The gym is aiming to serve women who feel intimidated in traditional fitness spaces by empowering them with equipment and training designed specifically for them.
DENVER — When Carissa Gomez and Alex French describe the last few months, they often default to speaking in unison — a habit that emerged somewhere between a move to a new state, the renovation of a former CrossFit box, and the launch of their new women-only gym in Denver.
Co-owners Gomez and French held their grand opening of Divine Feminine Fitness on Saturday. It’s one of the few gyms in Denver built exclusively for women.
“It is very surreal,” French said. “This is something that we’ve been working on, and oh my gosh, I’m already emotional about it.”
The two met as personal trainers at a women’s gym in Kansas City, but “never really, like, talked together,” Gomez said.
That shifted in May, when they sat down for lunch and, as Gomez put it, “within 15 minutes of talking, we’re like, we’re moving across states, and we’re doing this.”
Within the next few days, the Denver gym they would eventually purchase went up for sale.
By July, they had taken over the space in southeast Denver that used to be Kali Fitness. Over the next three months, they expanded it — at one point knocking down a wall themselves — and reworked it around a central premise: traditional gyms often aren’t designed for the physical realities or psychological barriers many women face.
“We both came from like just co-ed gyms,” Gomez said. “We saw all of these different ways that just kind of stopped women from feeling comfortable in the gym.”
Gomez said the pattern held across their clients.
“Women in general were just calmer when they came to the gym, and they felt more comfortable and confident coming into it whenever it was just women,” she said.
Their goal, she added, was to create “a safe learning zone” where women could “be encouraged by one another.”
That approach extends to physiology and equipment. The co-owners said most commercial machines are built around average male height and proportions.
“There’s a lot of equipment that actually doesn’t fit the majority of women’s bodies,” French said.
To address that, they selected machines with wider height ranges and options that reduce the need for improvised adjustments.
Their programming also reflects research on hormonal fluctuations and metabolic differences.
“Men can just train the same all day, every day. Their energy is always the same,” French said. “For women, our bodies require so much more work and deference, and so it’s important to be able to pay attention to that and have programming that reflects that as well.”
For some early members, the shift is tangible. Kylie Gray, who works in a women-dominated field and recently relocated to Denver, said she found the business online and immediately recognized it might feel different from a traditional gym.
“I suffer from, like, a lot of, like, gym anxiety,” she said. “I’m too intimidated to, like, go up to the lifting machine.”
After taking one of their classes and getting involved in their personal training, Gray said it gave her the confidence to be more consistent than she had been in years.
“And I’m starting to achieve some of my goals,” she said.
Inside the gym, the owners acknowledge that the work has been consuming.
“We’ve put blood, sweat and tears into this place,” French said. “Literally, we were on all floors, scrubbing the floor, Cinderella style.” Still, she said, “All of it is so worth it… just to see the impact and the change we’re having in women’s lives.”
Both French and Gomez believe the need they see locally reflects something broader.
“Like, if we affect one person, they can affect somebody else,” Gomez said. “And it just continues. And it’s just this massive movement.”
For more information on memberships, class schedules and how to try out Divine Feminine Fitness, visit their website at divinefemininefitness.com