Bringing the mission of health and fitness for all, Hampton Fitness expands into their newest location in West Linn. Hampton Fitness has a location in Tigard, Sherwood and recently, West Linn. Chris Hampton, the owner of the company, opened a Hampton Fitness on May 1 on Salamo road.

“We are just taking this [new location] over as of the first few days,” Hampton said. “We came in a little bit early [before opening] to start building a presence and introduce ourselves to everybody.”

Hampton Fitness centers their gym around a unique mission to help people live a more active lifestyle, along with teaching members how to defend themselves. 

“We are focused on private coaching,” Hampton said. “So, personal training and kickboxing, Krav Maga self defense, hand to hand combat, and weapons training. And for younger kids between the ages of five and 12, we actually do both staff and sword [lessons].”

Hampton is a fitness instructor and the owner of the company. Hampton has been involved in fitness for an extensive amount of time. He originated as a martial arts leader for Premier Martial Arts, a company that teaches self defense primarily to a younger audience.

“I’ve been doing fitness clubs for 13 years,” Hampton said. “So I wanted to combine physique training with martial arts.” 

Within this gym, Hampton Fitness focuses specifically on a type of martial arts called Krav Maga, a type of art focused on real world situations and extreme efficiency.

“It’s easy to learn, and it’s just functional using body movements,” Hampton said. “[It is] a combination of Western boxing, wrestling, aikido, and jujitsu.”

As far as learning new abilities, obtaining Krav Maga skills is within reach. According to Hampton, becoming proficient in the skill can take a short amount of time.

“You’ll learn really fast,” Hampton said. “I mean, how to be efficient with it. If you want to be a black belt, it’s gonna take between three to four years. You feel pretty comfortable, I’d say a year and a half and you’ll know how to defend yourself for sure.”

Hampton was motivated to start his company by teaching his own children, and realizing the need for more people to gain a better understanding of self defense and fitness within the community. 

“I started doing martial arts training, really to spend more time with my boys,” Hampton said. “So I got them into martial arts and [started] training martial arts and I saw the impact it had on so many people and so decided to combine the two fitness [areas].”

Hampton has made the goal to ensure his locations are impacting their local communities in a positive way.

“[We want] to impact a million lives,” Hampton said. “Through health, fitness, and martial arts.”