Meet Lane Grosser: STOTT PILATES® Certified Instructor & Mama

We had the good fortune of connecting with Lane Grosser and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Lane, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Since I was a little girl, I had dreamed of creating my own business. I was the entrepreneurial kid – the one who’s at your doorbell selling wrapping paper during the holidays, the one who makes her own babysitting flier (well before she had nice penmanship) and slides it into the frame of your front door, the one who starts a lawn care business with her dad and brothers and the one who makes jewelry to sell at the annual summer arts festival in her college town. As a preteen I became fascinated with the fitness world and could be found on the daily in the basement of my childhood home doing workout after workout because I thought it was just so fun… and, to be fair, I was all about those abs of steel and chiseled arms. Jane Fonda and Gilad were two of my favorite fitness personalities. Step aerobics and virtual beach workouts? Oh yeah. You could say that I was born to move. Fast forward a few years and I was training hours a day in ballet, modern dance and jazz dance. Even in those early days of my dance education, you could find me in my parent’s basement doing fitness videos on the days that I wasn’t in the studio training. The beauty of the human body and what one could do with it has always interested me. After a career dancing professionally, I was a dance instructor and choreographer. In my mid 20s to early 30s, I directed the Performing Arts School of Central Pennsylvania and founded Brio, a professional contemporary dance company. When my husband and I moved to Atlanta in 2013, I taught for Atlanta Ballet Centre for Dance Education and completed the long process of becoming a STOTT PILATES® Full Level 1 certified instructor at Inspire Health, a STOTT PILATES® Licensed Training Center, in Buckhead. My STOTT PILATES® certification provided the answers to questions I had always had. What were the scientific reasons behind the technical corrections that I was given and that I gave to students, in turn. What is the most efficient way to move our bodies and how do we help to care for our bodies for the long term through movement? Without a strong understanding of anatomy and physiology, I felt a bit lost. I wanted to know how the body was truly designed to work, not just regurgitate training that I’d received from others. My STOTT PILATES® training provided me with the answers to my questions. Seven years into working for Atlanta Ballet and Inspire Health, COVID-19 hit the United States and I was faced with the decision of what to do to help keep myself and my family safe from contracting the disease. As a mom of preschool kids navigating this pandemic, staying home was my answer. It was then that I started to peel back the layers. Behind the past 20 years of teaching for others was a desire to build something with my own hands. I always felt that the timing would reveal itself if there was ever an opportunity to pursue those dreams and a few months into the pandemic when all but one teaching hour per week had dried up, I talked with my husband about the possibility of starting an online fitness business and he was 100% supportive.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Learning something new is never easy. Training to become a professional dancer is not easy; it’s a steady focus in the same direction over many, many years. The path behind success is only made possible through significant trades. You trade what you could have at the moment for what you’re aiming for. What I’ve learned is that one’s success is created by a community that helps them get there but it is the individual who must make the decision to put the hard work in to make it happen. You are the ultimate decision maker for your own life and there’s cost with every decision you make. What is the best decision? I have to trust God through what he shows me in the Bible as I journey through the decision making process and trust my gut. If I want to give away a lot of classes to people who need them, I should do that! Even if the business decision doesn’t make sense to people looking in, it’s important to trust your gut and go with it, especially if it’s to serve others. Our lives our incredibly valuable and how we live our lives – what we say, what we do – has an incredible impact, for good or for bad. I want to be of help to people. To help them feel good in their bodies, to help their bodies feel good, and if I can do that for them then I count that the greatest success! If they feel good – feel strong and capable and out of pain – then everything else in their life will be blessed by how good they feel. They will be happier and treat people with greater kindness. They will feel less stressed and irritable and everyone around them will be grateful for that. That’s why I do what I do – to help others feel good.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Ooh, I would love to take a friend to the Atlanta Botanical Garden and stop by the cafe for a coffee (they have great coffee there). If Atlanta Ballet or Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre was performing at the Fox Theatre then I would take them there to see a performance and get the pre-show historical backstage tour of the theatre. A quick stop at The Varsity is a must and if we were up for brunch I would take them to the Flying Biscuit in midtown. That’s my favorite location. I spend more of my time out of the city, though, so I would definitely take them to Marietta Square and stop in at Tiny Bubbles Tea Bar for a boba tea. We’d walk around the square stopping at the local shops and then make our way over to Session’s Stand cafe for an afternoon pick-me-up and sit outside on their cute patio. I’d take them on a tour to look at the historic Marietta homes and stop in at the Good Kitchen + Market for a deliciously nutritious outside dinner on their front porch. If they were up for a hike, I’d take them to Kennesaw Mountain Battlefield and climb the mountain to show them the city view. You can see Buckhead, Midtown and Downtown Atlanta from the top of Kennesaw Mountain. In fact, this is the typical plan for friends and family when they visit. A lot of eating and a lot of sight seeing!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Without a doubt, if my husband wasn’t the hard working, supportive spouse to me that he is, there would be no business. He’s encouraged me to really go for it. Not just to try it out but to put the pedal to the metal and do everything I can to make it a success. Behind the support of my husband are the colleagues who have believed in me and have encouraged me to take this entrepreneurial step. Rebecca Gilliam, a fellow STOTT PILATES® instructor, as well as others expressed how much they enjoyed my classes and wanted to be able to take class from me more often. Behind those colleagues are the teachers and mentors that I have had. Over the years working at Inspire Health, Sara Baker, Inspire Health President, gave me a lot of opportunities to create new classes for the studio and to brainstorm ideas with her. I am truly appreciative for the opportunities that she gave me to exercise my entrepreneurial spirit and to create fun classes for our clients. STOTT PILATES® Instructor Trainers Samia Pellizzari, Laura Hicks Foutz and Elizabeth Ellison also deserve recognition. They are excellent instructor trainers and I learned so much from them. Moving further back, Andrea Hill, founder of the Performing Arts School of Central Pennsylvania, gave me some of my very first teaching and choreographic opportunities. Dance instructor Vicky McQuaide has been a mentor to me since I was a preteen. She encouraged me to find my unique path in the dance world and remains a close friend today. These wonderful people saw talent in me and encouraged me by provided opportunities to share those talents. They are the ones who encouraged me with training and opportunity. Where would I be without them? And of course my parents Dan and Rosemary. Where would I be without their unconditional love and support? They instilled a strong work ethic in me and showed me that I could do anything. They had high scholastic and extra-curricular expectations of me and supported every entrepreneurial idea that I have had. My parents let me carve out my path with the talents that I’d been given and provided for my dance and college education. Such sacrifice. Such love!

Website: https://www.pilateswithlane.com
Instagram: instagram.com/pilateswithlane
Facebook: facebook.com/pilateswithlane

Image Credits
Marian Lee, photographer