Get To Know The Owner
My name is Josh Rendon, I am 24 years old and the owner/founder of The Forge Gym. I’ve lived in the Conroe area all my life. I started my fitness journey as a freshman in high school by joining a local homeschool football team, The Northside Lions. Once on the team, I played both sides of the ball, all through high school. With such amount of time on the field, it required me to stay active and put in extra work. I spent five days a week in the gym hitting the weights.
Growing up as “the skinny kid”, I began to notice the changes in my body by spending so much time in the gym, building muscle and growing stronger. I fell in love with the process. After high school, I was off and on again with the gym, yet I still found time to workout a couple times a week. During this time, I helped coach the wide receivers and cornerbacks for the football team I once played for. While simultaneously lifting weights and Coaching, I spent two semesters studying at Lone Star College. I came to the conclusion that school was not for me and began to ponder the idea of becoming a trainer. Weightlifting and coaching was a true passion of mine and I realized that it could be something I might make a living out of.
Throughout the years, my knowledge in the gym grew and I began to pursue the idea of becoming a professional trainer. I came to the conclusion that the best way to jumpstart my training career would be to obtain a certification from the National Academy of Sports Medicine. In 2021 I passed my exams and received my certification. Afterwards, I got a job training clients at the local Fitness Connection. Although I enjoyed training people there, the method of training was very corporate and cookiecutter. I knew I wanted to pursue training clients on my own. Yet, the only way to make a decent living from being a trainer is to own/run a gym as well.
Ever since I started lifting weights, I toyed with the idea of owning a gym one day. And during the pandemic of 2020 when all the gyms were closed, I began buying gym equipment off Facebook Marketplace so I could continue working out. Every other month I would buy a new piece of equipment; my house started to look like a real gym. During this time I opened up my house to people and friends that wanted somewhere to train while their gyms were closed. I had much encouragement on my little home gym and everyone that went there assured me that it was a place that could one day become a functioning gym. For the past couple of years I continued to collect equipment and grow my home gym. In 2023, I finally had enough pieces to make my dream a reality. After much hard work and help from friends and family, we opened our doors in July of 2023 and have been growing ever since.