Helen Gruber
Before joining Destination Fitness, Helen Gruber managed a leading exercise center for women, where she trained clients overcoming obesity and coping with such conditions as arthritis, heart disease, osteoporosis and post-cardiac diabetes. A healer at heart and a gentle soul, Helen demonstrates a work ethic one client called “infectious,” thanks to her ability to inspire and motivate. Whether teaching boot camp, group fitness or one on one—men, women or children—Helen remains attentive to the unique needs of each athlete.
Her path to fitness started following high school graduation. Overweight during adolescence, Helen enrolled in a dance class, an impulse that quickly led to a passion. By age nineteen, she was teaching ballroom and Latin dance in downtown Chicago and competing in clubs throughout the city.
After graduating from Chicago’s Bryman College, Helen began working as a medical assistant, serving pediatricians and orthopedic surgeons. Assisting doctors and their patients taught her the importance of preventive care through exercise and proper nutrition. Committed to continuing education, Helen later earned an associate’s degree from McHenry County College, after participating in an innovative and demanding program entitled FIT (Fitness Instructor Technology).
“I sincerely enjoy helping people,” she says, “and doing so through my passion for health and fitness is a blessing. Seeing clients meet their fitness goals is as rewarding as watching them reap the benefits that result when they change their lifestyles. Through careful exercise management, I have seen clients lose weight, lower cholesterol, drop blood pressure—even reverse osteopenia.”
Among her most rewarding experiences were the four years she worked for the not-for-profit Pioneer Center for Human Services. There, Helen trained adults with special needs and assisted with individual exercise programs based on scrips written by physical therapists. Dissatisfied with the center’s equipment, mostly outdated donations, and fearing for the safety of her clients, who Helen felt deserved better, she lobbied for a new exercise center. Working closely with a grant writer, a fitness buff enthused by her proposal, Helen saw this grant approved six months later and had the pleasure of purchasing the necessary equipment herself.
The mother of four—ranging from teens to young adults—Helen stays fit by biking the hills of McHenry County and cheerleading for her husband and children.