Visions lead to fitness tool

Lying in a hospital room in January 2021, John Wilkins had just been told by doctors that if the cocktail of drugs they’d pumped through his system failed to beat back the COVID-19 virus wreaking havoc on his lungs, he could be dead in a matter of days.

“As the doctor is telling me this, I immediately started praying,” said Wilkins, a Sparta resident and self-described man of faith. “I could barely breathe. My lung capacity and oxygen levels were down. My lungs were crystallizing - hardening up. That created blood clots around my lungs, and the doctors were worried that I could have a stroke, heart attack or pulmonary embolism.”

Sick, scared and alone, his only connection to the outside world was his cellphone. He began texting his wife, children, friends and clients with whom he’d worked as a personal trainer to let them know how lucky he was to have had them in his life.

“When I dropped him off at the hospital, it was almost like sending someone off to war,” said Wilkins’ wife, Valerie. “I wasn’t allowed to get out of the car, and they took him inside and I was unable to see him or talk to him. He kind of kept me in the dark about his condition.”

While her husband was quarantined at Morristown Medical Center, Valerie was quarantined in a hotel room as she too had COVID-19. While her symptoms were not as severe as her husband’s, she lost her sense of taste and smell for nearly a year.

Eventually, Wilkins’ health improved and he was released from the hospital and began rehab at Crystal Springs, where he and Valerie had moved to care for her elderly mother.

“There were days he and I would take walks, and he would have to stop and sit in the snow to rest because he kept losing his breath,” she said. “We had breathing devices to ensure he was getting enough oxygen.”

The lifestyle change would be a difficult adjustment for anyone, never mind a world-class athlete, such as Wilkins.

“When I came down with COVID, I had already spent decades as a certified personal trainer,” he said. “I had played college football as a running back at East Stroudsburg and then had tryouts with the Saints and Denver Broncos.

“After years of doing deadlifts, bench presses and that sort of stuff, I switched over to functional training, which involves movements that utilize the whole body. For years, I did planks using dumbbells, but something did not seem to fit with the workout.”

As winter turned into spring, then summer, Wilkins’ health continued to improve. By January 2022, something special began taking place.

“A year later, as I was comfortably back home, I suddenly began having visions in my sleep and I would awaken every night between 2 and 3 a.m. and draw out these images that were coming to me,” he said. “They were of a plank bar. These visions continued every night for over 40 nights.

“In all my years as a personal trainer, I had wanted to come up with something that didn’t include barbells and heavy weights. I had been thinking about it for years and suddenly these images were coming to me in the middle of the night. I knew it was from God because I hadn’t yet thought of it on my own.”

Before long, sketches from those visions turned into the Finisher.

“The Finisher is a plank bar,” Wilkins said. “We designed it, engineered it and made it to help with mobility planks that work your body from the inside out, using your core.”

The Finisher has been used by employees at the Pentagon, professional athletes and members of Arete by JW, Wilkins’ training center in Sparta.

Nick Grifone, 25, is a trainer at Arete by JW who has seen the positive results that stem from working out with the Finisher.

“I was drafted by the Sussex County Miners in 2023 as a catcher,” he said. “I was there for spring training but ended up getting cut due to injury.

“I had shoulder surgery in college and regardless of how much rehab I did, it was not getting better. I started on the bar and it stabilized joints and muscles, especially the shoulder.

“We do a lot of mobility plank exercises. My shoulders have never felt better. The Finisher is not only a great way to heal an injury, but it is a preventive tool as well.”