Arsenal’s Adams a ‘flab to fit’ success story
Chris Adams, a 1996 Farragut High School graduate, is ready and willing to help fellow FHS alumni — or anybody else — stay or get physically fit.
After all, Adams himself has come a long way fitness-wise since childhood.
“How I got into fitness to start with was, I was a very overweight kid growing up,” said Adams, a minority owner of Arsenal Strength Training Facility, with a recently opened 18,000-square foot home, 10710 Lexington Drive, near Lovell Road and town of Farragut limits.
“I weighed more when I was 12 years old than I do right now, but not in a good way,” Adams, who earned a sports management degree from The University of Tennessee in 2001, added. “I was very much a couch potato. My parents really didn’t get me into sports. I was pretty much a lazy kid.
“My grandfather [Dick Schofield] saw that my inactivity was not good, so he got me involved in martial arts,” Adams added. “That’s how I got out of being a couch potato during my teenage years.
“I lost all that weight, and I was like, ‘I want to help people do the same thing.’ I was able to see what it’s like to be on the other side and feel great.
“And I promised myself I’d never go back again” to couch potato status.
As for overall clientele at Arsenal, “We do have a lot of elite athletes who train here … but we’ll also take anybody,” Adams said. “We’ve got older people here, we’ve got heavier people here. … We welcome anybody who wants to better themselves.
“… We don’t look down on anybody who’s never picked up a weight in their life,” he added. “We also have people who have been exercising in gyms for years looking for a new experience.”
Speaking of experience, “I ran a health club chain for 14 years, it was in four different states. I’m very familiar with competition all across the country,” said Adams, a former vice-president at The Rush Fitness. “We sold to Gold’s Gym a couple of years ago. When that happened I left the company.”
With Arsenal, Adams recalled that in 2015 “we were finally able to pull together resources and put the team together we currently have and get this off the ground.”
For more information about Arsenal Strength Training Facility, call 865-963-3030.
