Tucson’s new women-only gym builds strength, confidence and community

For years, she shared her ambitions with friends and family and even her personal training clients. 

For years, she found herself planning, dreaming and waiting for the right moment and the right location.

The right moment finally arrived last month, turning her years-long dream into a reality when she opened RDMFIT — a women-only gym on Tucson’s south side at 5650 S. 12th Ave., near West Drexel Road. 

“Opening these doors, it just means so much to me,” Marquez, 34, says. “Saved my entire life. So, I just hope it keeps going, and we just grow and we keep building, and I have to maybe knock down all these walls and take over all these spaces.”

RDMFIT isn’t your typical gym with TVs and workout machines everywhere and packed to the brim with people. Its vibrant red walls match Marquez’s signature fiery red hair, and the space is filled with fun signs, like “No boys allowed” and “You are that b**ch.”

It’s a space where women can build confidence and find community.

As a private gym, RDMFIT offers different membership options, including a monthly unlimited class pass for $169 or a 10-class pass for $119. Marquez offers four small-group classes per weekday, both in the early morning and evening. Members can take all four classes a day, if interested.

Those interested in joining RDMFIT can keep an eye out on the gym’s website for open enrollment dates, usually toward the end of each month.

Marquez primarily focuses on strength training and high-intensity interval training (HIIT), which seems to be working for her clients, given the growing pile of ruptured medicine balls in her office from previous classes.

Members never know what type of class they’re walking into until they show up and see the day’s schedule. This way, participants stay engaged and accountable. No skipping leg day there, ladies. 

Marquez also recently added a run club where members (and nonmembers) can get their steps in on Friday evenings at Mission Manor Park.

“I just want them to be fully capable of loving themselves and taking care of themselves,” Marquez says of what she wants her clients to get out of her training. “(For example) I'm not a mom, but my sister's a mom. A lot of my friends are moms and I feel like women can lose themselves and I've seen it with clients, too. They stop taking care of themselves and they just become so unhappy. And I always tell them, ‘If you are not OK, your kids aren't OK, your household is not OK, your marriage might not be OK.’ I'm like, ‘You matter the most.’ … Do what you gotta do, but just take care of you and put you first.”

Girl gang

RDMFIT’s members are more than just clientele for Marquez. They’re like a close-knit family to her, she says, often referring to them adoringly as “the girls” or “my girls.”

“I know my clients, I know their families,” she says. “I want to know their backgrounds. I don't want you just to walk through the door and I just know your name. That's big for me. I have holiday parties at my house and I invite the girls. That's how I want my clientele to be. So, I'm very picky with who I allow because I don't want mean girls. If I get a mean girl vibe or anything like that, I'm just like, ‘You might not be a good fit,’ because, it's a family.”

Someone who has experienced RDMFIT’s familial bond is America Maldonado, who has been training under Marquez four to five times a week for the last three years.

“It's been so good in every way possible,” Maldonado says. “I'm not even talking about just physically, even though that's what we're all there for, to get stronger and work out, but it's honestly such a mental game, as well. She's there for us at every single level, as in pushing us to go heavier. But then also, she’s such a good friend outside of that. We come to her and can tell her everything.

“The program itself is great. It's the community, the girls, making friends outside of the gym, pushing each other to our full potential, lifting something you've never even lifted before, and honestly, just liking it, liking the gym, liking to work out, want to show up for for yourself, it's a whole different mentality that you go in there and you’re like, ‘OK, let's try it out.’ And then you step out and end up just really loving it. And now you don't want to miss class.”

Since she began training at RDMFIT, Maldonado, who just entered her 30s, says she’s the healthiest she’s ever been, more than in her teen years and in her 20s.

But that’s just a bonus to the bonds she’s built with her fellow workout buddies.

“It's just a level of connection that's really different from that you'd find anywhere else,” Maldonado says. “You make friends of all sorts of ages and all different backgrounds. And I think that's big, especially for women.”

Marquez credits her “girls” with being the reason she pushes through, even on the tough days.

After a serious car accident five years ago, Marquez became severely depressed, even contemplating suicide at one point.

Not doing well mentally, she decided to take some time off from fitness training. 

But the bond she had with her clients helped her through one of the hardest times of her life, bringing her back to the passion she had for fitness.

“The only thing that got me up in the morning was knowing I had these girls depending on me,” Marquez says. “So for me, it's more than just opening a gym. It's like … these girls saved my life. … To get to this point when I almost didn't even want to be alive, for me, it's crazy that I'm even here and again, I wouldn't be. I wouldn't be without these girls. So, when I think of my hard days, I'm like, ‘These girls got me here and we're gonna keep going.’ ”

South side strong

The journey to what is now known as RDMFIT has been a lot of heavy lifting, both physically and mentally.

Marquez didn’t always know or aspire to be a fitness trainer. In fact, she’s had a “million different jobs” over the years, she says, including bartending and even being an on-air talent for Hot 98.3 and iHeartRadio.

But she loved fitness.

She began taking working out seriously in her early 20s after going through a bad breakup with a now-ex-boyfriend.

At the time, she had a friend who began competing in fitness and bikini competitions. It inspired her.

After telling her ex-boyfriend about it, he responded with something along the lines of “You can't do that. You can't look like that. Your body types are just different,” Marquez recalls.

So, she did what almost any determined woman would do: she set out on a new fitness journey and worked on her “revenge body.”

Documenting her training regimen on social media, many of her followers began to take an interest in her routines and ask for personal training. Thus, RDMFIT was born.

At first, it was Marquez training others at local gyms, then it started to transform into her own personal brand. With no place to call her own yet, she began training at local parks. 

Wherever she trained, she noticed it was mostly male-dominated, usually with only one woman in the weight-lifting area. She was determined to change that with a space for women. 

With the support of her family, friends and significant other, she built the RDMFIT gym from the ground up at the only place she would ever want it to be: Tucson’s south side. 

A place she grew up, went to school, eventually left for some time for work, but ultimately decided to come back and never leave again.

A place where she can help her community thrive in strength and confidence.

Now, with RDMFIT’s doors officially open, local women can safely and confidently work out in their sports bras when they get hot.

They can openly discuss women’s topics, like menstrual cramps, with the rest of the workout group and know that the rest of the women will understand.

They can laugh and have fun with each other while pushing one another to their full potential.

It’s everything Marquez wished she had when she first started her journey all those years ago, she says.

And it’s only the beginning.

Marquez already has ideas for the future, including incorporating girls' fitness classes into her training and, eventually, expansion.

Wherever RDMFIT goes, one thing is for certain: the women and community will remain at the forefront of its mission.

“I'm doing this for the community. I'm doing this for their safety and I'm doing this for them to have a space to come to, to let all their stress out and not feel judged or anything like that,” Marquez says. “It's an empowerment that I want them to feel anytime they walk through these doors. I just want to build this community for them. That's what it is. It's not a gym. It's not like, ‘Oh, I'm just gonna go work out there.’ It's legit a community. It's a family, it's a place to come to, yes, work out and have fun. But also know that you are part of something bigger.”