
Crystal Hill, founder of Twin Cities Wellness Center – Recovery Gym, remembers the exact moment she decided to get sober. She stood at the black line for boot camp during her second incarceration. Sergeants and CEOs were verbally in her face, “You think you’re a pretty girl. You think you can change when you want to.” When they said, “You have a chance now, the doors are right there. You’re either ready to change your life, or you’re not,” that was her deciding moment.
Hill had a lifetime history of not just substance abuse disorder but also eating disorders and mental health struggles. Diagnosed with borderline personality at 15, she became anorexic and bulimic shortly after her dad died later that year. She almost lost her life to eating disorders on four separate occasions, getting to as low as 75 pounds. She explains, “My eating disorder has been as much of a challenge or greater than the substance use disorder. They’ve gone hand in hand. When I stood at that black line, I had to really think. I thought about my kid that I delivered in prison during the first incarceration. But I said, ‘I’m going to do it,’ and I did it. On September 7 this year, I’ve been sober for 10 years and have 11 years remission of my eating disorders. My eating disorders are still a challenge, but I don’t make myself sick. I eat six balanced times a day.”
Going through boot camp while imprisoned changed Crystal’s mindset from one of using exercise to burn counted calories to a means for clear thinking. Exercise became something she needed to stay sober. While incarcerated the first time, Crystal completed her GED. A year and a half later, after the second, longer prison sentence and boot camp, she was released to treatment at RCCS, a center that’s no longer around. It was a successful program for co-occurring addictions: Mental health, substance use, and had a criminal component. “For somebody like me, on intensive supervised release (ISR) from prison, RCSS was a good place to go.”
She signed up for college the same day she entered RCSS, earning business and master’s degrees in five years, all while keeping a GPA of 4.0. She said, “That’s amazing considering my school record, but it shows what you can do when you have a clear mind and set it to something.”
RCCS’s owner, Paul Kustermann, kept up with Crystal after she finished treatment. He offered her a partnership opportunity in a gym solely for those in recovery. They opened it in Maple Grove, January 2020. When COVID hit two months later, they were forced to shut down. Paul retired, but he said to Crystal, “Take the equipment and sit on it. While you’re getting your degrees, think of how you can change some lives.”
That’s how the Twin Cities Wellness Center and Recovery Gym (TCWC-RG) emerged. Crystal said, “Paul sold me the equipment for $1, which is crazy. He used his lengthy history in the behavioral health field to mentor me. As I got my master’s degree, I did research, thinking of ways to pivot and make it work. There were no treatment centers in Minnesota that utilized a fitness component. The current center is literally right across the street from where I went to treatment. Some days I purposely look across the street to remind myself where I came from. I don’t know of something more universal or spiritual than that. I believe God had a plan for me. I had to push through all the struggles, yet everything fell into place.”
The current center is literally right across the street from where I went to treatment. I don’t know of something more universal or spiritual than that.When asked who else besides Kustermann influenced her to go in this direction, Crystal said, “When Paul offered me that partnership, I was operating a fourth sober house. That’s where I learned how important the housing piece is to treatment, and how to communicate between the two. TCWC-RG partners with multiple sober house organizations, but we’re also in the process of opening a board-and-lodge-housing. We’d manage treatment and housing separately, but connecting the two under one umbrella would allow communication to happen more seamlessly.”
When asked why other treatment providers don’t incorporate gym and fitness options with recovery, Crystal replied, “Reason one is that nobody’s done it before. It’s uncharted territory. Even DHS said that no one else had fitness. The behavioral health field follows a lot of policies and procedures. Providers help each other and rely on scripted formats.
The second, almost bigger reason is financial. The field is competitive. A multi-million-dollar company could possibly add fitness, but a startup can’t pay what large companies pay, even without the physical fitness piece and the gym, let alone with it. Third, it’s hard to find staff who are willing to build a new, uncharted curriculum and stick with it. Lastly, there’s the liability that comes with a gym. We’ve had a hard time finding an insurance company that will cover both providing treatment services and a gym that’s not charging fees. The insurance payers don’t have a blueprint to work from either.”
Crystal encountered numerous other difficulties in getting TCWC-RG off the ground. It took eight months after DHS approval to get into the space due to zoning issues. Nothing in the area was zoned for treatment services plus a gym. Crystal said, “I don’t know how many times I had to explain to the city, ‘No, we’re not selling gym services.’ I had to go to great lengths to prove that. The zoning guy told me, ‘The only reason this got approved is because you wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.’ In the end, it got attention when I reached out to an attorney friend who put in a call to the city. Cities make it tough, and it shouldn’t be that tough.”

Crystal explained, “If you have fitness, a nutrition component is needed as well. It took a long time to figure that out. Since July, we’re licensed to have dietary medical services. Our full-time dietitians work with the licensed alcohol and drug counselors who are credentialed personal trainers/certified coaches. These experts give clients the support they need when they’re working out. Plus, our staff has seen that our mixed, diverse client population builds a strong bond, stronger the longer they work out together. I can’t explain the gratitude that comes with it. It’s on a completely different scale compared to when fitness isn’t included.”
Numerous studies have shown that both exercise and healthy nutrition create endorphins. The brain functions better. The body craves the nutrients found in broccoli and green beans, not those in processed foods. Crystal said, “We’re partnered with an organization called Be Kind 2 People to provide food, as well as with Loaves and Fishes. The free and donated lunches they delivered meant clients were fed, but the meals weren’t necessarily healthy. It can be expensive to eat healthy. As we’ve grown, we’ve better aligned the meals with health and fitness. We offer a group class that teaches clients how to make cheap, nutritious meals, and which groceries to purchase.
When most people go to treatment, they gain weight. It’s the opposite at TCWC-RG. Eating six balanced meals a day is better for most of us. It doesn’t make us gain weight. The more balanced we eat; the better chance our body will have to be toned and look fit. Keeping everything in balance, including food, has been important for me, because I used to eat when I had feelings, and that’s changed. Sure, starving ourselves or making ourselves puke decreases numbers on the scale, but God, what it does to our bodies is so unhealthy, and it doesn’t have to be that way.”
TCWC-RG uses moral reconation therapy, or MRT, as part of their curriculum and encourages clients to go to meetings when they’re no longer in treatment. MRT is a 16-step process for participants to identify their morals, consider how their actions will affect themselves and others, and make choices that fit into social and legal norms.
I’ve always had an entrepreneurial mindset, I’m just using it for a way better purpose this time.Crystal said, “Forming a solid leadership team that’s aligned with our core values and focus has been my biggest accomplishment. Recrafting the core values took a long time. You can’t operate a business by yourself. You must trust others to be there for you and to help you. I finally have that. I can be at the center, but I don’t have to be there for the company to run and be successful.”
Conversely, she stated that the biggest challenge has been to keep staff pleased, to give them what they need, want, or even deserve. “To run the business, I need to keep money coming in and keep the doors open. Reimbursement rates haven’t increased in over 30 years. For example, a treatment that cost $1 in 1994 got reimbursed for $1. No matter what today’s treatment cost, our company would still only get reimbursed $1. And we all know how inflation has increased this past year, let alone the past 30 years.”
When asked how TCWC-RG gets people with anorexia or bulimia to change their mindset around exercise, when the program still incorporates exercise, Crystal said, “Finding balance for exercise and an eating disorder (ED) is tough. There isn’t a right or wrong way to do that. In three years, no one has come in the doors and said, ‘I’m anorexic’ or ‘I’m bulimic.’ But if someone did, our licensed alcohol drug counselors/certified personal trainers would coordinate with specialists at the Emily Program.”
Prior to prison, Crystal went to drug treatment. When that didn’t work, she went to ED treatment where counselors told her that ED was a co-occurring disorder. “Honestly, neither of those combinations did it for me. I went to prison twice and went a completely different route. ED is overlooked in so many ways, even in treatment. Nobody wants to admit they’re bingeing and purging. They won’t probably admit it unless they’re comfortable enough and have a safe space to do it. It’s not an easy space to create. I would love, more than anything, to be able to say to someone who has a background like me, ‘You can come here and we can help you. We can really help you deal with it.’”
While in prison boot camp, a therapist told Crystal Hill that she should use her business smarts and her street smarts to do something to help change the world. That stuck with her. Crystal said, “I’ve always had an entrepreneurial mindset, I’m just using it for a way better purpose this time.”
Prospective clients can book an appointment or sign up for an assessment at www.tcwcrg.com, through their Facebook page https://facebook.com/TwinCitiesWellnessCenter, via phone call 612-234-4242, or send them an email at info@tcwcrg.com.
Mary Berg is a retired associate professor of clinical education, a resume writer, published author, and poet. Her first poetry collection, A Mystic in the Mystery: Poems of Spirit, Seasons, and Self was released in 2024. Her website is: marybergresumewriter.com.
Editors note: While TCWCRG has a unique “fitness gym” component to their recovery, Vinland National Center (in Loretto), has a therapeutic exercise program they’ve offered for many years.
Last Updated on January 21, 2025