Camden South Carolina Owner Leaves Finance for Fitness

Wednesday June 12th, 2024 | Columbia Regional Business Report

Phil Gephart makes the 69-mile drive from Rock Hill in York County every day

to help residents of Kershaw County in the Midlands live healthier lives.

Earlier this year, Gephart and his wife Clare Gephart purchased the Workout

Anytime location in Camden with the goal of bringing a new kind of workout

experience to residents of the growing town.

Workout Anytime is a franchise-based fitness chain with 200 units nationwide

that caters to the growing number of people who want access to a gym that

fits flexible schedules. The name truly means what it says — members of the

gym have access to the facilities 24 hours, seven days a week. It’s a type of

gym membership especially appealing to people whose work and family

responsibilities make it challenging to hit the gym at traditional times during

the day.

“Many people these days want accessibility and availability, a gym on demand

just like you have TV on demand,” Gephart said. “They don’t want to wait for a

specific time to do their workouts. We have a lot of staffed hours, with trainers 

on hand most of the day, but if you want to come late at night or very early in

the morning, that’s available too.”

Five years ago, Gephart was living in Austin, Texas, and working as a holistic

fitness coach. His family moved to Rock Hill at the height of the COVID-19

pandemic in 2020. Gephart got a job in the finance industry and managed his

old Austin gym remotely for about a year, but he quickly realized he missed

working directly with fitness clients. Enter Workout Anytime.

Phil Gephart says his passion is working directly with people helping them get healthy and get stronger. 

     “My passion is working directly with people to help them get stronger

stronger, and the Workout Anytime franchise in Camden was for sale, so I

came back into the industry,” Gephart said.

Gephart said the existing location in Camden “needed some TLC and needed

some work” when he purchased it. He updated the interior and also changed

out other elements, like substituting snacks in an existing vending machine for

healthier selections, including gluten-free options and items with no artificial

sugars.

“I really fell in love with the community and was ecstatic to be here because of

the kindness of the people,” he said. “One of the reasons I also wanted to

come to Camden was I’ve been in bigger metropolitan areas and now I wanted

to bring an optimal training and health experience to a town like Camden.”

Sports and fitness has been a big part of Gephart’s life since childhood. He

played basketball in high school and then at Wilmington University in

Delaware, and later played professional basketball for five years on five

continents overseas. Besides playing, he also ran basketball camps in

Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, London and other locations.

When he left his playing career behind, Gephart got interested in personal

training and studied holistic health. He became a personal trainer, working on

an appointments-only basis with a focus on strength training. His work was

driven by a passion for helping people improve their basic health and live their

best lives through common-sense approaches.

“I created sort of a six-pillar system of fitness — sleep, sunlight, stress

management, nutrition, hydration and movement,” Gephart said. “All of those

are so important, and people don’t realize how great they’re supposed to feel if

all of those are involved. People believe that by 40 your knees shouldn’t work

anymore, or by 60 it’s supposed to be normal to be on 10 medications every

day. That’s not supposed to be the human experience. You can feel so much

greater if you just master the basics.”

Workout Anytime offers some high-tech approaches to developing the best

workout regimen for each client’s needs. A Slyku 3-D body scanning system

allows trainers to screen a client’s body to better understand their fitness

needs and goals.

“When someone becomes a member, we schedule a ‘success session’ where

we dig into their health and fitness goals, do a movement screen to find out

their muscular weaknesses and imbalances, and use the body scanner to

measure things like waist-to-hip ratio, lean body mass, and body fat

percentage,” Gephart said. “We can also track when they should be achieving

certain goals based on how many workouts they want during the week. We

can really lay out a specific path for each client and help them get there every

step of the way.”

Workout Anytime is located at 1670 Springdale Drive, Suite 13-C, in Camden.