Active Heroes, New Albany CrossFit gym team up to help veterans

NEW ALBANY, IN (WAVE) – A Kentucky-based nonprofit organization assisting veterans and their families sets up a new community center across the river.

Active Heroes has partnered with a New Albany fitness center, GrayStone Performance, in hopes of reaching and helping more service members.

The group currently has a Louisville community center and a military retreat in Bullitt County. Its newest community center will be located at GrayStone along Main Street.

DOWNLOAD OUR APPS
+ News & Weather apps

"Whether it's reintegration, whether it's health and fitness issues, hormonal imbalances, anxiety issues, depression and all of that ties into one another," GrayStone Performance General Manager Adam Smith said.

Smith knows the struggles so many veterans face on a daily basis once they return home. He served in the Army for more than 15 years, now he's a new gym that just opened in downtown New Albany.

"We offer personal training services to cross fit style workouts to class workouts to individual workouts," he said.

Thanks to a special partnership this place is so much more. Smith has teamed up with Active Heroes founder Troy Yocum.

MORE FROM WAVE3.COM
+ Dequante Hobbs' mother shares photos of slain 7-year-old boy
+ Changes coming to Elizabethtown intersection where teen was killed
+ Kentucky launches 'Help Wanted Kentucky' outreach campaign

"The great inclusion of this location is the fitness element, having that gym being able to do workouts with military family members is truly a great partnership between us both," Yocum said.

They have all kinds of programs in place to help veterans and their immediate families in an effort to decrease soldier suicide, Yocum said. He knows there is not a one size that fits all approach.

WATCH>> Katie Bauer's report

"What works for one veteran may not work for the next, so we needed to have variety of programming," Yocum said.

Active Heroes provides free programming including acupuncture treatments, massage and meditation and now fitness can also be a big part. The city of New Albany celebrated their newest downtown residents and welcomed them to the neighborhood with a ribbon cutting on Wednesday.

"It struck a cord of the idea of being able to give back and to really try to support the veteran community in any way that I can and at the time the only way I knew how was physical activity," Smith said.

The gym is open to everybody who wants to sign up. There are discounted rates available to veterans and first responders. For every gym membership purchased, 10% will go to Active Heroes.

Copyright 2017 WAVE 3 News. All rights reserved.