding and classic bodybuilding, sixty and over
Dates and titles come from the interview and are being verified against his own records.
Forty years apart. Still leading the game.
From a bodybuilder in the 1980s to the NPC Tennessee State stage at sixty-three: Mr. Tennessee in bodybuilding and classic bodybuilding, sixty and over.
The 1980s
Competing through the decade.
Mr. Tennessee, at 63
Bodybuilding and classic bodybuilding, sixty and over.
The working years
Before the studio he built the strength programme at a Bowling Green sports centre, ran hospital wellness for HCA here in Nashville, and wrote exercise prescription alongside physicians at a Cool Springs practice that paired an executive physical and full blood work with a training plan. That was the 1990s, a decade before the rest of the industry got there.
“I have clients older than I am, seventy and seventy-five, telling me I can’t close, I can’t sell, I can’t quit. That is a responsibility.”
Jeff Bergholtz
“It was never about having ten or twenty thousand square feet. It was about using every square inch of this one.”