Minneapolis Health and Fitness

The trainers behind Look Good Naked aim to get people comfortable in their skin. They have a slew of shared resources, such as nutritional guides, progressive measurements, and a weekly newsletter filled with exercising facts, meal ideas, ongoing coaching and support, and testimonials from clients. All these augment the core of the operation—the 12-week boot camps where both trainers and fellow students repurpose the benches, jungle gyms, and stairways of parks and public spaces during four, hour-long sessions each week. The sessions teach guests a slew of functional training maneuvers that require little or no equipment, helping them not only to slim down, but build up a skill set they can carry with them as they leave the camps.

“Stocky.” Justin Yule remembers when others used this adjective to describe him, an observation he considered to be a nice way of saying that he was overweight. It wasn’t until his dad invited him to work out at the gym that Justin discovered a passion for fitness and a desire to chisel away the stockiness he carried. Since achieving his goals, he has kept up his fit physique more than 22 years.

Justin also channeled his passion into a bachelor’s of science in physical education with a concentration in adult fitness. He used his extensive training to devise the curriculum for Look Great at the Lake Boot Camp, which he also founded. Justin calls his program the “fitness revolution,” mainly because it breaks exercisers out of the tedious routines they often fall into at the gym or when their friend Sisyphus asks them to push his rock and promises he’ll only be gone for five minutes. Every one of Justin’s workout moves come in three levels, each scaled to challenge exercisers of different strengths and experience levels. He also relies heavily on body-weight resistance exercises, and coaches provide guidance and support to clients in reaching their goals.

Justin considers the most valuable part of his program to be the camaraderie that he encourages among his participants in and out of the boot-camp classroom. He organizes charity events and parties so that groups can mingle and become a cohesive unit working toward a single goal. To further ease his clients’ path to fitness, he also offers nutrition programs, online exercises and tips, and education in the form of newsletters and fitness books that he’s penned himself.