Open since 2009
Shannon and Seneca Sarnella opened the gym 17 years ago with a fairly unfashionable idea: that the lifts which have worked for a century would keep working, and that most injuries come from being taught badly rather than from lifting heavy. They have not changed their minds.
- Founded 2009
- Privately owned
- 63 pieces on the floor
The name
New in 2026
For seventeen years this gym was called Raw Power. It was an honest name — Seneca is a two-time Texas's Strongest Man, there are atlas stones in the yard and calibrated kilo plates on the racks, and none of that is going anywhere.
But it turned out to be a name that answered a question nobody was asking, and quietly discouraged a lot of people who would have liked it here: people starting over, people coming back from an injury, people who wanted a treadmill and a machine circuit and no opinions about it. The room was always for them. The sign was not.
So it is Spicewood Fitness now — named after where it is rather than what the loudest person in it can lift. Same building, same floor, same coaches, same phone number. Nothing about the equipment got easier.
How it works here
The part that did not change when the sign did.
It is a private gym, which mostly means it is not busy. There is no queue for a rack at six in the evening and nobody is filming. Members get a door code and the building is theirs at any hour — a good deal of the training that happens here happens at five in the morning or after ten at night, which is exactly when a lot of people would rather train.
Staff are on the floor from six to six on weekdays. Asking one of them how a machine works, or whether your deadlift looks alright, is not a personal training session and does not get billed as one.
The coaching side runs on the same principle: nutrition, sleep and the unglamorous parts get talked about alongside the training, because leaving them out is why most programmes stop working in week six.
Kyle Heine came in as a partner after eight years of working alongside Shannon and Seneca. Between the three of them and the rest of the roster, the gym has served Spicewood, Lakeway, Bee Cave, Westlake and Dripping Springs since 2009.
Three free days on the floor is the quickest way to find out whether it suits you.
How the trial worksSee the inventory