Chris Albert fell in love with bodybuilding and powerlifting at the age of 12. Having never known his father, Chris’s mother encouraged him to join the local gym to keep him occupied and out of trouble. It
was the early 1990s in Connecticut, and most gyms on the east coast still catered to bodybuilders and powerlifters. There wasn’t anything fancy about this gym. It was just a bunch of iron plates, power racks, benches, and a few exercise bikes. The gym had its own powerlifting team, and it wasn’t long before the team drafted Chris to compete in the teenage division of the the USPF Connecticut State Powerlifting Championships. Chris went on to win three first place trophies before his 15th birthday.
As the years passed, Chris went on to do other things. He went to college, joined the Marine Corps, and served a tour in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. While it was nearly impossible to dedicate himself to his training during this period, he never forgot his love of training and had a secret ambition to compete in a bodybuilding competition. Finally, in 2009, while he was working on his doctorate in Political Science at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Chris decided his time had come. He began training like a madman at the University’s gym and researched and designed his own diet. He went on to place first in the lightweight division at the 2009 Musclemania California. He was hooked.
While Chris was at UCSB, he ran into Eddie Avakoff. Eddie was a bit of an anomaly. He was obsessed with powerlifting, bodybuilding, and strongman, but was also a competitive triathlete. Nevertheless, while experts on in each of these sports would say that Eddie’s training could never lead to success in any of these sports, Eddie proved them wrong by placing in the top five of every triathlon on the West Coast while building an impressive physique. Chris was impressed, and he and Eddie exchanged training ideas and sat around watching videos of Ronnie Coleman training in the legendary Metroflex Gym in Texas. Metroflex reminded Chris of his first gym back in Connecticut. That gym had gone out of business as a result of an influx of commercial health clubs promising fancier equipment. While their training styles
were very different, both Chris and Eddie had a common hatred for corporate gyms. When Chris saw that Metroflex was licensing gyms he saw an opportunity to bring a real hardcore gym to California. Chris immediately contacted Brian Dobson, the owner of Metroflex Gym, to inquire. Brian, who had dreamed of expanding to California, responded by offering Chris a license. Chris immediately called Eddie to ask if he’d go into business with him, and when Eddie agreed, a partnership was born.
A researcher by training, Chris immediately immersed himself into the fitness industry to find a way for Metroflex to succeed in southern California. He went so far as to get a job as a personal trainer at 24 Hour Fitness, a company he hated with all of his heart, to learn about their strengths and weaknesses. What he found was a company that was dedicated to quantity and not quality. It was obsessed with attracting more members, but didn’t really care about its members’ goals unless they bought one of the cookie cutter training packages provided by the company’s staff of underpaid trainers. It was here that Chris knew that it was his and Eddie’s mission to make Metroflex everything that these corporate gyms were not. Together they would bring hardcore back to California, and they believed there was no better place to do this than Long Beach. The rest is history.
