GOLD WINNER
Evolve Fitness3667 Strawberry Hill Street, suite 220
website
SILVER WINNER
R Studios2470 Maynard Street
website
BRONZE WINNER
O2 WellnessSunnyside Mall, 1595 Bedford Highway, suite 210
website
Ask twin brothers Matt and Mitchell Benvie to tell the story of how Evolve Fitness came to be, and you’ll get differing answers. Matt, the elder brother by 11 minutes, will tell you how he dreamed of becoming a gym teacher as a kinesiology student at St. Francis Xavier University and fell in love with personal training while he completed his undergraduate degree. Mitchell, the younger twin, will tell you how he was living in Korea when he came across a Faces Magazine profile of his older brother, who’d started his training career. “He was looking pretty jacked up,” Mitchell jokes. “I literally got serious about my fitness the next day, and basically didn’t come home until I was up to par.” Competition aside—or perhaps as credit to their good-natured one-upmanship—the Benvie brothers’ Evolve Fitness gym has become a perennial favourite with The Coast’s readers in our annual Best of Halifax awards. (This year marks Evolve’s eighth straight winning gold for Best Gym, and Mitchell’s sixth straight gold for Best Personal Trainer.) “A huge part of the fitness industry is helping people feel comfortable and making the gym a less intimidating place,” Matt says, speaking by phone with The Coast. “And our whole team is great at that.”
