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Episode 4 - Living Local with Ian McKay with Strong Hand Fit
Date: 10/20/25
Duration: 27:08
Guest: Ian McKay
Website: Strong Hand Fit
Episode 4 summary:
In this episode, Ed Frisbee sits down with Ian McKay, owner of Strong Hand Fit in Hendersonville, North Carolina, to talk about health, fitness, discipline, and community. Ian shares his inspiring journey from powerlifting and Navy service to building a thriving local fitness business dedicated to helping people live stronger, healthier lives.
They discuss:
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Ian’s 40-pound weight loss journey and how he overcame stress eating
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The story behind his Navy nickname “Big Show”
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Life aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and his connection to the Captain Phillips rescue mission
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Transitioning from strength training to overall wellness and agility
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His plans for Strong Hand Fit’s new 24/7 gym and wellness center, featuring cold plunges, saunas, smoothie bar, and recovery spaces
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Favorite local Hendersonville restaurants for pizza, burgers, and steak
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How he’s helping locals stay strong — body, mind, and spirit
This episode captures the essence of Living Local — real conversations with people who are strengthening Western North Carolina through passion, perseverance, and purpose.
Episode 4 transcript:
Hey, it's Ed with Living Local with Frisbee Real Estate and our special guest today is Mr. Ian McKay with Strong Hand Fit here in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Ian, thanks so much for joining us for the next few minutes. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. So, Ian, I'll start off a little different than normal. ⁓ If people see you on our podcast, you're bigger than most of our guests. ⁓ So that might give them an idea of what you do, but go and tell us what you do.
So without getting too long winded on this, cause I can, ⁓ my background is in powerlifting, ⁓ but I've always been a larger human being, I guess. ⁓ And I say that with a little bit of reserve because there are much larger humans out there than I am, but you know, I'm ever six foot tall and I've been 330 pounds for the past five, six years until recently ⁓ I decided to make changes in my life and
Lose weight some down 40 pounds down to 290. Wow. That's huge. Yeah, no pun intended. Yeah, that's yeah. How'd you do that? Very very excited. Um, I learned that I was a stress eater. Oh, um, You know, know, we're gonna we've you introduced the gym. I'm I own the gym here in town strong hand fit We're moving in right across the street from y'all. Um And so I wanted to be sure that I looked the part um for years I
relied on my strength as my indicator for being in the gym world. I had to step away from strength because of my intentions needed to be focused on the business. So there I was, 330 plus pounds, not as strong as I used to be, and I've got young daughters that I want to be healthy for. So I started to make the commitment to myself and to my family to lose weight and be more active.
So I'm probably one of the most ⁓ agile 290 pound guys, because I've been so heavy for so long and I've still got a pretty good baseline of strength. So ⁓ I'm changed up my training to focus more on a little bit more athleticism and health. So I didn't know we were going to go down this rabbit trail, but it's great. So do you eat different too then? ⁓ I do. ⁓
I do, I try to intermittent fast sometimes. ⁓ And it's typically like two to three days a week, not every single day. It's not easy. ⁓ It's easy when I'm focused on things. ⁓ So if I have a busy morning, I can easily intermittent fast. And so that would be, if I know I have a busy morning, then that's gonna be my ⁓ fasting day. And really what that looks like is I just, don't eat from.
before I go to bed till one or two o'clock in the afternoon during the day, which is a pretty good substantial amount of time. I'm drinking water during that time. I do have an energy drink, which may set off some of the intermittent fasting people because it's caffeine. I have seen okay results with still having a caffeine drink in the morning. ⁓ But as long as I'm drinking water, I feel great.
⁓ But also changing up my training style. ⁓ I'm focused more on burning calories than on strength right now. I have lots of questions for you. Since we're talking about food though, I'll just jump to one of my favorite questions I ask everyone. And you grew up in the Hendersonville area, I believe. So do you have a favorite restaurant that you recommend to people or you choose to go to? Or maybe a top three list? We might have to do a top three. ⁓ it's safer.
It's because I love food. I have different categories. I love pizza. ⁓ But ⁓ I also love hamburgers. ⁓ So if I'm gonna choose a hamburger place, it would be the Baker's Box ⁓ over on Asheville Highway. ⁓ And then I think we've grown to really like Marco's Pizza.
It's not a local joint. I guess Let's dial that back a little bit. I we love Marcos, but I would probably want to on a show like this one of support local ⁓ And more so if I'm gonna go sit down and eat pizza It's gonna be West first West first has a great pizza. We tend to jump over to pi squared Yeah, sit down. So I'm just not a fan of the crust that they offer for like their
their New York style. But I've also found that I want, I need to eat more thin crust anyways. So I do believe they offer thin crust there. thin crust for me, feel I don't get bloated as, but like I have pretty bad responses to heavy carbs. Amazing pizza company out in the middle of the river. are really good. I stopped in there a few months ago with my daughters and they had really good pizza.
Well, good about pizza and burger. said Baker's box. Baker's box. They have great fries too. ⁓ they have great. I love their fries. The other burger place would be Buddha's. I haven't been there. Yeah. Definitely go check it out. They're right off of Main Street. ⁓ I think that's Barnwell. ⁓ Barnwell and Main Street. It's not Allen, right? Yeah, it's Barnwell. Or I guess they're more so Barnwell King Street. Yep. But no, they have amazing burgers there and you get the, can add, you know,
You can add enough stuff in there to make a 20 plus dollar burger. And it's worth it. And what was the third? So you said burgers and pizza. that it? Steak would be the third. And honestly, that's at home. Me making my own steaks. how do you make your steak? In a grill or oven? So I do like to do a grill, but there has to be a cast iron involved. And then I use ghee butter.
Instead of regular butter if I don't have ghee butter, I would use an Irish real butter ⁓ Kerrygold is good, but ghee butter is probably my favorite. I haven't tapped into ⁓ Using ⁓ Man I forgot the name of it, but it's a it's more of a fat than ⁓ Tallow I haven't yeah, yeah, I'll tell them. I've heard that's really good taste wise and for you but
The simple recipe that I like to do for steaks is ⁓ pull your steak out of the fridge, let it get to room temperature. ⁓ I poke holes into it with a fork. So I take the fork all the way across it and poke holes on both sides. I then ⁓ put salt on it and I make sure to salt extra the fat on the outside so that the fat can get to like a caramelized state. ⁓ And then I put ⁓
Ghee butter in the cast iron I cook it for depending on the thickness usually around one to two minutes on each side and then I've already got the oven or the the grill ready but the oven is about 425 and I put the whole cast iron in the oven for five minutes and Then it's done. Wow. It's amazing. That sounds delicious. Yeah, I can even smell it Yeah, you can get in some pepper in there too. If you like black pepper. I
don't really, I don't really notice whether I have pepper on there or not. I just want the salt on it. We had Topp's Heirloin at a friend's house last weekend and all they had was salt and it was delicious. Yeah, it's amazing. don't, my, ⁓ I'm very much like, if you need sauce for your steak, then the steak wasn't done right. But then like when you have daughters, I don't know if y'all deal with this or not, but they put steak sauce on it.
And I'm like, I just put my entire heart into this steak. And they're like, steak sauce right away. And I'm like, ⁓ man. ⁓ But I've grown to just let it go. That's good. I can enjoy it myself. then ⁓ my family likes to take the juices afterwards and pour it on top of the steak. And then we'll have ⁓ some sort of vegetable on the side. And they like to do potatoes. I like potatoes too.
Honestly, I typically just try to stay away from as many carbs as I, you know, I'm and I'm not in a athletic performance mindset where my carbs and my proteins are all based to fuel my workouts, which that's a pretty in-depth conversation we could have about my 6,500 calorie days back when I was powerlifting. Well, now you jumped to powerlifting. So I, I met you a few years ago and I think you have a
I don't know if it's a stage name or your handle on Instagram, but it's Big Show or Big Show. Yeah. It still exists? So my Instagram, my personal Instagram is still Big Show. Like just Big Show. Mm hmm. Like the wrestler. might buy that from you. Yeah. Yeah, right. I don't know if I could do that because the Big Show wrestler has that kind of on lock down and he's much larger than I am. I am so sorry. That's all right. As long as it's not a fire drill. No.
No, let me mute, let me put that on silent. I didn't even think about that. There we go. And I'm just gonna set that there. So I was in the Navy and if you have any interesting characteristics about you as a person, you tend to get nicknames. And I was one of the bigger guys, so, or I was the bigger guy. And so I got the nickname Big Show. And that was not short of being called tiny all the time, but.
you know, big show was the one that stuck. So I took that in and, you know, introduced it to my powerlifting, introduced it into my coaching and even my event promotion. And it's kind of on standstill right now as I focus on the gym. Oh, thank you for your service in the Navy. And when did you serve? From 06 to 14. Okay. I was in the Navy.
and I was a nuclear machinist mate, so I worked with nuclear reactors and steam propulsion. ⁓ So I got fully certified through the nuclear power program, the Naval Nuclear Power Program down in Goose Creek, South Carolina. And I went to my first ship, the Dwight D. Eisenhower, it's a carrier. ⁓ I was immediately put into the ⁓ secondary system, which if you know anything about nuclear, if you don't,
It's pretty simple. You've got a reactor that creates heat and that's the primary system. And then you have to have containment for anything that deals with radiation. So there's now a secondary system. Primary system heats the secondary system and that creates steam. Steam drives the turbine generators that create electricity for the boat. And it drives the main engines that create propulsion for the boat. And we also created water and ⁓ steam for the catapults on the flight deck.
So we were the, we provided the power to launch the aircraft off of the aircraft carriers. So I was in that for eight years, but I was on Dwight D. Eisenhower for four and a half years. I did two tours. First one in 08, 09. So we left in 09 and I got to the ship in 08. We left in 09. That was a short deployment. It was like five and a half months. And then my second deployment was almost eight months.
and that was ⁓ in 2010. ⁓ And that was ⁓ a deployment, I believe, that ⁓ we got approached by Somalian pirate ships. ⁓ We rescued Captain Phillips off the Maersk shipping containers. He was ⁓ captured by Somalian pirates. ⁓ And then ⁓ we supported the effort on the ground. ⁓
what we call putting warheads on foreheads. They made a movie about that, right? They did, yeah. Tom Hanks played Jackson Phillips. So it's a funny story because I didn't realize that was us until I watched the movie and I was sitting in the movie theater. was like. And so then I looked at the timeline and sure enough, it was I was over there. That's why they just they don't tell us anything. So did this storyline kind of line up with what really happened? So I've I've.
got a few friends that served with Reconnaissance and SEAL teams and ⁓ some of the movie talks about ⁓ them shooting the pirates from the bow of the Bainbridge, which is the ship that ⁓ was a part of my strike group. ⁓ And I don't think that happened, how that happened. I also ⁓ was told that Chris Kyle was a part of the effort and I'm not sure how, to what extent.
He was, that's American Sniper, they made a movie about him too. And of course they're gonna Hollywoodize it, but unfortunately I'm at the bottom of a ship and we were probably about 100 miles north of the event when it happened. That's really cool. I bet we could take a whole podcast talking about that. Well, I haven't even asked you about your business yet. So you have strong hand fit.
Which is across the street you moved to this location recently and you're in the process of building it out Yes, you have lots of big plans so big plan give everybody an update and sure kind of a timeline What all is going to be there? So originally, so I actually took over the space in February of this year ⁓ and so we're now in ⁓ October and we haven't moved in we haven't built it out yet ⁓
I have been thrown almost every hurdle that could be possibly thrown in this process, but equally and if not more, doors have opened up in this process too. you know, I know everything happens for a reason in our life and the space will open up when it's supposed to open up, but we are in the process of closing on
SBA ⁓ business loan right now. So that's supposed to close this month. And once that closes, then we'll be able to begin the remodel process. But in the meantime, we set up a tent in the parking lot, of ⁓ just making it happen, you know, and a testament to my... ⁓
Attestment to who I am as a business owner and how I'm going to serve my community This tent is making sure that people that want to support our business and want to work out with us because they love our community have a place and so I set it up and then got it going and people supported it hugely and I realized that as a business owner you you really have the freedom to do whatever you want
Not in a sadistic way, ⁓ in a, hey, I'm not, I actually am not bound to someone else's wills. Now, of course, you gotta go through the permit process and you gotta have everything safe and get fire marshal approval. But ⁓ if you have an idea and you have the willpower, the hardheadedness to pursue it, ⁓ owning a business or running your own,
space, you can do whatever you want and you can pursue whatever goal you have. that's what I learned through that process. Well said. And your customer base is growing. They left, they're staying the same during the transition. So we were very fortunate. Now the tent does not make as much money as the other place did.
It's a transitional period. ⁓ But we've had close to 40 people pause their membership and with every intention of starting it back up when we open up the new space. ⁓ But ⁓ we've signed up just as many new people since we've opened the tent. So ⁓ that's kind of been, I guess, a wash in a sense. But we've also had normal attrition.
⁓ We haven't lost a lot of people just because of the tent ⁓ other than the pauses ⁓ So very fortunate amazing membership base that we have awesome and we're excited to grow it even further in the new space So tell us how can people find out about strong hand fit website? So we've got a website it is strong hand fitness comm. Okay, it still has the old name I'm not sure how to change that ⁓ As as a business owner, I wear all wear all the hats right now
And so I am web designer, graphic designer, ⁓ social media manager, everything. I have a really good accountant now, so I'm not doing that anymore, which is nice. ⁓ But ⁓ my website is stronghandfitness.com. I do keep that updated pretty regularly. ⁓ Our main social media platform is Instagram, but we do carry over into Facebook and TikTok.
⁓ And everything there has been named strong hand fit got it And so if you search and in fact, I believe if you Google strong hand fit ⁓ It will come up Awesome. Tell us your plans with the new space. I know you've got some good ideas. Yeah, so I was born raised here was born at party hospital pretty local ⁓ And I want
my space to be Hendersonville's choice for where they seek out fitness and being healthy. The gym has kind of transformed over the past few years. I opened it up as a strength-based gym. I'm still pushing strength because just for example, if you go to a physical therapist, if you're hurt, their primary goal is to make you stronger. Strength has...
has an ability to carry over into anti-aging, defying gravity, and keeping you healthy at any point in your life. So with that being said, our focus is still strength, but we are going to be a 24-7 gym and wellness center. So we're bringing in cold plunge and sauna. So you'll have the ability to do some recovery. We'll have other recovery options as well. And then the gym itself is 18,000 square feet.
We are opening up phase one, which is about 14,000. 12,000 usable space for the gym and then the rest of its bathrooms, locker room showers, cold plunger sauna, and some sublet spaces for other health minded businesses. We're gonna have a smoothie bar. We're also gonna be renting out bikes for the Acoustic Trail.
So we'll have a plethora of options and fun stuff to do as well as staying in shape and being as strong as you can. Awesome. And do you have a timeline? Would you guess? What I've been telling people is January, February. that's great. We've got to get started on the remodel before I can really figure out the timeline. ⁓ My goal is to have...
a date set for the grand opening, a secondary date set for the grand opening, and then start preparing a month out, staffing and ⁓ training my staff. And then ⁓ I'd like to do some initial walkthroughs with ⁓ some like VIP style walkthroughs, because the goal is not only to create a good gym, but a beautiful space.
And so I want people to experience that in a private setting before we open and then bring in some big names in the industry, but also be 100 % sure that our grand opening date can happen on that day. That means the CEO needs to happen the final fire marshal walkthrough. All of that needs to happen.
And so then we'll give ourselves about two weeks after that to train and prepare. Awesome. I look forward to it. Me too. I'm super excited. I bet it's been a long journey. Yeah. And it's with walk within walking distance of y'all. Yep. Maybe there's a special local business discount. There is actually. I do try to work with local businesses as much as possible. So, yep. Well, you know, as, ⁓ we, we have a VIP club for our clients, so maybe we work a deal out where our
clients can sign up for kind of discount. That's very possible. We'll talk about that out there. Sounds good. Would you be so bold to throw out your ballpark pricing just in case people are curious or just send them to the website? No, I've got it kind of posted everywhere. It's $45 a month. There is a registration fee that goes with that just like just about any other gym in the world. And we have discounts for veterans.
⁓ Fire veterans and first responders is the easiest way to say it. ⁓ And then active duty military that's not a recruiter station here, ⁓ active duty gets free membership. Wow, that's awesome. So if you're active duty and coming to town for a week, you can work out for free for a week or however long you're in town. That's a great idea. I'm trying to think of active duty people.
Yeah, there's not many around here where I mean, when I was recruited in the Navy, I had to go to Asheville because there was no Navy Naval recruiter here in town. ⁓ Did you learn the army? I was a I've been a fish all my life. I was on swim team at the Patton pool. Growing up, a little chunky kid in a speedo get like third place. Yeah, it was embarrassing. Especially when when I was ⁓
I ⁓ was there, you know, it's not, we're in the mountains, it's chilly mornings. ⁓ And swim practice was always in the morning at like seven in the summertime. And ⁓ my ⁓ crush's mom was playing tennis right next to us and she was like, hey Ian. And I'm just like, I'm so embarrassed.
I'm wearing a speedo, I'm wearing a swim cap and goggles and just so just out of my comfort zone. At least you didn't have one little snorkel things too. no. flippers or whatever. Yeah, definitely not. No, no, but I've been a fish. I mean, I've loved swimming, you know, I used to I used to practice how long I could hold my breath. And so I got up to I got up to like three minutes. Wow. Something seconds. Wow. That's impressive. Like this was like
super just weird Ian stuff that I would do on my own and would time myself. I heard one time that it was like my grandfather would talked about ⁓ deep sea divers, ⁓ the free divers that would and how they would train themselves to get past that ⁓ initial ⁓ fear of running out of oxygen and they would like make noises that would trick their brain into being okay.
Yeah, I don't think that ever worked for me, but I also didn't have a professional teaching me. So this was also the same grandfather that coming back from ⁓ Myrtle Beach, the traffic was on 26 was just dead stop and he drove on the median around everybody in her van and my aunt was yelling at him the whole time. Wow. Yeah. Well, I remember in high school, I tried to hold my breath in the pool and I think I got up to about a minute and a half. Yeah.
And today if I had to, might get 10 seconds. It's very different. ⁓ I don't know if your daughter's ever tested you, but ⁓ my oldest is always testing me. And we had a Hold Her Breath contest. And I started to scare her because I was like a minute and a half. And she's like, Dad, Dad, you can breathe now. It's OK. You won. I'm like, I'm good. good. I think the only time since my kids have
been born, we've had the Hold Your Breath contest, it's going through tunnels. yeah. Like going to Gatlinburg or somewhere. Well that's what I used to do too, and then there's a big bridge down in South Carolina, think it's the one in Charleston that they do the marathons on. yeah, yeah, I think I've been able to hold my breath across that. Wow. ⁓ Or most of the way, which is a really long bridge. That'd be fun to have a podcast holding our breath.
You can have me people would actually listen. Yeah, if you did like ASMR version where it's a very high Highly sensitive microphone, right? then you hear us dying All right. Well, thank you Ian very much. So check them out Ian McKay stronghandfitness.com or strong hand fit across Instagram Tick-tock that'd be fun to see on tick-tock and Facebook. So check them out and keep living local