Elite Gym USA marking 30th anniversary with celebration

Published 11:25 am Tuesday, November 1, 2022

Milledgeville’s Elite Gym USA is celebrating its milestone 30th anniversary this year. 

Founder Coni Adams Barnes originally owned For Kids Only daycare in Milledgeville but she remained involved in the fitness industry. She traveled throughout the southeast teaching seminars, and aerobics classes, training fitness instructors and conducting personal training for athletes and bodybuilders. She said that opening Elite Gym USA in 1992 was perfect for her because it combines the passion that Adams Barnes has for fitness and her love for kids. 

Elite Gym USA started in a 5,000-square-foot building on Log Cabin Road where it operated for 25 years. The business eventually moved to its current 20,000-square-foot facility at 50 Ga. Highway 22 West because of its growth. 

“We had outgrown our smaller facility at about the 15-year point. When our new building came available, it was an absolute answer to prayer,” Barnes recalled. “But I tell everyone that I had never dreamed it this big. Evidently, God had much bigger plans from me than I did.”

The business has 47 staff members and serves more than 500 families in the middle Georgia area. Elite offers a range of classes including recreational and competitive gymnastics, recreational and competitive cheer, combo classes with gymnastics and dance, gymnastics and cheer and TaeKwonDo. Elite’s newest program, Go Ninja, is a gymnastics-based obstacle course class. Elite Gym USA also has a mobile gymnastics school known as Buzzy Bus travels to local daycares and church programs in the mornings for ages walking to preschool. 

“Our bus has all of the equipment that you would find in a gymnastics gym but on a junior scale, including a zip line,” Barnes said. 

Elite Gym USA offers a selection of camps including gymnastics, cheer, dance, karate, Go Ninja, and KidzZone during school holidays and the summer. More offerings from Elite Gym USA can be found at  https://elitegymusa.com/.

The prices for the services at Elite Gym USA vary.

Barnes said that it is “a little surreal” that Elite Gym USA is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. 

“On one hand it feels like I have done this my whole life as it is just a part of me. On the other hand, 30 years have flown by so incredibly fast,” she said. 

Barnes has seen and served a generation of children who are in their 20s to early 40s now. She calls it “quite an honor” that kids that she previously coached are now bringing their children to her for coaching. 

Elite Gym USA will hold an anniversary celebration on Nov. 9, which will also see the Milledgeville-Baldwin County Chamber of Commerce pay a visit for a ribbon cutting. That day will also acknowledge the official kick-off year for the Buzzy Bus mobile gymnastics school. 

Barnes said what she loves most about running her business is the relationships that she has built over the past 30 years. 

“We call it our ‘Elite family’ and that’s exactly what it is. Between my daycare and this gym, I have literally raised thousands of children in this community. Kids will sometimes come back and quote me on something that I said to them when they were small and tell me that they never forgot it and it never ceases to blow me away,” she says. “I feel so loved. Each generation of kids keeps me on my toes and keeps me young! I just can’t imagine doing anything but this. I am so blessed to do what I do.”