SBG to unveil new, improved gym

In just over a year, the Straight Blast Gym of Montana has managed to double in size and scope, and looking at the resume of its growing staff, it’s easy to see why.

From a black belt mixed martial artist to an All-American wrestler, professional boxer, Iyengar yoga instructor and a doctor of physical therapy, the Kalispell SBG appears to have all the bases covered in functional fitness training.

Owner and founder Travis Davison (the black belt in Jiu Jitsu) and his wife Kisa (the yoga instructor) recently assembled a versatile staff and moved the gym into a facility literally twice the size (3,500 square-feet) of its predecessor.

On Saturday, the new and improved downtown gym at 30 Fourth Street East is having its grand opening. Refreshments are being provided by the Colter Coffee House and free trial classes for a variety of adult and youth programs will be offered to anyone who shows up. Other drawings will give away unlimited month-memberships and free hour-long physical therapy sessions.

Various classes will take place throughout the day for those interested in seeing demonstrations of what SBG has to offer, Davison said.

“I think it’ll be a good chance for people to get together and talk because I think sometimes people are intimidated by gyms in general, but especially what they perceive to be a (mixed martial arts) gym,” Travis Davison said. “But it’s about as layed back and friendly here as you can get. I feel like this is a place people can come to actually learn a skill set and at the same time be doing something for their stress and for their physical fitness.”

Davison said being centralized in downtown Kalispell was purposeful because of his hope that the gym will continue to grow its roots into the community.

“We were thinking about calling it a wellness center,” Travis Davison said. “I’d say that eventually I would like to see our numbers at five percent of people that are here because they want to compete, and then eventually I’d like to see 95 percent of the people here just because they want to be a part of a good community, be fit and learn a functional skill while they’re doing it.”

Along with the Davisons, the new team at SBG consists of local boxer Phillip Moore, who co-founded Flathead Boxing, physical therapist Kat Ingalls, who runs Mindful Motion, and Kevin Wilmott, a local chiropractor who was a Big Ten wrestling champ at the University of Wisconsin in the late nineties.

The gym offers a wide variety of options for men and women of all ages — mixed martial arts, boxing and wrestling classes, cardio and strength conditioning, yoga, and physical therapy.

“For a long time, I feel like we as a society have gone to gyms because we want to look a certain way, and instead, and I’m happy about this, I feel as a society we’re moving towards having a true wellness. So it’s not how you look, it’s how does your body function,” said Kisa Davison, who teaches therepeutic yoga as well as Iyengar-style yoga, which focuses on body alignment.

“It’s not ‘Can you fit into the clothing that you fit into when you were 20?’ It’s ‘Can you be comfortable in the body you have at age 40, or 50, or 80?’ So every age, every state we go through has a different set of needs and it’s about time we started paying attention to what our bodies really need instead of what we think society wants us to be.”

For more information, visit www.sbgmontana.com, or call 250-2380.

Reporter Dillon Tabish can be reached at 758-4463 or by e-mail at dtabish@dailyinterlake.com