Hey my name is Justin Cox. I am the owner and founder of Elite Performance & Fitness in Bemidji MN.
All my life I have been an athlete. I started competitive wrestling at the age of 5. When I started junior high I heard one consistent message from all of my sports coaches. “Get in the weight room.” “Okay.” I thought to myself. Getting bigger and stronger would really help me become a better athlete.
I walked into the weight room on that first day when I was 14 and I will never forget it. I was the only person there. We didn’t even have a competent weight room supervisor. The weight room supervisor was the high school math teacher who was only there for the extra paycheck.
He literally knew nothing about strength training. I spent the rest of my high school athletic career learning about strength training from magazines like Muscle and Fitness, and Bodybuilding. Needless to say, these magazines didn’t help very much in athletic development.
But what did I know, I was a young testosterone laden boy who thought that if I worked hard like these guys and took the supplements that they took then I would get bigger and that would make me a better athlete. Thank goodness I didn’t have a lot of money growing up and never got into supplements.
On to the next chapter, college. I didn’t go to a big college but I did go as an athlete. While I was there I learned A LOT more about strength training and athletic development. But unfortunately I still did not have a strength coach to guide me and tell me what direction to take. My strength training was a lot better and I was getting stronger but I still did not know enough about why I was doing what I was doing. I was just doing what I was told.
That is the reason I decided to get into exercise science. I did not like the feeling of not knowing what I was doing or why I was doing it. I did not want to take other people’s word for it. I wanted to learn these things for myself. I wanted to learn how to do these things right, or at least where to find the right information about them (for some reason a magazine about bodybuilding owned by a supplement manufacturer didn’t seem like a reliable source of information).
After college I founded Elite Performance & Fitness in Bemidji Minnesota. I do not want people to have to go through what I went through. I want to teach the most up to date and scientifically accurate information on exercise and health and fitness that I can.
I want to help people achieve their goals, I want them to live their dreams, and I want them to get there in the shortest amount of time rather than the long way like I had to.
Mission Statement
As Bemidji’s premiere resource for health and fitness, Elite Performance & Fitness strives to bring our clients the most current and up to date information on athletic performance, fitness, nutrition, and weight management. We are the only team in rural northern Minnesota to specialize in the use of Russian Kettlebells.
Our trainers will develop a program designed to meet your goals based on your needs and lifestyle. These programs are progressive and continually challenge you to perform better every workout. We will teach you how to manage your fatigue, increase your strength, and how to never fail.