Leo Grant Preaches Your Will, Your Way

By James Jarvis

Leo Grant likes to say that family and faith started him on his journey to becoming the owner of the Mold Me Fitness Studio in Middleburg.

Grant, 41, was born and raised in Marshall, where he still lives with his wife and four children. There are many Grant family members all around the area, including his first cousin Dwight, who owns a popular hair-styling salon on Middleburg’s main street.

Leo Grant of Mold Me Fitness

Photo © Vicky Moon

“All my family is from Marshall and Rectortown— all these little towns,” Leo Grant said. “So, I’ve got a lot of background back through here.”

Grant credits his father with instilling in him the habit and importance of exercise as an adolescent and remembers his dad always pushing him to get stronger. They would spend many mornings and nights working out together in the basement using a three-piece circuit fitness machine and a punching bag.

“I think [my father] just kind of wanted to have a son to kind of man up a little bit – have someone to get tough with,” Grant said.

In 1998, after graduating from Fauquier High School, Grant left home to earn a degree in theology from Life Christian University, which has a remote campus in Amissville. Grant thought he might become a Christian counselor coming out of college and eventually a pastor.

Before that could happen, Grant said it was Leo Grant of Mold Me Fitness

important for him to first find “wisdom” and he also had faith that God would show him the path forward. “You can’t go into this just saying anything and being anything you want,” he said. “You’ve got to experience some things to say some things.”

Grant had several jobs out of college, including working at a childcare center where he met his wife,

Aracely. He had always worked out, thanks to his father’s early urging, and he finally decided to make a career out of fitness training.

After earning his personal training certification, Grant started working with clients in a gym in Warrenton. After a few years, he created his own personal training business with clients at their homes until he was hired by the owners of Mold Me Fitness in 2010.

“My dad was always in and out of Middleburg and told me that there was a new fitness center that was opening up, and I should go check it out,” Grant said. “So that’s what I did.”

“Legacy” was the word running through Grant’s mind when he decided to purchase the business from Heather and Tony Galloway eight years later in 2017. In making the decision, Grant said, his mindset was focused on his family, “something that I could possibly pass down to one of my kids to take over.”

While there have been ups and downs in the business, the studio is now doing well. And when one of his many devoted clients walks through the door to work with him on cardio, flexibility or strength training, they all know by now that Grant’s inspirational motto is “your will, your way.” He’d also like to think he’s now guiding them much the same way his faith guided him to his current work. Not to mention his father, and that well-worn basement punching bag.