Brooke Jones
Owner, Lovelo Cycle & Strength: Age 25
Only a few months after Brooke Jones started taking spin classes, her instructor saw something in her, and started training her to lead classes herself.
The first time she led a class, “I was so stressed, writing down every song and what I was going to do with it. I spent hours trying to figure it out,” she recalled. “I got up there and … I’d really overprepared. It was not as stressful as I thought it was going to be — and it was the best thing ever.”
It turns out her instructor (2022 40 Under Forty alum Jazlinda Navarro) really did recognize in Jones a skill and passion for fitness training.
“It was so great to be in the room with people who had similar energy and who were there to move their bodies and feel good about themselves,” Jones recalled. “I felt so confident in myself. I wanted it to be not only a workout, but a safe space for people to be themselves, to free themselves and move their body. That was what drove me, just creating that safe space for people.”
After working for Navarro for a while at the latter’s juice bar, Cellf Juices, Jones made the entrepreneurial leap to open her own spin studio last August, called Lovelo Cycle & Strength — and has been helping clients make a difference in their lives, health, and self-confidence ever since.
It was Navarro who encouraged her to make the leap to business owner. “She said, ‘I think you need to do this,’” Jones said. “But I was so young. I said, ‘it’s not for me.’ Then I thought how empowered I felt with the first spin class — and that’s what motivated me. So I said, ‘I can do this.’”
But that’s not Jones’s only foray into athletic training. She also coaches cheerleading at Central High School in Springfield, and will begin her fourth season this fall.
“That has also been an amazing journey,” she said. “They had a program, but they weren’t competing. And we went from having a team that had never really competed to bringing them to states and placing top 10 in the state the past three years.”
Jones credits many friends with helping her build a satisfying career, but especially gives thanks to her mother.
“I wouldn’t be the person I am if it weren’t for my mom, who paved the way, showing me what hard work and dedication is. She is the reason why I’m the person I am today.”
—Joseph Bednar
