JANESVILLE — When Carrie Krueger opened her women’s only workout studio, Rock Rebounding in Janesville, she wasn’t trying to just start a business. She was trying to inspire women of all backgrounds and stages of life to grow into their best selves.
Carrie Krueger, the founder of Rock Rebounding in Janesville, leads squats on a trampoline.
In a classroom on a recent early morning at Rock Rebounding, 415 W. Milwaukee St., music pulsed as women bounced, laughed, and sweated together on mini trampolines. Some were mothers, some grandmothers.
All were navigating their own personal life trials and all were there for one main reason: to keep moving their bodies.
“It’s about body acceptance, that’s what I want my class to be,” Krueger said. “It’s about loving your body at all stages of life.”
Krueger, a life coach, has worked with her husband, Matt, in their financial consulting business and was doing business coaching part time prior to opening Rock Rebounding. She said their children are grown and, wanting to do something for herself that would also benefit the community, joined the YWCA Rock County board of directors and began volunteering with women living in the YWCA’s transitional housing.
Rock Rebounding, 415 W. Milwaukee St., in Janesville, is a fitness studio for women only.
The author of a workbook called “Grow with Purpose,” that includes exercises she used in her coaching, she said she wanted to go a step further, authentically empowering women through the opening of a fitness studio.
She noticed that a fitness influencer from Arizona, whom she followed, offered trampoline classes, and she trained to teach such a class.
Then, in search of studio space locally, she reached out to her friend, Hannah Kealy, who owns Hannah & Co FIT, 415 W. Milwaukee St. Kealy responded “absolutely,” that she would rent Krueger a studio space.
Krueger said despite the fear of failure, she felt the stars aligning with every step of her research and preparation. Her mission was clear: to create something energizing not just for herself, but for others who might be craving community, movement and a strong start to their day.
“I think when you’re pulled so strong internally to do something, even if you feel like a failure, you just keep pushing past it, because you’re like, ‘Hey, I know I have something really cool here,’” she said.
The class
Krueger said while she welcomes all ages in her classes, a main focus are women in perimenopause, as she is now.
Carrie Krueger, the founder of Rock Rebounding in Janesville, teaches a trampoline class.
Women of that age “feel like we’ve kind of lost touch with ourselves,” she said. “We’ve raised our kids,” and can find it hard to stay focused while working out.
“You can go to the gym and workout on a treadmill, and I’ve done this, and it’s just, like, mindless,’” she said.
She urges women in her classes “to focus on themselves for once,” and said the structure of the class, an hour of low impact, high energy jumping, helps with that. She directs class members to pick a focal point on the wall to help stay balanced while they jump.
“The moment you get the legs down then we have arms... there isn’t an opportunity to really think about anything else,” she said.
She reminds women that they can just be themselves in class, and to leave their struggles “here on the trampoline.”
“I say ‘your mind is going to want to quit before your body wants to quit,’ but that ‘you really can expand yourself and keep going.’”
Carrie Krueger, the founder of Rock Rebounding in Janesville, leads squats on a trampoline.
