New Wavertree gym, The Zone sees online training thrive during pandemic

Lauren Caffrey, the 23-year-old owner and founder of The Zone Personal Training, already provided an online training service before the UK’s first national lockdown and her business has continued go from strength to strength

The Zone Personal training – which specialises in 1-2-1 and online training – has quintupled its income during the pandemic.

Owner of The Zone Lauren Caffrey, a 23-year-old personal trainer, already provided an online training service before the UK’s first national lockdown in March 2020 and was well prepared to swiftly transition all of her clients to online training and continue pushing forward to pursue her dream of opening a flagship facility.

Lauren

Having previously run her business from her parents’ garage from 2019-2020, converting it into The Zone PT Studio, Lauren used this as a crucial stepping stone to introduce clients to her way of training and wholeheartedly transforming their daily habits to create a consistent lifestyle that they’d get their desired results from.

She originally started training between 40-50 clients, and hired fellow personal trainer and friend Emily Stevenson to share the 120 sessions each week.

Since the pandemic, The Zone now trains 150 clients online, as well as having 100 subscribers to The Zone’s app – a fantastic achievement during a tumultuous time for many industries.

Having seen her income increase fivefold, Lauren has saved every penny of her earnings to open an incredible New York-inspired facility in the heart of Wavertree on Mill Lane Trading Park.

The Zone will be home to a floor dedicated to the gym itself which during Monday – Friday will be used by The Zone’s 10 personal trainers who will be putting their one-to-one clients through their paces.

The gym floor will then be open to the public at weekends where day passes will be available to purchase.

Lauren is also creating The Zen – a yoga studio upstairs in Unit 10, which she says will encourage yogis to get “in their Zen” with the studio helping clients to reach their goals both physically and mentally.

The businesswoman hopes to bring together every aspect of lifestyle, health and wellbeing all under one roof with The Zone also offering physio sessions, botox treatments and up-and-coming gym wear brand Sporty Lula which is available to purchase from The Zone.

The facility will have capacity for Lauren and her team to train up to 15 people per class with four classes running each day, roughly 80-100 people per day in personal training sessions and a further 12 people per yoga class.

Lauren is part of the business coaching group Online Trainer Education, founded and run by Adam Hayley, helping her to structure her online business and point her in the right direction for business growth.

Lauren said: “It’s amazing to think that The Zone will go from helping around 50 people each week when we had the studio to around 500 people at our new facility. We’re hiring personal trainers and have created 15-20 jobs during the pandemic which is something I’m incredibly proud of.

“I’ve worked so hard over the last year but when you have a dream, you put your all into it and I don’t do anything by halves. I knew I wanted to open a space that would transform our clients’ physical and mental health to become the very best version of themselves and I wanted that space to be amazing. The Zone will be exactly that.

“At 17, I stayed on at school in the hopes of studying a Business degree at university but on paper, I simply wasn’t clever enough and didn’t get past my first year of Sixth Form. I left school and did an apprenticeship in personal training and fast forward six years, lots of hard work and plenty of blood, sweat and tears and I’m now running a really successful business. I know this is exactly where I’m meant to be.

“I want to inspire young people, particularly during the pandemic when GCSE and A Level exams are up in the air at an already really stressful time, that you can be just as successful if you don’t stay on and study and you follow a different route in education. Just never stop learning and working hard and you’ll become the best version of you!”