DETROIT -- You’re Up, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing physical therapy, personal training and spinal cord rehabilitation to people without insurance, was started earlier this year in the Detroit area by former NFL player Charlie Sanders Jr. and personal trainer Rossano Rea.
After five months of fundraising, the duo is now offering a year of free services to those who qualify in southeast Michigan. To qualify for You’re Up, applicants must be uninsured and have household incomes below $22,000 per year.
Sanders told local media that the program could serve up to 150 people a day and ultimately could grow to thousands more when they open a 40,000-square-foot facility in Detroit that was anonymously donated to the organization. Sanders is working to raise money to transform the building into a fitness facility with a swimming pool.
Rea currently donates his Bodymorph gym in Ferndale, MI, for You’re Up services. Oakland MRI will provide diagnostic care for You’re Up, and Lucia Zamorano, a clinical professor of neurological surgery, and Fred Leff, a podiatrist at the Detroit Medical Center, will be the organization’s medical advisers.
Sanders played briefly in 2000 with the Detroit Lions, the team for which his father, Charlie Sanders, starred for 10 seasons. The elder Sanders was enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2007.