Your 2025 Dynamic Duo

“I had been working out for about a decade and was always kind of treading water and not totally happy with it. It was a lot of fun to see some tangible results. On top of that, the workouts were fun. I almost died several times, but it was nice to be pushed again!”

Brendon Stankard

Dynamic Duo 2025

Since joining our staff of outstanding personal trainers in June of 2024, Tyler Hovanec has rapidly become one of our most popular and successful trainers.

Tyler

Now, with “The Contest” — our annual Spring fitness challenge — completed and in the books, his depth of knowledge and experience are confirmed, as Tyler guided the team of Dylan Floody and Brendon Stankard to victory. What’s more, Dylan was the top-scoring individual, while Brendon finished third! Yes, results like that speak for themselves, but we are always interested in members’ experiences of the contests — their motivations, approaches, and how they feel about their results. We thank Tyler and his team for sharing some insights.

Meet The Dynamic Duo

“I have been a member since 2020 (right after COVID),” says Brendon. “I joined F.I. in part due to the location (I live just south of the Village) but primarily because Fitness Incentive has always had a great reputation. Dylan, meanwhile, became a member solely for the Contest.”
Neither contestant had ever competed in anything as formal as an F.I. Fitness Challenge, and both of them were looking for a change. “Both Dylan and I had begun to feel stale in our prior workout routines,” says Brendon. “Dylan was doing CrossFit, and I was just lifting by myself.” The Contest fit the bill for them both perfectly.

Working together as a team came naturally to them. “Dylan and I are dating,” says Brendon, “and we picked Tyler (well, actually, I did…Dylan had no idea who he was as he had not been to Fitness Incentive to that point). The whole thing was last-minute — I believe we signed up on the absolute last day to do so. I mentioned to Dylan that I was thinking of signing up, so I did a little research on the details and price. It seemed like it had a lot of value, so we went back that very day and signed up. Picking Tyler was based on watching him train other people at the gym and liking his style of work.”

A common thread among contestants is the team dimension of the contests. So it was with Brendon and Dylan. “We are both competitive people, so we used that to help motivate each other. It wasn’t necessarily about winning anything — more about competing against one another. We never actually focused on the team winning, but rather on pushing ourselves. If we happened to win, great! If not, at least we challenged ourselves.”

Perfect Fit

Their hunch about Tyler proved prophetic. “Tyler was great at really getting us to a point where we were at our limits without going too far,” says Brendon. “I have some old injuries (herniated discs in the neck and a torn labrum), and Tyler was always able to give me exercises or variations of exercises that wouldn’t hurt me while still pushing me hard every session.”

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

So effective was Tyler’s guidance that his winning team has continued to work with him beyond The Contest. “We both have decided to keep up with a version of The Contest going forward,” confirms Brendon. “We won’t be doing two sessions a week or following as strict a diet as we did during the competition. But we have already committed to doing weekly sessions with Tyler, as well as keeping up with a new, modified version of the diet he has just sent us. Not only do we hope to maintain our contest achievements, we’re still looking to improve upon them.”

The depth of their commitment is not surprising. “It was really cool to see the changes in my body,” says Brendon. “I had been working out for about a decade and was always kind of treading water and not totally happy with it. It was a lot of fun to see some tangible results. On top of that, the workouts were fun. I almost died several times, but it was nice to be pushed again! We gained a lot of this knowledge from Tyler and the competition: that we can actually achieve visible, measurable results from our time in the gym. It has produced a newfound enthusiasm for working out and a new perspective. Positive, productive influences created a noticeable change. Instead of just going to the gym and eating a certain way because you feel like you should be doing it, Tyler and The Contest really helped us buy in.”