Passion for fitness centers life, family for UB staffer

Jerome Shanklin can go the extra mile.

During his 29 years as a UB staff member, the former Burgard High football and track athlete has honed his passion for fitness into building a successful business as a personal trainer,  running in the odd marathon or Ironman competition and winning competitions in Men’s Physique, a relatively new category in the bodybuilding/physique competition world.

“About seven years ago, I ran a half-marathon,” says Shanklin, now receiving operations manager at Putnam’s Marketplace Eatery in the Student Union. “The next year I ran a full marathon. I didn’t like the way that went for me, so I ran another marathon the following year.

“It took me a little over four hours to finish the first marathon. But I ran the second one in four hours,” he says.

Before running those three races, Shanklin had been working as a personal fitness trainer for a number of years — in addition to his job at UB.

“I started out working for a gym, but after a while, I realized I needed to go out on my own,” he explains.

“When you go to a gym and hire a trainer, it is the trainer who initiates the relationship, has the person sign a contract and then works together with them to find out what their goals are, sets up a schedule and helps them to accomplish whatever it is that they want to accomplish.

“Now for that, the gym then takes 70 percent,” he says. “So, after a little bit of that, going out on my own became a business decision.

“Making the decision, then doing what it takes to actually make it happen, of course, are two different things.”

Shanklin continued as a personal trainer while also working full time at UB. As it turned out, he says it took 11 years of working seven day weeks to save enough money to buy gym equipment and purchase the building for his gym.

“Anyone who has visited any gym can figure out that those machines are not cheap,” he says. “So, I ended up going to gym auctions, buying workout equipment in New Jersey, New York City, Pennsylvania — anywhere that I found within traveling distance.

“Moving gym equipment is an interesting experience,” Shanklin adds. “You don’t take the units apart — they are very bulky and there’s all of the weight, so they have to be rolled in and out of wherever it is you are taking them.

“One of my friends has an 18-wheeler, and I was buying gym equipment for about three years. Each one was an all-day job, and I never had less than three other guys with me. I put the gym machines in storage until I could find the right building,” he says.  

Shanklin opened his gym May 28, 2013. He found a mix of newspaper advertising, social media and word-of-mouth worked to get the word out.

“Over the past five years,” he says, “I have discovered that 10 is the right number of clients for personal training to fit in with everything else I have going on. I am here, at UB, 50 hours a week; I take my grandkids to football practice; I work in the gym, training people for about 20 hours a week; and my personal workouts take about eight hours a week.”

Another piece of marketing, one that Shanklin says he did not anticipate, turned out to be his participation in Men’s Physique.

“The National Physique Committee is the premier amateur physique organization in the world,” Shanklin says. “Men’s Physique is a new division in both the NPC and the International Federation of BodyBuilding and Fitness, an international professional governing organization that oversees many of the sport’s major international events.

“Contestants perform on stage, making quarter turns wearing board shorts, and are judged based upon muscularity, body conditioning, symmetry and stage presence,” he says. “Men’s Physique allows athletes to compete in the NPC arena in a separate division from bodybuilding.”

Shanklin says his interest in Men’s Physique started out as promotions to demonstrate what he could do for personal training.

“Before I began competing in Men’s Physique, I was training for Ironman competitions,” he says. “I think if you are a competitive person — and I am — what happened was, once I started this and didn’t win, it made me want to push harder into it.

“I am one win away from going pro,” he notes, “which would put me in the International Federation of BodyBuilding and Fitness, which is headquartered in Madrid.

“In chasing that next Men’s Physique win, I never realized it would go this far.”

The competitions also opened new business opportunities, Shanklin adds, and led him to find his own personal trainer.

“My coach for Men’s Physique is out in California,” he says. “It’s amazing what a good coach can tell from looking at an image of you, a photo, and tell what you need to change.

“The reason I am happy he is coaching me is that he is also coaching two of the top guys in the world — the No. 2 and No. 4 Men’s Physique athletes in the world.”

Looking ahead to the future, Shanklin says there is a plan.

“I am not ready to retire from UB right now. I have 29 years in. I am 48, and I want to retire at 60 — so I still have another 12 years to go to get there,” he says.

Shanklin adds his company will be paid for in five more years. “I don’t even take a paycheck because I’m just trying to pay everybody else and get my bills down to zero — except for things like the electric bill, heating and those sorts of things.

“And I try to tell people I am not doing anything I wouldn’t be doing anyway. If I can go to the gym and work out, and get paid to do that, why not? That is a win-win,” he says.

“I wanted to take the initial dollars from my company and use those to re-invest in it and build it. Real success is not showing off for others. You need to be true to yourself.”