By James Feichtner

A Florida-based fitness studio is spreading its reaches into Indiana over the next year. With more than 300 studios worldwide, Orange Theory Fitness is a fitness studio that combines the use of heart rate monitors and certified trainers to coach group fitness sessions. With a location already well established in Carmel, OTF is now looking to open a store in Fishers in spring of 2016 and even has a Fishers resident opening her own store in Keystone.

Orange Theory Fitness Indiana area representative Shaun McDonald said that with their first location being in Carmel, many of its clients are coming from not only the Carmel area, but surrounding cities. Expanding into Fishers would allow clients to relocate at a studio in their home city.

“When you’re the first studio in the market we would pull from the other areas where you would have other studios, so once we have other studios in Fishers and down in that Ironworks area we would expect some of our current members to use some of those facilities, but that is part of the cool thing because you can use your membership at any of the locations,” McDonald said.

McDonald said that Fishers has many of the same cliental that Carmel has and that it’s future location in Fishers at 116th Street and Olio would also market to Geist area residents as well.

“When we look at Fishers it really has the core customer base that Carmel has. We have dozens and dozens of members from Fishers using our Carmel location right now waiting for our Fishers location to open up. They ask us on a weekly basis when is Fishers going to open up so for us it can’t open soon enough,” McDonald said. “There’s also that it might stretch out a bit further in and around Geist. I think that whole area is just going to be awesome. The numbers look like they are going to rival our Carmel location.”

The Fishers location is expected to open in Spring of 2016 and will be approximately 3000 square feet attached to an existing retail center.

“It’s kind of like a ‘build-from-the-ground-up’ even though it’s just going to be hooked onto the end of the current place,” McDonald said. “They’ve broken ground (last) week and our expectation is we will be opening around the end of April of next year. We are just super excited about that location. It’s kind of a wide range of demographic. I don’t think we could ask for a better location.”

The Fishers location will mark the third OTF location in Indiana as the second location is located in the Ironworks building in Keystone and is coincidentally being opened by McDonald’s sister-in-law and Fishers resident Jennifer Haas.

Haas’ experience with OTF in Florida made it hard not to resist the opportunity of getting involved when OTF made its way to Indiana.

“My husband and I decided to buy a franchise. We bought one license and it’s here in the Ironworks building,” Haas said. “We see people getting excited about it and we believe in the brand. I had personal experience working out in the studio when I was in Florida visiting several times. It’s a simple concept. It doesn’t strike us as a fad at all. Everywhere Orange Theory goes it just blows up in the community. It’s a young, fun brand.”

Haas said the main reason she enjoys the program because it’s an economical and flexible way to stay in shape.

“I like the simplicity of it. I like the convenience of it,” Haas said. “You get the benefit of both strength and cardio training. We love the feature of the heart rate monitor. It makes it appropriate for all ages and levels because you’re not competing with other people in the class you are just monitoring what your body is telling you, what’s comfortable for you.”

For more, visit orangetheoryfitness.com.