Jon Hinds now has 14 national and international locations of his Monkey Bar Gymnasium and about 400 members in Madison, but for the first two months after opening his original gym at the top of Williamson Street, Hinds had just one client.

Hinds had just moved back to his native Madison from Los Angeles, where he was charging $150 an hour training professional basketball and baseball players, and was essentially giving the gym's sole member daily private lessons for $75 a month.

"Everybody was telling me just close it up, close it up. Just get a job at UPS or something," Hinds recalled. "I said, 'nope, I know this is going to work.'"

Now there are people using Monkey Bar principles all over the world with licensees in Australia, Japan, Canada and soon Sweden. Last year, the fast-growing company was featured in five national fitness magazines.

Monkey Bar Gym specializes in natural movements, or what is known as "functional fitness" in workout jargon. It relies on body weight training and resistance, eschewing the usual weight benches and health club machinery for equipment like ropes, kettlebells, sandbags and tires.

The gym's philosophy is based on three pillars of success, said Greg Metzler, the company's chief operating officer. There's the functional training, but there's also an emphasis on plant-based nutrition and the late Roger Eischen's unique brand of yoga.

There are two corporate locations, the Madison one, which opened in August 2000, and another that opened last February on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. The rest are licensees, which go through Monkey Bar education and training and then get to use the company's name, logo, system and support.

"It's kind of like a mini franchise," Metzler said. "The only reason it's not a franchise is because we cannot legally tell them how to run the business, we can only suggest."

The other locations soon will be franchises, however. Company officials decided licensing is not the best way to grow because its strict program can get watered down too easily.

"We want to make sure that everybody's following the way they are supposed to because when you take people's nutrition and health into your hands, there's got to be very strict guidelines," Metzler said.

The transition to franchising is happening Jan. 1 with four franchises coming on board right away and the rest of the U.S. locations turning their licenses into franchises. The international ones are going to stay licensees.

"The people who are becoming licensees think outside the box and are using the Monkey Bar Gym method," said Dusty Mattison, manager and personal trainer at the Madison location. "It's people who are not really interested in the traditional."

Mary Nanfelt, a health club analyst for IBISWorld, a Los Angeles-based market research firm, reports that even in the midst of the economic downturn, the fitness club industry has maintained steady growth, with membership rates growing consistently and profits remaining solid.

Pilates and yoga are huge trends in gyms and studios nationwide, Nanfelt said, and Monkey Bar is playing to that audience. "It's using your own body movement and body weight to create strength," she said.

"It seems like the Monkey Bar really gives personal attention, which is again a rising trend — people using personal trainers and taking smaller classes where they can get more attention, so that their fitness is unique to their body," Nanfelt said.

According to Google Analytics, which generates statistics about website visitors, the Monkey Bar's site gets about 50,000 hits a month from all over the world.

People stumble upon it over the Internet using popular trigger words like "functional fitness," "suspension training" or "kettlebells," Metzler said.

Much of the Monkey Bar Gym equipment has been invented and designed by Hinds, who for the past 10 years has also served as vice president of his father's business, Lifeline USA, which sells portable, adjustable exercise equipment and jump ropes. At 81, Bobby Hinds still runs Lifeline.

The younger Hinds, who has moved to Chicago but also maintains a residence in Madison, said the biggest difference between Monkey Bar and other gyms is that it "trains movements, not muscles."

Monkey Bar's rules are "no machines, no mirrors, no shoes."

Going shoeless or wearing the popular Vibram FiveFinger shoe, basically a rubber glove that fits the foot, strengthens the feet, puts people in better alignment and prevents injuries, Hinds said.

Metzler said that during the first 60 days of membership, a typical Monkey Bar client loses 17 pounds of fat and gains 5 1/2 pounds of muscle.

On average, Monkey Bar members show up 2 1/2 times a week, where at a traditional gym the national average is two times a month, Metzler said. "So our clients come early and often and see amazing results."