LUTZ, Fla. — As Americans celebrate the Fourth of July, it’s important to take time to honor the people who serve our country.
One Tampa Bay area gym is making sure veterans and adaptive athletes have a community and somewhere to train.
“I was a pilot. I was deployed in Iraq,” said Gabriel Gonzalez, a veteran.
He described the night in 2017 that changed his life.
“We were riding in the van from the plane back to base, and I was holding on to a strap. The van was going about 50 miles per hour, and the strap I was holding onto broke, and I fell out. I landed on my head and sustained a traumatic brain injury,” said Gonzalez.
A medical team flew him to Germany, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, and finally, the James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital in Tampa for treatment.
Now, years later, part of his weekly routine is training at Impact Fitness.
“After vets get their immediate life-saving surgery, they do a lot of their physical therapy, a lot of services that are provided at the VA hospital here in Tampa, and stay here in Tampa for those services. But they are also looking to work out like any of us would want to work out,” said Denny Locascio, co-owner of Impact Fitness.
Locascio started the gym more than a decade ago with a focus on high school and middle school athletes. But more recently, it transitioned to working with veterans and adaptive athletes as well after a friend, who is also a vet, inspired him.
“He started volunteering and helping out with the Wounded Warrior project. He said, 'Denny, we need more local gyms to offer fitness for veterans in the community,'” said Locascio.
He has been working with veterans ever since.
“So they can sit here in their wheelchair, and now they can get cardio,” said Locascio. “We now have cardio equipment that we have made specifically for wider wheelchairs or wrist straps or certain exercise modalities so we can work around those injuries and still offer a full strength training.”
Locascio also started the nonprofit Heroes Adapt to raise money to get adaptive fitness equipment into the homes of local veterans and the gym so they can work out there.
He said the most rewarding part was “giving [veterans] years in life back, giving them joy, finding some purpose and passion."
“It is good for your physical well-being to start off with. To be in shape and emotionally,” said Gonzalez.
Locascio said they are able to adapt a lot of equipment, but the biggest item they could use right now is a strength training piece of equipment that adaptive athletes can use without having to get in and out of their wheelchairs.
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