By Tabitha Evans Moore
Editor & Publisher
In his twenties, Spencer Smith — like a lot of us — struggled. He felt depressed and drank a little more than he should. He also slugged around 100 extra pounds that began to trigger a cascade of health consequences. As his thirtieth birthday approached, something inside him screamed, “enough!”
“It was time to take a big dose of accountability and ownership,” Spencer says.
If you know Spencer well, you know he doesn’t do anything halfway. He immersed himself in health and wellness information and even enrolled to earn an ACE personal training certification — not so much to become a fitness guru but rather to learn the fundamentals.
At the time, Spencer lived in Nashville and worked in the financial services industry. Over the next year, he completely transformed his habits. He replaced Thirsty Thursdays and greasy, late-night binges with daily exercise and mindful, whole food eating. It didn’t happen overnight, but eventually the number on the scale started to head south while his energy and confidence excelled. He went from five daily prescriptions to none. But most important, Spencer says, he deepened his relationship with God.
That’s when a bit of serendipity happened. As he began to lean into the idea that something greater than himself might be supporting him, the COVID 19 pandemic struck and sparked an internal recalibration about his due north.
When his brother and his family decided to return to Lynchburg, Spencer says he felt the nudge too. As it turned out, that decision led to the birth of iQ Fitness.
“It became a way for me to turn my experience into a mission of helping others reclaim their health and vitality,” he says.
Coming Home
Spencer Smith is a Moore County original — Smith and Wallace on either sides, which he describes with characteristic self-deprecation as “the most milk-toast breed I could be.”
He grew up on Essie Cleek Road before his family — parents, Janie and Steve and brothers, Derek, Drew, and Evan — moved to a farm off Five Points Road, where his father was raised, and where the extended Smith clan has since resettled into something of a family compound. In addition to his personal training small business, he helps care for his 91-year-old grandmother.
He graduated from Moore County High School in 2004. He briefly tried football, but, as he tells it, “brought absolutely no value to the team” — so he got a job at Kroger and saved up for his first car.
“I was better at remembering PLU codes and bagging groceries than running plays,” he laughs.
Nearly two decades later, he returned and brought something with him that Southern Middle Tennessee has never seen before.
The Machine That Changes Everything
Inside iQ Fitness, tucked into Tullahoma, sits a piece of technology that until recently was found almost exclusively in major cities and the training facilities of NFL teams. It’s called ARX — Adaptive Resistance Training — and Spencer was the second person to bring it to Tennessee. There are currently only three ARX locations in the entire state.
The system is, at its core, a robotic strength trainer powered by artificial intelligence. Unlike free weights or traditional machines — where the resistance is fixed regardless of how your muscles are performing — ARX reads your output in real time and adjusts resistance to match exactly what you’re capable of delivering at every moment of every rep. It eliminates the momentum, sticking points, and joint overload that make traditional lifting both less effective and more injury-prone.
Spencer discovered it through biohacking communities during his own health transformation, then became a user himself after his first hip procedure. Before his second hip surgery, ARX helped him gain nearly 12 pounds of muscle and meaningfully improved his recovery.
“You act on the machine, and it responds to you,” he says. “Most users only need one workout per week because of the high-intensity, adaptive nature of the training.”
As the coach, Spencer programs each session — setting the parameters for time under tension, reps, and recovery — while the system tracks and quantifies every aspect of performance. The result is a fully data-driven workout that typically runs about 10 minutes and delivers what would otherwise take an hour of traditional training.
His college business instructors, he admits with a laugh, would probably shake their heads at his decision to plant this technology in a small town. He’s not deterred.
“I’m passionate about making this accessible to people in rural communities like ours who might otherwise never experience it,” he says.
Who It’s For
Spencer’s clients range from 12 to 78 years old, and his ideal client is anyone who wants to age well — staying strong, mobile, and independent for as long as possible. He has a particular passion for working with people over 50, a generation he says received a lot of incorrect advice about exercise and nutrition over the years.
“I see people who worked hard their entire lives, saved diligently, and looked forward to retirement — only to find their bodies no longer allow them to travel, climb stairs, or enjoy the activities they dreamed of,” he says. “That breaks my heart.”
He’s not chasing six-pack goals. He wants his clients to be able to garden without feeling wiped out, keep up with their grandkids on the basketball court, and move through daily life with fewer aches and pains. Clients come from across the region — Tullahoma, Lynchburg, and as far away as Nashville.
Guffaws and side eye may be exchanged during a session, he acknowledges. “But afterward,” he says, “you’ll be glad you came.”
The Business of Staying Well
Spencer is the first to acknowledge that his pricing can cause some initial sticker shock. But he’s quick to put it in context: broken down, his memberships come out to roughly half the cost of hiring a traditional personal trainer — and every workout is personally programmed and supervised, one-on-one, by him. Clients also receive body composition scans, red light therapy, and personalized nutrition and lifestyle guidance. Things a corporate gym simply doesn’t offer.
“Fitness is always one of the first things cut from a budget,” he says. “But the long-term costs of poor health — medical bills, prescriptions, chronic illness — are far greater than any gym membership.”
For anyone curious, Spencer offers free studio tours and free demos. Body composition scans are available to anyone in the community at no charge, by appointment. He doesn’t do walk-ins — because he supervises every workout personally — but he doesn’t do hard sells either.
“I’m not pushy or salesy,” he says. “I just want people to learn.”
The Philosophy Behind the Practice
Spencer’s approach to health extends well beyond the hour — or ten minutes — you spend in his studio. His foundational advice is deceptively simple: start slow, give yourself grace, and prioritize consistency above everything else.
“No one has ever regretted a workout, but many regret skipping one,” he says.
On nutrition, he’s equally direct. He’s a believer in real, whole foods — red meat, quality proteins, butter, salt — and a skeptic of the ultra-processed, sugar-laden options that fill most grocery carts. At iQ Fitness, he jokes that they live in “opposite land,” where they lift with their backs, let their knees go over their toes, and eat the foods mainstream diet culture spent decades demonizing.
“Our bodies aren’t designed for what most people are putting in them,” he says simply.
For anyone overwhelmed by where to start, Spencer offers a practical framework: go to bed and wake up at consistent times, treat your workouts like non-negotiable appointments, and plan your meals at least two days ahead. None of it is revolutionary. All of it works.
He also knows what it feels like to fall short — and he’s honest about it. The difference, he says, is learning not to let a bad week become a bad month. Action comes first. Motivation follows. Waiting until you feel ready, in his experience, is the surest way to never start at all.
And when the chaos of modern life threatens to swallow your best intentions? Spencer has a remedy for that too. He points to Exodus.
“You may not be Moses,” he says, “but you can take control of your own chaos and protect your time intentionally.”
It’s the kind of advice that sounds like it came from hard experience. In Spencer’s case, it did.
iQ Fitness is located just across from historic, Downtown Tullahoma on North Atlantic Street. Touring the studio is free to anyone and he provides free, by appointment body composition scans to anyone as a community service. You can learn more on his website or follow him on his Facebook page for additional information. •
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