Not long after he obtained his first weight set, Josh Kosier started noticing the compliments rolling in.
“Hey Josh, you look like you’re working out now,” classmates would tell the 13-year-old. It was this newfound attention that spurred Kosier to take his physique to the extreme, to finally replicate the superheroes that he admired so much as a kid.
Now, at 32 and a hearty 230 pounds, Kosier is still going strong as a personal trainer, gym owner and a master of bodybuilding. In his gym, the HQ Madison, he still carries the drive for fitness that took him to the top of the national teenage competitions in his youth. Since then, he’s gotten bigger, not only in terms of his reputation within Madison’s fitness community, but also in sheer mass.
As a teenager, Kosier followed a ritual every first day of the month: go to the nearby Walmart and check out the new issues of his favorite bodybuilding magazines, including Flex Magazine, Muscular Development and Muscle and Fitness.
In Beloit, where Kosier grew up, it could be difficult to find a space to exercise one’s bodybuilding ambitions.
“It’s a real small town. There’s just a dirty YMCA basement gym,” Kosier said. “There’s no teenage bodybuilders, so I’m just this big fish in a little pond.”
At 15, Kosier competed in his first teenage bodybuilding competition and he admits he had no idea what he was doing. Over the next four years, he would train for one of the biggest competitions in the country, hosted by the National Physique Committee.
It was winning the teen title in the National Physique Committee’s Teen, Collegiate and Masters National Championships in 2011 that gave Kosier his moment in the spotlight.
“To be a kid out of this little bitty city, to win this big show was pretty cool, because I’d beat guys that were in New York, LA, guys that trained at gyms where pros actually trained,” Kosier said.
When Dave Palumbo, a writer for Muscular Development, flew him out to Los Angeles for an interview, he suddenly realized he could be in the very magazines he’d read not so long ago.
Palumbo would go so far as to say that Kosier was well on his way to becoming “Mr. Olympia,” the most sought-after title in the world of bodybuilding.
Kosier would never compete on the Olympia stage, though.
“I did not become what he predicted me to become, and that’s okay, because now I’m a family man,” Kosier said. “I love the gym, and I’m totally content with that.”
Instead, he transitioned to personal training and, eventually, to owning his own gym in Madison that focused on individualized training.
Gergens Polynice, a client of Kosier’s that had experience working with Fortune 500 companies, offered to mentor him in starting his own business.
In its conception, Kosier’s ideal gym was meant to hold several members at the same time, a prospect that was soon dashed when COVID-19 completely changed the fitness landscape. At a time when it seemed unstable to create a new business, Polynice encouraged him to adapt. They implemented a new plan, developing a smaller gym that would emphasize 1 on 1 training for clientele.
“The key factor I see in Josh is that if you give him a goal, he will go after it,” Polynice said.
With the help of his business-savvy wife, Jenn, Kosier started to refine what is now The HQ Madison, with his persistent bodybuilding mentality carrying over to his work ethic.
“He would be here until midnight if he could,” Jenn Kosier said. “I have to rein him in and tell him to back up a little.”
These days, the gym owner is transitioning into the role of a father, teaching his daughter and two sons the value of fitness even earlier than he learned it. Finding the balance between fitness as a career and a passion can be difficult, but Kosier feels that he’ll reach that point soon.
“I know that once I get to a spot financially when I can live off the income from my gym and I don’t have to train six to 10 people a day, I just know I’m gonna fall in love with it again,” Kosier said. “And I can’t wait for that, because I know I’m just a couple years away from it.”
