Lander Peerman, Found of Fushion Fitness (PhOTO BY CAROLINE MOOREHEAD)

The stereo blasts the beats of Justin Bieber’s latest song and Backstreet Boys throwbacks. Fans circulate air above. Eight treadmills are neatly lined up against the mirrored wall beckoning for their next victims. As soon as you walk in, the cheery founder, Lander Peerman, meets you at the door. It’s called Fusion Fitness, and is the hippest (and hardest) way to work out in Dallas.

How it all happened

But running a fitness studio wasn’t always her goal. An Austin native, the 25-year-old is a University of Texas graduate. Her dad, a successful entrepreneur in Austin, jokingly gave Peerman the choice of going to school or taking the tuition money and opening a business. “My mom was like ‘Hell no,'” Peerman says, “you’re going to go, and you’re going to pledge Chi Omega.”  She double majored in business and communication, graduating at the top of her class in the McCombs School of Business, but during her junior year, she became very involved in the UT recreation center’s group fitness programs. “I was like, ‘I really want to do this for a living,'” she says. Several internships in communication and business reinforced her idea of not wanting to be in an office setting for eight hours a day.

After college, Peerman moved on a whim to New York City to follow the man she was dating at the time. During her time there, she worked for Sports Club LA, which is similar to the Dallas Country Club in terms of membership. She managed the group fitness program and helped members figure out what classes’ best matched their needs. After leaving New York City to go back to Austin, she met Neissa Springmann, of Ignite Fitness, who was instrumental in opening her studio. Peerman taught for Springmann and thought, “Well I like the outside aspect of it, but eventually I’d like to have my own studio.” When Peerman moved to Dallas with a friend who was a teacher in Highland Park, she began hosting her own boot camps at Southern Methodist University under the name “Dash.” “But again, the outside in Texas is the killer,” she says, “It’s cold. It’s hot. It’s raining. I mean there’s like three days a year when it’s perfect.” She started looking for a studio that would let her keep the group dynamics of the class going while allowing her to incorporate cardio into the hour time limit.

Making Dallas home base

“I picked the Design District because I thought it’d be close enough to SMU,” she says, “But really we’ve found that it probably needs to be closer.” Even though it could stand to be a little closer than the 10-minute jaunt down the Dallas North Tollway, that doesn’t stop hoards of SMU women from attending the classes. As soon as you pull into her studio’s parking lot, you’ll see cars lined up with sorority letters on the back and women walking in decked out in sorority and SMU gear. Caroline Aston goes back every week for the positive feedback from the class. “I think that between the atmosphere and the number of familiar faces at each class are what keeps Fusion so popular, especially for other SMU girls,” Aston says. What was originally a fun, but hard, way to work out has also become a way for women to gather before or after a school day to get their daily sweat on. Ashley Anderson joined Fusion Fitness just a month after its opening and has been working with Peerman ever since. “I love Fusion workout because it’s the only workout class I’ve been to where after the class, I’m dripping in sweat,” she says.

Doing it her way

The women’s only studio is open every day but Sunday and holds a variety of classes ranging from the signature Fusion Fitness to Tabata. “I’m trained in group fitness and personal training, and they don’t teach you a particular format,” Peerman says, “I’ve taken what I’ve liked. I’ve gone to every studio in Dallas and tried every form of class.” Despite there always being 30 minutes of cardio in every workout class, her strengthening and stretching never repeat themselves. After trying a class at a different gym, she’ll reflect on it: “I like this about it, I don’t like this about it. Let’s add this here, let’s cut this there.”

So how does Peerman do it? Half of the class is always cardio and the other half is toning exercises. “And that’s what the name is: speed, strength, stretch.” She says that a woman’s body needs those three things almost every day so that’s why she calls it a fusion workout. Marathon runners that take the class can’t even keep up because they “have tunnel vision with their workout when the body really needs to be constantly challenged in new ways.” The name “Fusion Fitness” came to her after talking with her best friend and roommate, Courtney. One day Peerman said she was talking to her roommate who said, “you know what, in one hour I want to be able to get my cardio, my resistance training, and I want to be able to stretch out a little bit.” That conversation inspired Peerman to create her workouts based on a fusion of strength, resistance, and cardio workouts.

Plans for the future

Her studio, which is flooded with women for every class, has 60-70 members currently and aims for 100 by the end of the year. She also has five instructors, all Lululemon Athletica girls, with the hopes of adding two more by the end of the year. In the future, Peerman hopes to expand into multiple studios. “Eventually I’d like to go back to Austin and raise a family there,” she says, “so opening a bunch in Dallas then venturing off to Austin and maybe Houston. That’s part of my five, ten year career plan.” The young fitness entrepreneur also hopes to venture into complimentary industries for fitness like spas and health foods.

For Peerman, it’s been a whirlwind of a year: “It’s gone great so far, we’re only seven months in and we’re already talking about second locations.”