How VASA Fitness Mastered the Gym Sector’s Most Important Category

The rapidly growing gym brand credits equipment provider Life Fitness/Hammer Strength with building out floors that center today’s most important modality

VASA Fitness, the rapidly growing high-value low-price (HVLP) gym operation, isn’t skipping leg day.

In fact, over the past few years, the brand revamped several of its gyms with a primary focus on strength training, particularly for the lower body. The shift was an intentional strategy designed to provide consumers with outcomes that underpin both their long-term health and short-term aesthetic goals.  

“Members are gravitating toward these strength areas as a home base and building their workouts around them,” said Chris Griebe, chief operating officer at VASA Fitness. “This makes them not just an accessory exercise, but a core one.”

To create that anchor, VASA turned to Life Fitness/Hammer Strength, a leading fitness equipment vendor. 

“Life Fitness/Hammer Strength has the most reliable offering in terms of lower body strength products,” said Gina Masciopinto, director of strategic accounts at Life Fitness/Hammer Strength. “We worked in tandem with VASA to drive towards a consultative outcome.”

Along with stronger quads, glutes and calves, the collaboration also resulted in improved health results, more efficient gym environments and a better differentiator for VASA as it continues to expand. 

A Modality You Need to Nail 

Lower body strength carries well beyond the squat rack, supporting everything from daily movement to general athletic skills. Masciopinto argues it leads to “higher gains” and “better overall performance.”

Nevertheless, gym operators often mishandle it or fail to recognize its potential to deliver widespread, satisfying results. 

“Lower body is the area that members most often skip or do wrong in a traditional floor with old, outdated equipment,” Griebe said. “However, lower body equipment is the highest payoff muscle group for everyday functionality, injury resistance and frankly, it gets the aesthetic results members care about most right now.”

This gap between vitality and execution largely encouraged VASA to partner with Life Fitness/Hammer Strength. 

Inside the Redesign

Modern VASA gyms now include a variety of Life Fitness/Hammer Strength lower-body strength machines, such as the V-Squat, Hack Squat, Ground Base Multi-Squat and the new Pendulum X-Squat. Elements of the Insignia, Hammer Plate-Loaded and Huge Power Play lines can also be found, as well as dedicated performance lifting areas which the brand calls “Strong.”

“Traditional gym floors treat strength as part of the gym floor, not the core of the experience like VASA does,” Griebe said. “We wanted a space that signaled strength training as its core, not a side amenity.”

VASA also added Life Fitness/Hammer Strength’s HD Air bikes, which still challenge lower body muscle groups while bringing a cardio element to the table. Strength, however, remains the central pillar. 

“VASA really focuses on enhancing the member journey as it pertains to strength and performance,” Masciopinto added. “It’s at the center of the experience. As you move through a VASA club, you are greeted with so many different options to choose from.”

Cohesive and Convenient

But even as Life Fitness/Hammer Strength added new pieces to VASA’s floors, it was careful not to build a maze in the process. By putting such a sought-after concept like strength at the center and other modalities around the margins, Life Fitness/Hammer Strength created a free-flowing environment for members to move through. 

“They don’t have to move through our gym in silos,” Griebe said. “The experience we’re building is a floor that reads as one continuous performance environment that blends cardio, strength and recovery, but with the focus on pure strength. So, when members move from a Hammer Strength rack to an HD Bike, it feels like a natural progression rather than a trek across the club.”

These proximity and flow-related perks are vital to long-term member retention, Griebe argues. 

“Members want to experience classes where they can combine strength training, high-intensity cardio training and recovery all in one,” he went on. “If these experiences live in disconnected corners of the club, it makes it difficult for members to navigate and we could lose them.”

Life Fitness/Hammer Strength equipment makes advancement easier from a physical skills standpoint as well. By including a diverse range of equipment, Griebe insists VASA now has the capacity to meet consumers at a wider variety of fitness levels and help them progress. That’s helpful in attracting and retaining gym-goers of all kinds. 

“Life Fitness/Hammer Strength offer this diversity with their selectorized and plate-loaded strength equipment, free weights and functional performance equipment,” he said. “It helps our members progress through their fitness journey and we’re able to attract a diverse membership in all of our clubs. That philosophy guides us. It’s accessible but genuinely effective. It’s exactly why Hammer Strength/Life Fitness was the right partner. It let us build a floor that works not only for our first-time users, but former college athletes, all in the same hour.”

Reflecting on the Future

VASA expects strength-focused floors that are simple to pass through, improve yourself on, and of course, use to hit those lower body muscles, to become even more crucial to operator success in the coming years. 

“Strength and performance isn’t a trend in the industry,” Griebe said. “It is the industry now and Life Fitness/Hammer Strength understands that.”

Griebe shared that all VASA clubs built in 2026 and beyond will have dedicated Strong areas and functional performance racks along with performance cardio amenities and HIIT classes. 

“We are here to help bring the vision to life with the best equipment on the market,” Masciopinto added.

This article is from ATN’s 2026 “Gym of the Future report,” which will examine the ways in which health clubs, gyms and studios are evolving to keep pace with modern trends, both inside the four walls and outside. Download the full report for free later this month.