BILT for success: Agassi unveils long-hidden workout secrets

The secret's out.

For more than 20 years, Andre Agassi and his strength trainer, Gil Reyes, kept the tennis great's conditioning regimen classified, national-security style.

But Thursday, at the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association's trade show in Los Angeles, the business partners will unveil the fruits of their startup venture to make and sell exercise equipment based on the strength and conditioning routine Agassi followed while racking up eight Grand Slam titles. Their new company, BILT by Agassi & Reyes, will offer 12 machines, all modeled on equipment Reyes created exclusively for Agassi.

"This is an evolution of 20 years together, and every piece of equipment in BILT is a machine that Gil literally hand-sketched and single-handedly cut and welded to give me the opportunity to get stronger with zero risk as it relates to safety," Agassi said Tuesday from his 14,000-square-foot warehouse in southwest Las Vegas. "It's been our dream for a long time to see this come to life."

BILT's emphasis, as Agassi noted, is equipment that builds strength safely, isolating muscles with minimal risk of injury.

The BILT flat bench, for example, has arms that lower the weighted bar over the "sweet spot" across the chest and retract on the bar's lift-off. That eliminates shoulder stress from reaching up and back to lift the weighted bar up from a traditional bench press. The change-of-direction machine is built for safe squats and side shuffles by providing a direct line of movement to protect the spine and back muscles and to conform to the body's natural angles. The BILT abdominal machine isolates ab muscles through a full-range sit-up motion to reduce the risk of back injury.

Some common exercise machines, such as the bench press, haven't had a redesign in 70 years, Reyes noted.

"We believe, as a result of this innovation, that the bench press will actually become obsolete," Reyes said.

BILT will focus for now on sales to universities, high schools, health clubs and professional sports teams, but it's possible the company will eventually sell to individual consumers. Reyes didn't give specific prices, but said the machines' cost would be on the "higher end of the spectrum."

Las Vegas is a natural fit for BILT. Aside from being Agassi's native town, Las Vegas has a significant sports equipment industry. A recent export report from the Brookings Institution found that medical equipment and sporting goods ranked No. 4 on the list of top local exports, with $610 million in machines exported from the market in 2010. The sector claimed 8.2 percent of the city's export base.

BILT has about a dozen employees now, but expects to grow quickly. The partners are already looking to double their office and warehouse space as inventory comes in from a factory near Shanghai.

Agassi said he has the same passion for BILT that he brought to his educational endeavors. He said he had three goals when he retired from tennis in 2006: to see his Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy in West Las Vegas funded in perpetuity; to help finance charter-school buildings nationwide; and to turn his custom-designed training machines into something that could "literally be in the lives of millions of people."

He's already accomplished the first two, raising funds to permanently endow Agassi Prep and co-launching in June the Canyon-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund, an investment group designed to help charter schools nationwide finance buildings. The fund's first effort, a building for KIPP Philadelphia Elementary Academy in Pennsylvania, opened in January.

And though you might not see much similarity between charter schools and exercise equipment, Agassi said one thread underlies all of his ventures.

"It's authenticity. I don't do anything halfway anymore, certainly not at this stage of my life," he said. "I have the luxury of pouring myself 100 percent into these things. Everything I do has to be authentic. In this case (with BILT), this is what I trained my whole life on, and Gil and I built this over two decades out of a love and commitment to one another to always give our best, and to do a little more than what is asked of us. We don't want to do things like they've been done. We want to do things differently."

Contact reporter Jennifer Robison at jrobison@review
journal.com or 702-380-4512.