March 25, 2022 by Gabrielle Martin
Make way for Magnitude Strength & Power, a world-renowned workout program that's been brought to the South Shore by two of Hingham's resident fitness gurus, Ali Winslow and Jenny Gusella.
All About Ali Winslow
Originally from Philadelphia, Ali Winslow currently resides in Crow Point with her husband Josh, their sophomore son Fisher, and their seventh grader Teak; the family relocated to the South Shore in 2010, when Fisher and Teak were 5 and 2, respectively. “We had connections to Hingham, as my husband grew up here, his parents live here, and we have always envisioned setting our family here,” Winslow shares.
Ali’s career in fitness and nutrition began at the University of Pennsylvania, which she graduated from in 1996 with a degree in Human Biology and Nutrition; post-graduation, she relocated to the East Coast to work in Cambridge conducting nutrition research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While working in research, Ali says she supplemented income by teaching spin classes as well as personal training coaching in the early morning and evenings.
As if that didn’t keep Ali busy enough, during her early post-grad years, she also trained and competed in not one, not two, but six marathons! This ultimately led Ali to become interested in triathlons, which resulted in a change in career choice—from medical research to triathlon coach. “I began training adults in small groups at a small studio in Boston with the goal to improve their mobility, strength, and power while also coaching them and writing training programs for sprint through Ironman distance triathlons,” she says.
After relocating to the South Shore, Ali began transitioning her business and clients to Hingham; in order to establish herself, she began coaching at a few local gyms in the area. She also became actively involved in the youth sports scene: “I took on the role as middle school cross country, basketball, and lacrosse coach at Derby Academy, I helped volunteer coach for Hingham girls youth lacrosse, and I also volunteer coached for Hingham Youth Soccer,” she says. “Around 2012, I decided that while I loved coaching adults, I also really wanted to work with youth athletes as I saw how the demands of the sports and club programs were increasingly challenging these kids’ athletic development; I began to research and train more in the strength and conditioning world, getting multiple certifications to work with the athlete population.”
A year later, in 2013, Ali stepped into the role of Varsity Assistant Coach at Notre Dame Academy, where she began coaching lacrosse at the club level; at the time, she also had a corporate gig as a wellness coordinator for an employee benefits consulting company where she became a resident expert in helping companies work towards building healthier cultures. “At the same time, I continued to work with the athlete populations as well as adults who wanted to do more with their fitness: I rented space in various gyms, which then transitioned into me building out my own space at my house.”
Get to Know Jenny Gusella
Foxboro native Jenny Gusella relocated to Hingham in 2017 with her husband Dave shortly after they were married; today, the couple resides on Hersey Street with their two Australian Shepherds, Hershey and Skyler.
“I was always an athlete,” Jenny recalls, saying she played field hockey all through high school and ran track through college as a mid-distance sprinter. While attending Bates College pursuing a degree in philosophy with a minor in rhetoric, she was “always deeply involved in the strength training program for the team,” though involvement in athletics has always come naturally to Gusella. “My mom was a Health and Phys. Ed. teacher in Norwood, so we were always running around and trying different sports growing up,” she explains.
“While coaching was always in my blood, after college I decided to take a corporate job rather than something in athletics or fitness, beginning with internships in public relations and ultimately ending up at a series of PR agencies,” she says. However, it was in January of 2019 when Jenny took the plunge and launched her own personal training business, JKG Training, which operated out of the Gusella’s garage. “After years of programming workouts for myself and my friends, I officially started fitness training part-time,” she says. “[Then the] part-time gig turned into full time.”
However, from the very beginning of her training career, Jenny always knew her goal was “to coach all my clients the same way [she] was coached as an athlete—the workout is always part of a greater end game, making you stronger and better for your sport, or your life.”
The Conception of Magnitude Strength & Power
Ali and Jenny met while they were both coaching at Orangetheory Fitness here in Hingham. “We both had a passion for strength training,” Jenny says. “Ali was about to get her Certified Functional Strength Coach certification through Mike Boyle Strength & Conditioning and asked me to come along; it was a natural fit for me, as my high school track coach had been an intern of Boyle’s, so I had been a student of the very method we would go on to coach!”
The pair became closer while walking their dogs together at Turkey Hill. “I always saw Ali as a mentor—from the moment I met her, she has helped open so many doors for me, giving me opportunities to expand my coaching career and to meet important connections around town. As her and I both began to train our own clients out of our houses, our dog walks took a more serious business turn; we knew we’d soon hit our ceiling (figuratively and literally!) working out of our garages, and we knew that bringing our brand of functional strength training to the South Shore on a larger scale would be a hit.”
“I have always been looking to grow as a person and as a coach,” Ali admits. “Over the last 25 years I’ve worked as a personal trainer, as a corporate wellness consultant, a medical researcher, a pharmaceutical sales representative, a lacrosse coach, and I also did my prerequisites for medical school (and actually applied!). While all of these different roles each have individual appeal, I never felt like I was doing what I really was meant to do. As Jenny said, she and I have been talking about training and what we could offer, and we are both so motivated to work hard, and be the best at what we do. We knew that by combining our experience and our business brains, together we could really create a unique fitness business.”
Pandemic Impact
Ali acknowledges the difficulties of launching a brand-new business during unprecedented times: “COVID-19 presented an interesting situation, because so many kids and adults were no longer comfortable going to a gym, but they also knew they wanted to continue with training and they needed a safe place to workout. Jenny and I were both fortunate enough to be able to offer effective and safe places for both kids and adults to workout, and we were incredibly happy to be able to offer this service.”
However, the duo did not anticipate how rapidly business would boom within a year. “We were both separately bursting at the seams and couldn’t offer any more additional opportunities for kids or adults to workout; this is what led us to realize it was time to move into a different space.”
About MBSC Thrive
MBSC Thrive is the workout program devised by Mike Boyle, of Mike Boyle Strength & Conditioning.
As a world-famous strength coach, Boyle made his name at Boston University and went on to be the strength and conditioning coach for the Red Sox, the Boston Bruins, and the U.S. Women’s Olympic Ice Hockey Team, to name a few; now at Mike Boyle Strength & Conditioning in Woburn, MA—where hundreds of professional, collegiate, high school, and middle school athletes train every day—his programs such as MBSC Thrive and CFSC (Certified Functional Strength Coach) give coaches and business owners around the world the tools to implement the time-tested MBSC method.
Behind the Brand: Building a Business
“The process for creating the concept was actually very simple,” Ali and Jenny admit. “We wanted to create a space where we could really and truly train people in a safe and effective manner, whether they were adults or athletes. We were looking at places close to the highway in Hingham, Norwell, Rockland, and Weymouth, so that clients traveling from other towns could easily access us; our clientele was already largely based in Hingham, since we both live here, so we wanted to still be close to town as well.”
Working together with their MBSC Thrive network, the two received assistance with faculty design and staff training. “For us, having a staff of highly-trained coaches who are interested in furthering their education is something we absolutely pride ourselves in. One of our biggest goals is to provide education and training opportunities to coaches so they feel like this is a place where they can grow, too—and beginning this summer, we will be launching an internship program!”
Interested? More information about Magnitude careers and internships can be found at https://www.magnitudestrengthandpower.com/careers.
Launch
Ali and Jenny say their biggest obstacle—after actually finding the space to begin their business—was understanding the “non-coaching aspects” behind Magnitude Strength & Power.
“Neither of us had true business experience, and we didn’t have a background in things like managing our books or forecasting and budgeting,” they admit candidly. “So there was a very steep learning curve during our planning process, as well as in our first few weeks leading up to our launch. As you can imagine, we had challenges learning how to use a brand new software and much of our time was actually spent behind the scenes on the computer, learning how to use our membership management system, how to create online schedules and how to work our membership app.”
Despite any difficulties the duo faced, they say the most rewarding part of their launch was “seeing the physical and mental progress of our athletes and adults, whether it’s seeing people begin to move better, seeing our athletes learn a new skill, or hearing from our adults all of the things in their daily lives that have become easier since working out at Magnitude.”
“The benefits of adult functional training—our method of training—is to improve our members’ lives on a daily basis. It is our goal to have our clients look forward to their workouts every day, to never be something they dread or ‘have to do,’ but something they ‘get to do.’ Our program is designed to be something that improves daily living, and a side effect is looking better, feeling better, and giving our members better balance, control, strength and power.”
That’s why the workout at Magnitude won’t leave clients feeling overly sore, tired, exhausted, or ready for a nap: “Instead, Magnitude is about changing the thought process as to what fitness is and should be; we have a phased program that builds upon itself throughout the year. Each phase is 4 weeks long, and the movements stay consistent throughout each phase so our members have the time to learn, practice, and master each skill and they can anticipate the workout each week. This benefits our members greatly, because nothing is random, nothing can cause overuse, and everything is designed with a progression-regression in mind so that we can accommodate both an experienced member and someone who has never stepped foot inside a gym.”
What Sets Magnitude Apart?
“What sets Magnitude, and the MBSC method, apart is that we are a functional strength program designed to get people stronger, get them moving better, and avoid needless injury.”
At Magnitude Strength & Power, they believe in the following:
1. For a training program to work it must be completed consistently (several times per week, mostly every week, for several months or years), progressively (getting incrementally more challenging over time), and it must be measurable (how else do you know if it’s working?). Our memberships and our workouts revolve around those tenets.
2. Strength & power training, combined with mobility work and conditioning, is the key to feeling good, looking good, staying injury-free, and aging gracefully.
3. When it comes to exercise, we should be chasing the Minimum Effective Dose–the least amount you can do to get the most desirable outcome. To draw a parallel, if one aspirin cures your headache, conventional wisdom tells us we shouldn’t take four; there is no benefit to taking four aspirin when one does the job, and in fact, taking four could actually be detrimental to you.
4. Unilateral strength training should be implemented often. Much of our movement as humans, and particularly in sports, occurs unilaterally (meaning one leg or one arm at a time) and gaining strength in those movements will be crucial to your overall success.
Magnitude Strength & Power Services
- Small Group Strength Training for Adults: “Our adult training program at Magnitude is designed to help you move better and feel healthier than ever before, and our small group atmosphere (8 people or less) ensures plenty of individual coaching attention while still having the benefit of others around you for inspiration and motivation. Each hour long session is modified for your training level and led from start to finish by a coach.”
- Sports Performance Training: “Sports are demanding on athletes’ bodies, and practicing skills and playing games isn’t enough to keep athletes injury-free and performing their best. Magnitude’s Sports Performance program teaches and builds strength around the movements athletes need to stay healthy and play their best; our Sports Performance programs are available for collegiate, high school, middle school, and fourth and fifth grade athletes.”
- Speed School: “Magnitude Speed School is a program run by the Magnitude coaches, hosted off-site at Union Point in Weymouth. Speed School focuses on increasing foot speed, teaching running mechanics, improving endurance, practicing jumping/landing mechanics, stopping/starting/changing direction and reactive training.”
So, if you find yourself asking, “Who can benefit from Magnitude Strength & Power?”
You can!
“For adults, going to a gym with lots of weights can look intimidating,” Ali and Jenny acknowledge. “That’s why the workouts we do at Magnitude is highly scalable to whatever level you’re at. If you want to: get stronger, gain muscle, lose body fat, be able to play tennis or go skiing, be able to touch your toes, chase after your kids, go out for a run and not be in pain, come back stronger after an injury, or stop waking up feeling tired and sore, we may be the program for you!”
To learn more about Magnitude’s adult program and book a Trial Run, visit https://www.magnitudestrengthandpower.com/adult-training.
To learn more about Magnitude’s Sports Performance program for youth athletes, and to get on our list for our summer session, visit https://www.magnitudestrengthandpower.com/sports-performance.