Meet Our Newest Trainer, Hanna Reuter

Exciting news - 

You will soon have the pleasure+pain of dealing with TWO REUTERS.

My younger sister, Hanna, will join Strength School soon as a trainer.

Hanna just finished her bachelor’s degree at Marian University. But way back in 2014, at the very beginning of Strength School, I employed Hanna and her twin sister, Holli, in packing and stamping client newsletters. I asked the girls what they wanted me to pay them.

Hanna said, 

“Five dollars . . . a minute!”

I couldn’t afford her then, and I can barely afford her now. But she will be a great asset for me and for all of you. And Hanna’s annual raises are 100% based on growth of the gym or whether she can beat me in a 60 yard dash (whatever I’m feeling that year), so if she ends up being lackluster, she gets no extra money. Or I’ll just fire her. 

Most of you have heard of Hanna by now. Here’s some more info:

• Graduated summa cum lauda with majors in philosophy and psychology

• Received the “Top Student” awards in Philosophy and Psychology 

• Spent the 2025 summer at Johns Hopkins University as an Amgen Scholar in a neuroscience lab dissecting rat brains (she claims to know more about the the dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area of the brain than almost anyone else in the world right now)

• Presented her research at the 2025 Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego - the world’s largest and most prestigious neuroscience conference

• Sprinter and long jumper on the track team at Marian

• Part of the 2026 NAIA Indoor Track national championship team

• 5x All-American

• 16x qualifier for nationals

• Has tattoos, but none on her face

Hanna is smart, disciplined, and goal-oriented. Physically, she’s not only super fast, but also very strong. She can deadlift twice her bodyweight, do 5 or 6 pull ups, has a 26” vertical, etc. I started her and Holli at the gym at 10 years old, so I will take a little credit for those achievements.

She will be a great addition to the gym. 

Plus, she is different from me in some key ways. First, she’s a female. I do think it’s beneficial, if possible, to have trainers from both genders, as we have men and women clients.

10am client Kelly Thompson recently said, 

“This is the only place where I pay a man to tell me what to do!”

The irony of Kelly’s statement is that 100% of people pay me but - on our best days in the gym - only about 75% of people listen when I tell them what to do. Maybe we’ll go above that with Hanna coaching with me.

Second, Hanna is waaaaay nicer than me. I’ll admit it: I can be a bit direct. Some would say I’m harsh. And more than one person in the gym has recently said something like, 

“Sometimes I hate you Shane.” 

I doubt they’ll ever say that about Hanna. 

Third, Hanna brings some well-rounded culture to balance out my Paragon redneck ways. I’ve already mentioned her academic and athletic achievements. But she also spent the 2024 summer in Spain learning to speak Spanish. She’s traveled all around Europe. She even dated a guy once whose mom was from Belgium and dad from Luxembourg. (Thankfully that ended because I couldn’t bear the thought of having a brother-in-law named “Olivier.”) To be fair to my wife, we have traveled to 12 different countries (Canada, England, Ireland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Lichtenstein, The Netherlands, Italy, and the Vatican), but that was in the past . . . Paragon is our present and future.

Now, why hire Hanna?

The obvious answer: to grow the business. 

Some classes have a lot of room to grow, but many are at or are nearing capacity. Which is fantastic! The gym has grown a lot over the past few years in large part to your referrals, which I really appreciate - THANK YOU. So it will be helpful to me and all of you to have another person around directing traffic. My plan is to fill every class to 12-14 people and then add more times once we get there. Hanna will be a huge resource when pursuing that goal. I may also have Hanna add a class or two on speed and explosive power for athletes, since she is an expert there. 

But another reason I hired Hanna is to give myself a little breathing room. It is, to be quite frank, not easy being a one-man show with early mornings, late evenings, Saturday mornings, etc. It has gotten gradually harder as the gym has grown and as my family has grown. The more time I spend at work, the less I get to spend with my wife and kids. And I really like my clients - but I like my family a lot more (sorry, Strength Schoolers). 

So having Hanna here will take some pressure off of me (which I need now that I’m 37 years old) and allow Strength School to continue offering a very high-level service without pushing myself into chronic fatigue, sickness, disease, and eventual death. Just in the past couple of years, I’ve gotten too sick to work a few times and had to send Anna in, as many of you know. I gashed open my forehead a few months ago at 5:37am getting ready to leave for the gym. I had blood running down my face but if I don’t leave my house by 5:40, I will be late for the 6:00am class. So I quickly woke up Anna and said, “You’ve got to put a bandage on this and make it stop bleeding, and you need to do it quick because I gotta go!”

I’m just saying, it would be nice in such instances to know that my business will continue on and clients will be taken care of if I’m out sick for a day or 15 minutes late dealing with a trauma wound to my head. 

A big mistake I made in the past when employing other trainers was abdication of responsibility, not delegation. I spent too much time outside the gym trying to grow the business with advertising, or opening a second gym. I mistakenly got away from face-to-face time with my clients. The plan now is to be coaching classes as normal with Hanna as a second coach, most days. 

So you won’t be escaping me any time soon . . .