How PSKC Runs a Gym That Changes Lives

In 2007, Dale King was in the military when he got bit hard by the CrossFit bug. After leaving the Army, he found his way back to his hometown of Portsmouth, Ohio — two hours south of Columbus, right on the river between Kentucky and West Virginia — and decided to open a gym in one of the poorest and most drug-addicted counties in the entire state.

"I figured, what the hell — let's charge people five bucks a workout and hope I can pay rent," Dale says. "That's kind of how the whole thing went down."

The CrossFit community ran deep from the start — Dale learned the discipline from Bill Henniger, who went on to found Rogue Fitness. He quit his day job in 2015 and went full-time into the business.

Today, Portsmouth Spartan Kettlebell Club — known as PSKC — is far more than a gym. The building houses both the gym and the manufacturing and fulfillment operation for Doc Spartan, a first aid company Dale co-founded that landed a deal with Robert Herjavec on Shark Tank in 2017. The company grew out of the gym community itself — a member was making natural creams and lotions, and Dale connected that with his nonprofit work supporting adaptive athletes who needed better first aid solutions for prosthetic-related skin issues.

When Doc Spartan's growth created a need for part-time workers, the gym's impact expanded again. A member working at a local addiction treatment center suggested that group fitness could be a powerful tool in the recovery space. Since 2018, PSKC has been using fitness as an alternative therapy for substance use disorder — work that's become central to the gym's mission in a community hit hard by the opioid crisis.

Dale is also Head of Affiliates for Metfix, the metabolic health education platform founded by Greg Glassman, which provides tools and connections to help gym owners become expert educators on nutrition and metabolic health.

Why PushPress

Dale has been a PushPress client since the early days of running PSKC, and he's seen the full evolution — from tracking member payments on a whiteboard to running his entire operation on PushPress.

The value became crystal clear on a recent Monday morning, when he walked into the gym at 5:30 a.m. to find that a quarter of his roof had blown off in a windstorm overnight, creating an unintentional indoor waterfall.

"I'm dealing with clients, trying to get classes going, moving stuff out of the way — it's just another Monday," Dale says. "But in the background, I didn't have to worry about class reservations. I didn't have to worry about automatic messages being sent out. I didn't have to worry about leads being responded to."

"I look at you guys as the central nervous system for any gym operation. If you get it set up and get it running right, it takes a lot of the burden that I hate dealing with on the admin and ops side. It gives me the freedom to focus on the business instead of in the business."

In Dale's Words

"What you guys have to understand is the value you're creating for the people on the front lines making impact into the day-to-day life of their members is incredible. Everything you do benefits the gym owner. And if it benefits the gym owner, more lives can be changed for good."

Watch Dale's full conversation with CEO Dan Uyemura.