Burroughs Grad Back Home With His Own Campus Fitness Program

William Feuerbacher is an enterprising 26-year-old businessman with a career starting in physical fitness. He offers boot camp style shape up training to adult men and women every day at John Burroughs School in Ladue. Although his sessions are in groups, they are small, and each participant gets plenty of one on one attention.

Patch caught up with Feuerbacher after an early-morning session to find out more about his company Speed Play StL.

Ladue-Frontenac Patch: Your business is based out of the fitness center at the John Burroughs School. There must be obvious reasons why here.

Feuerbacher: Yes. I am a 2006 graduate of Burroughs. I played football and baseball here. I played baseball for Andy Katzmann and I played football for both Jim Lemen (his last year) and coach Todd Small.

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Patch: So you went to Miami of Ohio and graduated with a business degree. How did you end up back in St. Louis.

Feuerbacher: I got a job offer from a company called Cintas, and they are located outside of Cincinnati. They asked me if I’d like to move back to St. Louis or go to Boston. I chose St. Louis to save some money and to be comfortable. I was training for a race in Chicago.

I was working and training and fell in love with my training. The company is in the business of shredding documents and I realized this isn’t what I really wanted to do.

I asked my trainer what can I do and what are my options and he suggested I get my CSCS (Conditioning certification) and I started studying and quit and hit the books five hours a day. I took the test and passed it and had a brief internship with NutriFormance (in Frontenac) and that was great and I learned how a health club operates and did work with Athletic Republic and worked with kids and that was great.

I knew I had made the right decision. I went to a small gym in Des Peres where I used to work out (Peak Performance) and I started working out at Burroughs and they needed someone to coach their middle school football and we worked out a deal where I open up their weight room and health club and in return, I can run my program from here.

Patch: So we can give a shout out to Peter Tasker, their athletic director for allowing you to do this.

Feuerbacher: Absolutely, Pete is the man. I had him at Burroughs my first year as a math teacher so I was familiar with him already. I will be coaching their middle school football team again this fall.

Patch: Will your fitness programs continue at JBS during the school year.

Feuerbacher: Yep. The hours will be extended. I will be open pretty much all day from early in the morning until about 1 p.m. then the physical education program takes over. So I have it from 5:30 a.m. to noon and again from 5 until whenever.

Patch: What is your primary class, and who are your clients. My men’s class are gentlemen, ages about 50 to 70. It is primarily a weight maintenance class. We do circuit training and strength training. I really encourage them to maintain healthy diets between training sessions.

Patch: Tell us about the women’s program.

Feuerbacher: So I have a women’s class right now. We meet every day from 8 to 9. This is much more casual with drop in. That is a circuit class just like the men. Its definitely a challenging class, no easier than the men’s.

Patch: So you are now officially a small business man.

Feuerbacher: My dad has worked for Merrill Lynch for 35 years. I’ve learned a lot from him. He owned a small business in Columbia, Missouri, a package liquor store. He gives me quite a push. He is very motivating to me.

Patch: What is the best way for people to get hold of you and make connections.

Feuerbacher: I’ve sent out some flyers and its been a lot of word of mouth, and I advertise on the Patch. This is the website. All my information and services are there. I try and update it often with changes and discounts. My email is on there: feuerbwr@gmail.com or best call my cell phone at 314-496-5057.