At Varsity House, Coaching Comes Full Circle

A gym’s history is usually told through the space it outgrew or the equipment it added. At Varsity House, another thread is worth following: the people who first arrived to train and later helped shape the business.

NJBIZ traced that thread in a May 2021 profile. Joe Riggio opened Varsity House in a shared Northvale garage in 2006, initially working with student athletes. Dan Goodman, then a college football player, was one of them. The coaching relationship eventually became a business partnership.

The company moved to its Orangeburg facility in 2014, the report says. Today, its Rockland location is at 337 Blaisdell Road.

That athlete-to-coach progression also appears in the gym’s current staff biographies. Performance Director Alex Pleasic describes training at Varsity House as a young athlete, continuing through college softball, and returning as an intern in 2018 before working up to her present role. It is a specific example of a local training relationship becoming a professional path.

There is a second turn in the story. According to the NJBIZ profile, an athlete’s parent helped persuade Riggio to introduce adult training. A business built around students’ after-school schedules began serving people at another stage of life.

The current adult program makes that shift tangible. Varsity House describes starting with an individual conversation about a person’s history and goals, then building a progressive strength plan. The offering combines a dedicated coach and a customized program with small-group training. The organizing idea is continuity: someone helps set the direction, and the sessions belong to a plan.

For Rockland residents, that is the interesting connection between the gym’s past and present. Its story stretches from students preparing for sport to adults making room for training, while some former athletes return to guide the next group. A place to work out can also become a place where a role changes—from being coached to doing the coaching.