The Story
Fitness Personified Ltd. was incorporated with the State of North Carolina in 1995 as a personal training business. The owners of Fitness Personified Ltd. are my husband Rufus Singleton and I, Karin Singleton.
To both of us, this is our second career after years with IBM in various positions, including managerial. Fitness, however, had been a lifelong recreational activity for us. My husband Rufus had been a football player in high school and in college, and I had various interests including horseback riding, Tae-Kwon-Do and – most importantly to me – Squash. After some injuries, I began going to fitness clubs and did the traditional ‘club fare’ of weight training and aerobics classes.
We married in 1994, and that was also the year when I resigned from IBM Germany (I had come to the US as an international assignee), while my husband retired from that company, and we decided to go into business as Personal Fitness Trainers.
Since then, we both have made it our commitment to become the best trainers we can be. We are both members of IDEA which is a worldwide organization of fitness professionals, and we take continued education seriously. IDEA hosts the IDEA World Fitness Convention and a Personal Trainer Summit annually. From the start of our business we have attended at least one conference a year, and more often both of them; it’s just too much fun to learn. Over the course of all those years, I had the privilege to learn from the best in the industry. I saw trends come and go. It was at the convention in 2009 when I was first introduced to MELT which has become an important part of my business.
My husband passed away December 22, 2015 after acquiring an infection during a surgery. He had scheduled that surgery so that he could attend the IDEA World Fitness Convention, and I am grateful to have this as a lasting happy memory in a field that means so much to both of us.