Our Story
About Us
StrongLife Fitness is a locally owned private training facility, focused on offering a more personalized approach to losing weight and building strength. Our location features a fully equipped gym and a personal staff of Certified Personal Trainers and Nutrition Coaches. Our programs are all highly personal and are customized for your individual health and fitness goals. Whether you are looking for a professional trainer for 1 on 1 weight-loss and strength training, or a group training program with a great team, StrongLife Fitness is here to help. Why wait to build the new you. Give us a call at (801) 870-0047 or visit us at 13322 S 3600 W Riverton, Utah to learn more about our programs and set up an in-person or virtual tour.
“STRONG LIFE’S MISSION IS TO INSPIRE AND INVEST AN INDIVIDUAL’S JOURNEY TO OPTIMAL SELF BY OFFERING AN ENCOURAGING, SUPPORTIVE, AND SAFE SPACE FOR CLIENTS TO TRANSFORM THEIR BODIES AND HEALTH WITH SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES IN STRENGTH TRAINING, NUTRITION, CONDITIONING, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND CONNECTION.”
JILL CARLILE / OWNER
StrongLife Fitness began as a way for the owner, Jill Carlile, to give to others that which had been given to her many years ago when she embarked on her own health and fitness journey – a fitness and lifestyle transformation, but also a safe place for individuals to cultivate change and become aware of their innately unique qualities. Jill’s revolutionary idea behind Strong Life is that strength is sustainable, movement and correct nutrition are essential, and these principles can be perfectly balanced with accountability and personal connection.
When embarking on a health and fitness journey, it is typically the physical changes that people notice and want to be a part of, but for Jill it is much more about fostering the emotional and spiritual changes that are behind the physical transformations. She believes that the combination of holistic self care and a balanced approach to fitness training are essential components in managing destructive and addictive patterns or coping methods. True change doesn’t start on the outside, it gently begins below the surface. Then, as we start to recognize the incredible intrinsic power the body and mind have to work together in synchrony, we learn, grow, and flourish. It is then that those possibilities and ideas that once seemed so far out of reach become accessible and believable…completely within one’s grasp.
The discovery that that there is much more to strength than just muscles leads to the realization that transformation is more than skin deep (though we do love the muscles, as well!). This is the reason StrongLife exists. StrongLife programs are comprehensive and customized to each client, including personal training, nutrition plans and coaching, and conditioning. We focus on strength training for weight loss and functional strength, as well as holistic health. All programs are optimized to meet the goals and lifestyle of each individual, and it is our goal to provide an environment that is unique in the industry – one that offers our clients the very best opportunity to achieve sustainability and success.
To begin, StrongLife offers a free strength assessment and consultation to evaluate your current level of fitness, how your body moves, your conditioning level, and any limitations you may have in achieving good form. Upon completion of the assessment, we will tailor a strength and weight loss program specific to your health and fitness goals, dietary needs, schedule, and budget. StrongLife is committed to helping you achieve your personal goals, and deeply invested in each and every one of our clients’ fitness journeys and long-term health. Our purpose is to help you get the results YOU want – safely and effectively – by offering innovative, comprehensive exercise science and training methodologies combined with the support, accountability, and personal connection that is vital to success.
The Story of Stronglife
Get to know Jill’s story & where Strong Life began.
The desire to change is never an easy undertaking. It’s an uncomfortable place to be. An uncomfortable feeling. We know that facing our weaknesses and imperfections, and taking accountability for our failures, is going to hurt. Not to mention that we don’t even know what the outcome of our path to change will be. Is it worth the work?
This was me 15 years ago and where the story of Strong Life begins. Following the birth of my fourth child, I found myself 100+ pounds overweight and struggling with the effects of undiagnosed postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. I did not recognize my illness for what it was and did not know it was treatable. I hid what I was feeling from my family and friends and I isolated myself. The postpartum psychosis had caused an endless loop of negative thoughts to run through my mind: fat, ugly, worthless, crazy, addicted, loser. These words echoed in my head all day, every day, and I was suffering tremendously. I had never felt so lost and alone. My body, my mind, and my heart were all screaming for change. I felt like I just needed to start DOING. Doing something. I just needed something different.
In making the decision to lose weight and be healthy, I immediately knew that I was NOT going to be walking into a commercial gym anytime soon. I knew I needed someone to guide me in my fitness journey and my interest in weightlifting had been piqued by my good friends. When I made this decision, strength training for women was relatively new and it was especially uncommon for women to weightlift unless for competition. Strength training for weight loss was pretty much unheard of – everyone knew that if you wanted to lose weight, you counted calories and did aerobics. Lots and lots of aerobics.
After asking them to personally train me and help me learn about fitness, my friends took me under their wing and set up a weekly schedule for me to come in and lift weights and workout with them. Every day at 4 pm, after the kids were home from school, I would meet at their house to train for an hour. I could not have even begun to imagine how this one decision would affect me – it would alter the course of my life forever.
And this is where the real work began. I vividly remember my first training day – mostly because I was frustrated with what I physically couldn’t do. It was tough on me, not just physically, but emotionally…I don’t know if I sweat more or cried more. But, I do know that the support, kindness, and understanding from my new trainers was essential for my spirit and resolve. In the beginning, fighting the battle to show up every day was one of my toughest challenges. That little garage gym became my reckoning grounds. Every single battle I fought and won there was another step forward on a new path. Each victory was preceded by many failures, and I found it difficult to hold myself accountable for both. However, this is the road that would eventually lead me to start StrongLife. It was my trainers that guided me and steadily held me accountable; they pushed me hard, yet they both knew just when to ease up and give me the encouragement and laughter I needed to keep moving forward. They were helping me heal both my body and spirit, and the right medications and therapy were helping me mend my brain’s chemical imbalances. The extra weight I was carrying started coming off; just a little at first, but as I became stronger, it seemed to just melt away.
I was learning that weight lifting was a powerful, interesting, and progressive discipline in the fitness world, yet one that was severely underutilized in fitness programs – especially for women. I began developing a passion and purpose in wanting to teach others how to implement this tool in their own fitness journeys, and, more importantly, helping others become healthier and happier versions of themselves. The self-confidence I had gained throughout my own personal journey also gave me the confidence to share what I had learned with others; I knew I could help others succeed in their own fitness journeys. In my heart, I believed that there were many individuals out there who simply needed someone to work alongside them and who was firmly invested in their fitness journey. Someone to care about them as a unique individual, and to help identify and understand their motivations, strengths, and weaknesses. All of these things are what my trainers did for me – they made all the difference, allowing me to see fitness as part of the big picture, not just a means to an end or for aesthetic purposes. I believed (and still do!) that combining the individual connection and accountability of good coaching with a strong base of resistance training, nutrition, and conditioning, encourages positive results to transpire. I knew that this concept was what I wanted the focus of StrongLife to be.
Of course, this didn’t happen overnight. I began by enlisting the help of my sister, Alicia, to start this new venture. Oh, how I wish I could have recorded that very first year of training – it would have made for great reality television! It was just the two of us learning how to program and progress on our own in a tiny, basement gym with nothing but the most basic of equipment. As I began the process of obtaining my personal training certification, and researching and learning all I could about nutrition for health and fitness, Alicia started talking about our journey to friends and neighbors as her own body started becoming lean, strong, and fit. Soon enough, we had a group of individuals who knew us, and were close to us, wanting our help and guidance to begin their own journey to health and fitness. We found that we had created an environment where our friends/clients could (and did!) succeed. Despite our relative inexperience and lack of professional equipment, we were able to help our first clients transform their bodies and change their lifestyles. We realized that we had found our own brand of fitness “magic”!
I am a full believer that when you are ready for change, you subconsciously start to seek out change in perfect harmony with your conscious decisions and actions. You begin to choose the the work of change, and as you do so, those people that are meant to help you come into your life exactly when they are supposed to.
For me, this came to be through the wisdom and insight from two people: my mother and my best friend, Mary. They had both been there to support me, and helped me function on my lowest days. They had talked to me and loved me through it all, but neither one had really pushed me to get help up until the time I experienced a significant mental break – I was pacing, weeping, and raging; I was hysterical and suicidal. I couldn’t be reasoned with, talked to, or calmed down and spent three days in bed while, thankfully, my mother took care of my children. On the fourth day, as I began cycling out of this state, both my mother and my best friend spoke frankly to me about my mental health. The long and short of it: I was not recognizable anymore, and had become a shell of who I was before. They were concerned because I was not myself. My personality, my humor, my fire – the passion and spark that had genuinely made me who I was as an individual was no longer there. My mother encouraged me to seek help from my doctor, my friend Mary did the same. But Mary also told me something VERY different. She told me that I needed to start exercising and lifting weights. Whenever I think back on this, I laugh – at the time, it was such a novel idea to me. This was something I could do on my own to help myself! I could start doing something physical that was good for my body. Maybe doing this “something different” could change my path.
I called my doctor the very next day and scheduled an appointment to get help. I also made the life-changing decision to lose weight and pursue a healthy lifestyle. The interesting thing about my best friend was that she and her husband were very much into fitness themselves – competing locally as bodybuilders and working out every day together. They had a crazy regimen that they followed; one that up until then, I had been completely uninterested in. To their credit, my friends always freely spoke about their fitness journey, but had never tried to push their lifestyle onto me. They accepted me for who I was, and my weight was never an issue in our friendship. Maybe this was why it just made sense to me to ask them for help – I trusted them.
I discovered (to my surprise) that I really liked to lift weights. It was always different. And challenging! It was fun to see what new limits I could push and what new barriers I could break with my newfound strength. I found my confidence returning and I started to see what my body was actually capable of. This groundbreaking for me, as I had never tested such limits before. It was powerful! I had daily reminders that, as humans, we are capable of so much more than we think we are. The daily workouts were the building blocks of my transformation. I began to recognize that the body and mind are truly connected and interdependent. When you are able to exercise discipline with your body, that discipline spills over into every other area of your life. It teaches the brain that we CAN, indeed, do hard things. Very hard things.
But we don’t have to just want to change, we have to actually change what we DO. This is why the physical process of exercise and strength training is so powerful – it’s a lesson in discipline. Lesson after lesson in understanding the power of our mind and body, and developing the skill of consistency – showing up is half of the battle!
Throughout this challenging year of change, it became clear to me how important it was to find a sustainable way in which to incorporate fitness into my busy life as a mom…and as a woman who wanted to make a difference in the world. I began to see my transformation as a refining period of my life – the blood, sweat, and tears I left on that gym floor helped me focus on my purpose and meaning in this life. If, at my lowest point, I could turn my life and health around by 180 degrees, couldn’t other women in situations similar to mine do the same? I began to see what a powerful tool weight lifting could be in a weight loss journey. I learned that metabolic resistance training works in a very real and individualized way. After all, I didn’t even start implementing cardio training until I was about halfway to my goal – I had lost over 50 pounds through lifting-related workouts without doing any type of sustained cardio activity. Just by modifying my diet and lifting heavy and regularly, I had altered my metabolism and encouraged my body to burn fat while building muscle.
But the best part – the part that inspired me to want to continue repeating that “magic” over and over again – was the relationships that we developed with our clients. It was simply the most rewarding process I had ever experienced! Like me, these individuals began to rediscover themselves through the discipline and work of change. There were hard-won lessons in patience, perseverance, sacrifice, pride, self-care, and desire. And, just like my trainers had done for me, we never let them give up – not when we were asking them to do difficult or challenging things, and definitely not on themselves (even when they wanted to or felt like they were failing).
I distinctly remember one of our first clients who hit a 60-pound weight loss goal. She came up to me, giving me one of the biggest hugs ever, and with all the emotion in her voice, simply said “Thank you. I am forever changed because of you. Thank you for believing I could do it.” This was just as powerful and wonderful and satisfying as my own personal transformation – I felt those words in my heart and they have never left me. And I want everyone who has the desire to do so, to experience that power and pure joy of such a transformative experience in their lives!
From that humble start as two sisters training their friends in a tiny, basement gym, StrongLife Fitness has grown into a small, private gym specializing in individualized strength training, nutrition, and conditioning programs. Because I believe in the process, we have made it our focus to support each client’s individual journey, working together to achieve amazing results – all while making fitness a sustainable and balanced part of each client’s lifestyle. The StrongLife team is deeply invested in each client – just as we were in the beginning. We strive for positive connection. We work hard to make our gym a safe space for the transformative process, and we welcome all ages and fitness levels as we firmly believe that weight training is for everyone, and every body. In fulfilling the purpose that came to me so many years ago throughout my own fitness and transformative journey, I have continuous faith in StrongLife and our commitment to helping individuals to not only succeed, but to find joy in the journey.