Former Dallas Cowboy DeMarcus Ware opens a gym during COVID, plans for app to follow
Going to the gym these days for a workout is hard enough. Now try to open a new one during a global pandemic when even the fitness freaks figure they can get a good sweat at home.
Former Dallas Cowboys linebacker DeMarcus Ware had planned to open his new fitness center and gym in Trophy Club long before a global pandemic turned leaving your house to do anything from a chore to a nuisance.
Having prudently managed the money he made during his 12-year NFL career, he did not have to open 3Volt Fitness until everyone’s daily routine looked more like everyone’s daily routine before coronavirus hit. Ware and his three partners could have waited.
But on the morning of July 15, Ware walked into his gym wearing a mask and carrying an industrial broom. It was time.
“I was going to open it regardless of COVID or not,” Ware said while at the studio. “I am opening it at a time when it’s not the most opportune time, but it’s my time. I can’t say I’m going to open it in two months or whenever. This is the time it needs to be open.”
Opening a gym during COVID
According to a survey of 2,000 Americans conducted by OnePoll, three out of five believe the gym will become a relic as a result of COVID-19.
More than six in 10 polled believe they don’t need the gym membership to stay in shape.
Not exactly an encouraging trend for a gym owner.
Ware and his partners believe the class atmosphere with an instructor will not only survive, but is still better than anything a person can do at home on their own.
Having done the workout thing myself at home on my own and in classes, the peer pressure of a group with an instructor is always better. You compete, you work to keep pace and you’re less likely to cheat.
“I want to build something that is an oasis for people from their problems, and this is something they want to do with other people,” Ware said.
3Volt has three distinctly different rooms where gym rats can try an array of workouts and classes.
His house is two minutes away, and he himself plans to run some of the classes and workouts.
People have to wear a mask to enter the building, and they will have their temperature taken. After that, they can take off the mask to workout in a room that looks, smells and feels so clean you can eat off the floor.
“Everything is sprayed down before classes,” Ware said.
During the 45-minute class that I took, we sprayed down everything we touched after we were done with the equipment.
“Then we clean it again after they leave,” Ware said.
The guy who supplies the sanitizing chemicals is former Dallas Cowboys linebacker Bradie James.
One additional investment Ware was not expecting to make was to install an air filtration system that covers not only his own fitness center, but some of the surrounding square footage of the attached space.
“I would not have done all of this without COVID, but we had to do it,” he said. “I wanted to make sure this was ironclad.”
D-Ware thriving in transition to post NFL life
While sports, and the Dallas Cowboys, are loaded with an array of sad stories of guys who made good money but blew it and go on to lead a post-playing existence that is often tragic, Ware has avoided all of those cliches.
He’s a former first-round pick who has had what is likely a Hall of Fame career, who now at 37 has transitioned into life after football. He’s a workout junkie. He dropped some weight from his playing days, but he still looks like he could suit up at tight end.
He kept his ties to the Dallas Cowboys and the NFL, which is a shrewd move for any ex-player who retires to the area where he had a successful career. That relationship and celebrity status can open doors for quite a long time.
Following his retirement from NFL after the 2016 season, Ware set out on his new mission of eventually wanting to open his own fitness center. “I built a gym in my garage and it’s been something I’ve always loved to do,” he said.
Never one to dwell on football, Ware is thinking about the next evolution of his business. “I would play with computers, play with drones and cameras,” he said.
And so now he’s working on a fitness app that will allow a consumer to workout virtually with Ware, or potentially other NFL players, to simulate the correct form in a workout. If the person is a sucker for punishment, they can try to do the actual workout of an NFL player. He hopes to launch the app in about three months.
Until then you know where to find Ware, working to get his new venture off the ground. The world might look at someone opening a gym during a global pandemic and question whether now is an ideal time, but for DeMarcus Ware that doesn’t matter.
This is his time.
