SET Fitness | Semi-Private Strength Coaching in Mamaroneck, NY

Premise

Why the room stays half empty

Most studios solve for volume. Fill the floor, run the clock, sell the next month. We took the opposite decision in 2013 and have not revisited it: three people train together at most, and the coach stands with them the whole hour.

That single constraint decides everything else here. A lift can be stopped mid-set and corrected. A programme can be rewritten on a Tuesday because someone slept badly. Nobody queues for a rack, and nobody is coached by a screen on the wall.

It also means we cannot take everyone. Places come up when a block ends, and we would rather tell you to wait a fortnight than put a fourth body in the room.

3 people on the floor in any session block, coach not counted

The programme

The programme, in four movements

One arc, repeated. Every member sits somewhere on it, which is why we can tell you in a sentence what you are doing this week and why.

Assessment

Week one · 45 minutes

Movement screen, loaded carries, a short history of what your body has already been through. You leave with the first four weeks written down, not with a sales conversation.

Base

Weeks two to seven

Six patterns, light enough to be repeatable, heavy enough to matter. This is the part most people skip elsewhere and the part that makes the second half of the block possible.

Load

Weeks eight to twelve

Weight goes on the bar in small, boring increments. Sessions get shorter, not longer. Conditioning is deliberately modest so that strength has somewhere to go.

Review

Every twelfth week

We re-measure, write the next block, and say plainly whether the last one worked. Members who need a lighter season take one; there is no penalty for a quiet quarter.

Places open as blocks end — usually two or three a month, occasionally none.

Request a place

The studio

The room on Spencer Place

Nine hundred square feet, four racks, wooden floor, tall north windows. No mirrors along the long wall and no music you have to shout over.

Training floor at SET Fitness with racks and daylight from tall windows — The floor, mid-morning

A coach setting up a barbell with two members during a semi-private block — A block in progress, three on the floor

Donald Johnston

Owner, head coach

Took over the lease in 2013 and still writes every twelve-week block himself. Coaches the early mornings, Monday through Friday.

Marcelo Reyes

Strength coach

Barbell work, tempo and technique. Runs the evening blocks and the Saturday sessions for members training around family hours.

Ilana Petrov

Coach — assessments

Handles first assessments and return-to-training after injury, in conversation with your physio when there is one.

Evidence

Thirteen years of one small room

19

Months, the median time a member stays with us — measured across the last five years.

3

The hard ceiling on people per block since the studio opened. It has never been raised for a busy week.

I spent twenty years in gyms and never once knew what week I was in. Here I do, and so does the coach.

A member, four years in — name withheld by request

Terms

Rates, plainly stated

Starting points, not a price list. What you pay depends on how often you train and whether you share the floor.

Intro consult: No charge
Semi-private block: from $65 / session
One-to-one coaching: from $130 / session
Strength assessment: from $90
Programme review: from $90

Blocks are bought in eights and expire twelve weeks after the first session.
Twenty-four hours' notice moves a session; inside that, it counts.
Semi-private means two or three people who train at a similar level, matched by us.
No joining fee, no annual contract, no automatic renewal.

Enquire

Ask about a place

Four lines is enough. Donald reads these himself and replies within a working day, usually with a time to come and look at the room.

A quieter way to get strong