Superstar Stretch Club
I moved to Miami and built a fitness community on the beach. The brand, the app, the website. Very Baywatch.
I moved to Miami and built a fitness community on the beach. The brand, the app, the website. Very Baywatch.
I love to stretch.
I have always loved stretching. I always had a natural flexibility and remember wanting to maintain that, like a way of holding onto something important about how I felt in my body. It felt like nurturing a superpower, warming up for battle. I have always loved being active, using my body, pushing it, reminding myself what it is capable of. Stretching is often the part of a fitness routine that people skip or rush through, but to me she was the leading lady. I have had so many fitness eras — cycling, swimming, dancing, weight training — and stretching has been with me through all of them. That is my girl. It has long been a fundamental element in my routine, my confidence, my balance, and I had always wondered when the right moment would be to start sharing that with people.
I had never really given yoga a chance. I preferred high intensity activities in my twenties, fast workouts, sweat, blood pumping. When I moved to Providence and had less group fitness options I found myself stretching alone at home more than anything else. There was this cute studio on Federal Hill near my loft, West Side Yoga, that lured me in one morning for a 6am class. I was immediately reminded how much I had missed having a fitness community, people to wake up and start the grind with together. I loved waking up, driving up the hill, unwrapping my mat with the other stretchers. I went as often as I could for my last month.
When I moved to Miami, finding a yoga community was a top priority and within a month I was enrolled in the Teacher Training at Ahana Yoga in Miami's Design District. I loved the vibe, feeling my body get stronger and more capable week by week. The instructors made me want to discover my own way of sharing that energy through teaching. I stepped in with curiosity and left with confidence, a certification, and a better sense of how I could move my relationship with fitness forward.
With Dawn Feinberg and the team at AHANA Yoga, graduating from the Teacher Training.
After graduating I found myself wondering what a class by me would actually look like. I love yoga and I think yoga is sacred, but I wanted to start exploring other class formats that could better highlight other things I am able to offer as an instructor. Above all I wanted people to leave with more flexibility than they came in with. The traditional asanas, particularly from the Ashtanga lineage, are a perfect way to incorporate that into the class in a way that is familiar and gives the student a clear path to grow. But I also love fun. Upbeat music, something to play with, a reason to look at the person next to you and smile. That social, energetic side of fitness has always been one of my favorite parts. The stretch bands just made sense as a prop to guide the second half of class. They are fun, portable, challenging, and of course, stretchy.
Stretch Club fell off the tongue — the class named itself. I added Superstar because this was my Stretch Club, built around my message. My tone in class is empowering, optimistic. I will remind you that you are a superstar. The class, the concept, became an intersection of what I love, who I am, and what I want to give.
A view from the Palace.
I was watching the sunset from the rooftop at Palace Bar, Miami's iconic gay destination on South Beach. You can see the gay beach framed in the distance, blurry bodies, tourists rushing down Ocean Drive, and a beautiful grassy area that separates the sand from the cement. I was immediately able to imagine Stretch Club right there. The music, the bands, the bodies. So entertaining, so Miami, so Superstar. There was a built in cinematic element, a recognizable nod to that 80s image of Miami. A fitness movement focused on fun and joy. The vision felt so familiar, as if I had subconsciously been working towards building this my whole life. The things that had always filled my inspiration suddenly had a place in my reality, if I was willing to put them there.
Setting up on the grass in Lummus Park, moments before Park Patrol told me I could not teach there.
I challenged myself to four free classes in February. A chance to practice teaching, feel out the class, and figure out what it would actually become. The first challenge would be figuring out how to get people to come and enjoy my class.
Calling my angels.
I had visited Miami a few years earlier to shoot with my friend Nicole in her swim line, Kitten Tropic, on muscle beach. The suits looked so Miami, so hot, so cool. Her men's collection had four patterns so I committed to wearing one suit to each class. Nicole also offered to photograph the classes. I trusted that if I were going to be wearing her product, she would make sure the shots came out crispy.
Setting up for my first class on the beach, in my Kitten Tropic speedo with my poster.
Ricky and I have been friends since 2014 when we met at a design agency in SoHo. We bonded immediately. We were both twins, we loved the 90s, fashion, that look. We have been sharing images of Kate Moss and Claudia Schiffer since the day we met. The Versace girls, Gianni's vision of Miami, the energy of that era lived permanently in our vision boards. When I called Ricky about Stretch Club he already understood what I was trying to do. We had finally found a project to apply the moodboard we had been building together for over a decade.
The first flyers for Stretch Club, designed by Ricky Blake.
Tech Barbie.
Watching the branding come together fueled everything. We had a logo that embodied that varsity energy, with that signature script right next to it. Gay, fashion, beachy. With the right edit on the photography and a color palette that embraced Miami, the design system felt solid enough to start applying to a website.
The mobile and desktop designs for Stretch Club.
I built the site with Next.js and Vercel, Tailwind components, easy setup. The priority at launch was announcing the schedule. That vision has since evolved to focus on getting people to download the app, where they can register for upcoming classes and view their class history. The app is built in React Native, deployed through the App Store, with Supabase managing users, Mailchimp handling the newsletter, and Vercel Analytics tracking everything.
Building my own app instead of using a third party booking tool was a deliberate choice. Tools like Mindbody or ClassPass are great for established studios but they would have put Stretch Club inside someone else's ecosystem from day one. I wanted to own the relationship with my community, control the experience, and have the flexibility to build features that made sense for what Stretch Club specifically needed. That flexibility is already paying off as I think about what comes next.
Screenshots from the Stretch Club app.
The app expanded my imagination for Stretch Club quickly. A Stretch Club store, new community features, other offerings. Stretch Club is nourishing a whole new part of my abilities while bringing me back to a genuine place with the technical skills I had started to lose appreciation for. Following a passion for fitness brought me back to coding in a way I did not expect.
I love the idea of stretching in every sense of the word. Our minds, our vision of ourselves, who we can be and what we can become.
Wednesday night on the beach.
At the time of writing this I have finished two months of classes. I build a new playlist and flow each week, work on feature updates in the app, and think constantly about new ways to bring Stretch Club to more people.
The first class was everything I had hoped it would be. I felt calm, excited to finally share what I had been building. Park Patrol had other plans for us on the grass, but we quickly moved to the beach and it became clear that was exactly where Stretch Club was supposed to happen. The first class was a mix of friends from yoga, guys from the bar I had invited, and people who had found me on TikTok. I taught for nearly an hour and a half because I did not want to stop.
Teaching my first class on the beach.
The class is so fun to teach. I love watching new people discover Stretch Club, walking toward us on the beach unsure of what they are getting into. Is this Stretch Club? they say as I march toward them in my speedo. I love rewatching the footage, analyzing my teaching, watching everyone smile. Editing the photos reminds me how much I love capturing moments, the way the light falls on the beach at that hour.
More moments from class.
Each week teaches me something new. I watch people come back, their outfits change, their energy changes. Friends bring friends. TikTok went from 51 followers to 950 in two months. The Stretch Club Instagram grew from 31 to 107. The app launched in March with 72 registered users in its first month. Classes are currently donation based while I focus on building the community first.
The group after class.
Stretch Club is the new playground for my fitness fantasy. What I know is that it will keep me waking up, pushing myself, and reminding other people who they are. You can see when I am teaching next in the Superstar Stretch Club app. There is no better way to spend a Wednesday night.
