Photo by Erin Nelson.
Participants warm up during a class led by Ashley George at Burn Boot Camp in the Village at Brock’s Gap in Hoover on Sept. 12. A new Burn Boot Camp location is scheduled to open in Meadow Brook on U.S. 280 in October.
Jim Safron has had good success with his Burn Boot Camp locations in Hoover and Homewood and now is opening a third location in Meadow Brook.
The new location of the high-intensity workout gym is at the corner of Alabama 119 and Doug Baker Boulevard, in just more than 5,000 square feet of a new strip shopping center being built by developer Jim Mitchell.
The company has a tentative soft opening scheduled for December and a grant opening planned for January.
Safron, who lives in Hoover’s Blackridge community, originally had hoped to open there in June of last year, but there were a lot of challenges with development and construction of the strip center, he said.
Safron said the U.S. 280 corridor actually was one of the first locations where he wanted to build a Burn Boot Camp in the Birmingham area, but opportunities solidified more quickly in Hoover and Homewood.
He opened the Hoover location in The Village at Brock’s Gap in February 2019, and Homewood followed in January 2021. The Hoover location has grown to more than 600 members, and Homewood is nearing 600 members, he said.
He sees great potential in the U.S. 280 corridor, and this spot is less than a mile off U.S. 280. He likes being close to the highway but not directly on it, and this shopping center should have good access in and out, he said.
“I think the location is perfect,” Safron said. “I think it’s [been] worth the wait.”
He’s also still looking for opportunities to open Burn Boot Camp locations in Mountain Brook and the Liberty Park section of Vestavia Hills, he said.
Safron formerly worked in management for several big-box retail companies such as CompUSA, Gateway Computers, Office Depot, Office Max and Lowe’s. While he was working in North Carolina as the Southeast manager of product protection plans for Lowe’s, his wife started going to a Burn Boot Camp in North Carolina.
They liked the business model so much that he opened a Burn Boot Camp in Woodstock, Georgia, but he ended up selling it later because he didn’t see a lot of prime locations left to expand the franchise in the Atlanta area, he said. He and his wife saw a lot of opportunity in the Birmingham market and moved to Hoover.
What he likes so much about Burn Boot Camp is that it’s primarily for women, he said. “It creates a very different environment when you don’t have men in the picture,” he said. “It creates a community.”
The women who come to Burn Boot Camp end up forming new lifelong friendships, supporting and encouraging one another as they work to improve their physical fitness, he said. But it’s certainly not like a book club, he said. “Our workouts are really hard.”
Burn Boot Camp offers high-intensity workouts that vary from day to day. One day might be focused on cardio health, while other days the focus will be on upper body strength, jumping, arm days or leg days, he said.
“It’s dynamic,” Safron said. “No workout is ever the same.”
The gyms also offer child care and focus meetings where women can discuss goals they want to achieve with a trainer. And Burn Boot Camp is designed for women at any level of fitness.
Amanda James, a 39-year-old Helena resident, said she started going to the Burn Boot Camp in Hoover about a year and 10 months ago after seeing her sister do it in Nashville.
At first, she thought it would be way too hard for her because she had never lifted weights or done boot camp-style core training before, she said. She had never done a pullup or burpee. Before, she couldn’t keep moving more than a minute or two at a time, and now her stamina has increased significantly, and she is getting stronger, she said. “I’ve lost about 20 pounds. I feel better. I sleep better.”
The trainers are encouraging, know you by name and correct your form so you don’t get injured, James said. She likes the variety in the workouts and child care for her 4-year-old daughter.
Also, she has developed a lot of new friendships with women who text and encourage each other daily. They even arranged a beach trip together in September.
“I’ve made so many friends. It’s a super-encouraging atmosphere,” James said. “It’s been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”
Editor's note: This story was updated on Oct. 24 to day that Burn Boot Camp hopes to have a soft opening at its Meadow Brook location in December and has a grand opening planned for January.
