Colleen McNutt was an NCAA D1 collegiate athlete and graduated from Colombia University. Through both personal health struggles that limited her ability to workout in a traditional sense, and her time as a collegiate athlete, Colleen found herself in need of something new – a routine that didn’t require double or triple days, or hours on end in a gym. Through those same health struggles came an introduction to Electric Muscle Stimulation (EMS), a technology new to the US, but decades old in both the EU and Asia as a primary source of health at fitness for professional athletes and the average at-home athlete alike. Before this, EMS was limited in the US to small scale, immobilized TENS therapy during injury rehabilitation.
It was this exposure to EMS that sparked something in Colleen. How could this have not even scratched the surface in the US? Health and Fitness is rife with opportunity for technology that truly works, but nothing like EMS had been integrated into actual fitness routines as a core, or complimentary, element in the daily lives of individuals.
In 2018 Lightning Fit began – Colleen’s sole purpose and mission behind creating Lightning Fit was to innovate the health and fitness industry by bringing this disrupted technology out of the shadows of use only in professional sports circles, and into the limelight. Lightning Fit started in a small 200 sq ft space in Costa Mesa, CA with 1 EMS machine and a vision of what EMS could become. Two seemingly simple workouts, 25 minutes at a time, began to have a profound impact on early adopters satiating for something new, just like Colleen.
Since then, Lightning Fit has now blossomed into a multi-facility, multi-faceted business with 4 brick and mortar locations and 20 employees in the LA and OC area; with an opportunity to be the first mover of a true EMS provider in the states, with scientific training and analytical data to back it up. Alongside the existing facilities Lightning Fit also has branches dedicated to mobile training and professional athletic performance.
WHAT’S NEXT: Lightning Fit continues to expand throughout the SoCal area and eventually nationwide with the goal of giving people access to EMS workouts through Lightning Fit globally with a unified vision, approach, and adherence to quality that is lost on current EMS options internationally. Lightning Fit is currently in active conversations with multiple professional sports teams in the hope of bringing the revolutionary targeted muscle activation technology to elite athletes across multiple sport modalities. By focusing on constant innovation in the fitness landscape, Lightning Fit is poised to disrupt a stagnant marketplace who’s only true innovation in the last years has been in-home connected fitness.
Our ethos at Lightning Fit is simple: Optimizing People through Smart Technology.