CI 2010 Speaker Richard Simmons Takes the Stage

CHICAGO -- Richard Simmons is well known in the fitness industry as a television personality, but fewer people know that he is also a fitness club owner. So when he addressed the audience Thursday at Club Industry 2010, he did so not only as a celebrity keynote speaker, but as a peer.

In front of a room packed with industry professionals, Simmons told the story of how he came to be interested in exercise, and how he opened his fitness club, Slimmons, 35 years ago in Beverly Hills with money he had saved up from years of waiting tables. Now 62, Simmons says he still teaches more than 200 classes a year there.

To read more about Simmons’s keynote address, see our blog.