The idea for opening a Blush Boot Camp in Clinton started when Charice Staley and her husband, Ryan, were driving from Garden City to Clinton. During the drive, Charice received an email from the women-only fitness and exercise business, announcing that the company wanted to expand into other towns in the area.
Clarice remembers joking to Ryan, “We could open a gym in Clinton.”
Then Charice got an email from her friend, Missy McCoy Moretine, asking Charice if she had gotten the email. Charice and Missy were neighbors in Garden City, and both worked out at Blush Boot Camp in Harrisonville. Charice answered, yes, she had gotten the email, and Missy texted back, “We should open one in Clinton.”
“We started out joking about the coincidence of us both thinking the same thing,” Charice said. “After we thought about it for a couple of days, we just jumped on it.”
Last week, Charice signed the 140th member of Clinton’s Blush Boot Camp, in the east-side shopping center between Hibbett Sports and Tractor Supply. She runs the business with her daughter, Charlee, who stepped in to help. Missy passed away on Dec. 3, 2022, a week and a half before the scheduled opening.
Missy’s cancer was re-diagnosed last July, Charice said, but she worked right up until her last week to get the gym ready for the Dec. 12 opening. The funeral was held that day. Charice got up before 3 a.m., drove to Clinton from her home in Garden City, worked until mid-morning, then drove to Garden City for the funeral. Then she drove back to Clinton for the evening sessions.
“We had pushed so hard to open” Charice said. “I knew that’s what she wanted.”
Charice worked 77 hours the first five days the gym was open, but has since cut back to working 4 a.m. to noon. Missy, realizing that she would not be able to help run the gym, asked Charice’s daughter Charlee to help. Charlee holds down the office during the evening sessions, at 4:30 p.m., 5:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.
Charlee, 17 years old, has elected to attend high school online, so she can fulfill Missy’s request.
“She’s really stepped up,” Charice said.
Stepping up your physical activity and strength level is the idea behind Blush Boot Camp, which is designed to be for all ages and fitness abilities. A trainer leads the women through each workout, Charice said, and offers modifications of each exercise. Blush Boot Camp offers a patented workout schedule that is designed to be effective for women, she said, and exercises a different muscle group each day.
The variety, the music, the environment and the guidance of a trainer combine to make the workouts interesting and effective.
“It’s a very unique experience,” Charice said. “You never have to wonder if you are doing it right.”
A membership entitles women to come to as many sessions as they want, she said, noting that some women like some of the workouts so much, they attend twice a day. The gym offers five 50-minute sessions on weekday mornings, on the hour from 5 a.m. through 9 a.m; three evening sessions starting at 4:30 p.m., three workouts on Saturday mornings starting at 8 a.m., and two on Sunday morning, at 7 and 8 a.m.
The 3,850 square-foot space has 2,600 square-feet of workout space, painted a blush rose, plus a shower room with two pink showers for women who need to get ready for work.
“We do try to make it as convenient as possible,” Charice said.
There’s a day-care room, with baby-sitting during an exercise session included free with a membership for children 12 weeks to 5 years old. Preregistration is required to reserve a place, as there’s a limit of children from six families per session.
Also free is a Kids’ Boot Camp once a month for ages 2 through 13, and a Spouse/Significant Other Boot Camp once a month. At their first session, the guys were surprised by how challenging the work-outs were, Charice said.
“There was a lot of complaining,” she said. “They kept asking for a break. There were no breaks.”
The goal of each workout is to burn between 500 and 1,000 calories a session. Each woman wears a heart monitor that tracks her heart rate. The “Blush Zone” is the optimal rate of increasing the heart rate. Charice said she had difficulty dieting and exercising, but lost 30 pounds in the six months after she joined the Blush Boot Camp gym in Harrisonville.
The most important thing, Charice said, is to keep moving. They employ four trainers, including Autumn Anderson of Clinton.
Prior to opening the Clinton Blush Boot Camp, Charice worked from home in Garden City as the bookkeeper for her husband’s company, RC Remodel and Repair. Working long hours in Clinton was an adjustment, Charice said, but watching women fall in love with Blush Boot Camp has been very motivating.
“Everybody supports everybody else,” she said. “It is really a sense of community.”
The week before the gym opened was a bit frantic, she said, trying to bring all the pieces together in time. Her husband’s work crew put in long hours to get things ready for the opening on Dec. 12, she said, as she and Missy had planned.
The important thing, Charice said, is that they honored her wishes.
Clinton Blush Boot Camp is located at 1832 E. Ohio, Suite 8, Clinton, Mo 64735, off Hwy. 7 South in the shopping center. The first session is free. To register, go to the Clinton Blush Boot Camp Facebook.
