LAURINBURG — Jay Flowers visited the Laurinburg Rotary Club on Tuesday to talk about AYM, the CrossFit fitness center he co-owns with Jay Britt. But first, he shared his own personal testimony in an effort to show where he came from.
I’m a very driven, self-motivated person,” he said. “But there are very specific reasons for that.”
He said his father passed away when he was just 6 — and he had three younger brothers. His mother remarried, and Flowers said the man was physically abusive.
“He always seemed to beat me … which was OK, because it meant my three brothers were spared,” Flowers said. “Of course, that led to a divorce, so my mother was a widower and a divorcee.”
But she remarried again.
“This time, the man was emotionally abusive — always telling me I’d never amount to anything and would be stuck in Laurinburg,” Flowers said.
But those words had the exact opposite effect on him. He went on to play football and baseball at Scotland High, then baseball at Emmanuel College in Franklin Springs, Georgia. He is now married with a son of his own.
“I’m proud to be a husband and a father to a first-round draft pick in about 16 years,” said Flowers, who is also a third-shift supervisor for Service Thread in Laurinburg. “And I came back to Laurinburg, not because I had to but because I wanted to.”
And it was there he decided to open a gym. But not any gym — a CrossFit gym. And he chose a significant name.
AYM stands for “All Your Might,” which comes from one of Flowers’ favorite scriptures: Ecclesiastes 9:10, which states “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might …”
Flowers said the name isn’t necessarily only for his gym, but for all things in life.
“I try to be a husband, a father, a friend, a leader and a son with all my might,” he said. “It’s the kind of mentality we all need to have if we want to be successful.”
AYM in its earliest days was run out of a storage facility along Hwy. 74 in 2015 with a handful of people. A few photos and Facebook posts later, word of mouth took over and, soon after, Flowers had about 35 people showing up.
“I really had to think on the fly,” he said.
Things continued to take off and, in 2017, AYM moved to its current location at 304 N. Wilkinson Drive in Laurinburg and has about 70 members.
“We don’t specialize in anything,” Flowers said. “Instead, we train people to become well-rounded. And wherever you are in your fitness, that’s where CrossFit meets you.”
Flowers said his clientele has ranged from 5 years old to 75 years old.
“We’ve had athletes and those who have absolutely no athletic experience,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. What we do can help.”
Flowers concluded by saying his decision to come back home was the right one.
“I love Laurinburg,” he said. “This is home.”
AYM can be reached at 910-280-2132.
W. Curt Vincent can be reached at 910-506-3023 or [email protected].