LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER

Lake Forest native Lauren Telander Edmonds embodied lessons from her father as she opened Vibe Fitness Studio in Evanston.

WHEN LAUREN TELANDER EDMONDS was on the swim team at Lake Forest High School, there were nights when she would lay on the floor and tell her dad she wanted to quit.

“Swimming was brutal,” Edmonds says. “Balancing the long hours of practicing, the long weekend swim meets, all while trying to keep up my grades and find the time to have fun with friends was close to impossible. I definitely went through moments where I felt like I couldn’t do it anymore.”

But her father, Rick Telander, a former football player, sportswriter with more than 50 storied years at Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Sun-Times, and an author of nine books, wasn’t one who was going to let her off the hook easy.

“Judy and I never forced our kids to play sports,” Telander says of he and his wife. “But they weren’t allowed to quit mid-season either. Whatever it was that they started, they had to finish it.”

Telander spent his career covering the greats—Mike Ditka and Michael Jordan to name just a few—and he would bring his children around these legends whenever he could, exposing them to the talent and hard work they represented. “These guys are human,” Edmonds recalls her Dad saying. “They have talent they were born with, but they have worked their butts off to get where they are.”

Thankful to her parents for encouraging her to stick with swimming, Edmonds earned a Division 1 scholarship to swim at University of Richmond, later transferring to the University of Colorado to play water polo.

“Lauren did that all on her own,” Telander says proudly of his oldest child. “She did the work, and it paid off.”

In some ways, her early years as a swimmer set the stage for Edmonds’ career in fitness.

“After graduating from college, I worked in a few jobs that I didn’t love, always teaching some group fitness classes on the side. The classes brought me so much joy,” she says. “For 18 years, I taught it all—barre, cycling, boxing, strength training. I loved teaching and empowering women to feel their best by taking time for themselves to workout. I really saw the beauty of group fitness in these classes, the community that came together as a result.”

In 2020, when fitness studios were forced to close due to the pandemic, Edmonds created her own style of classes and started teaching outside so that her clients could still enjoy working out in a group atmosphere.

“I was teaching in the park, people’s garages, in their driveways,” she remembers with a laugh. “We did whatever it took to stay together. I remember one day it was 17 degrees outside. I texted my clients that we should cancel because it was too cold. They texted back, ‘Nope. We will bundle up! Let’s go!’”

This excitement and enthusiasm for Edmonds’ workouts didn’t end when the pandemic finally did.

“I was lucky enough that we could safely go back inside, clients still wanted to take my classes. I found a shared space with another gym that we all squeezed into until the waitlists for classes got too long and I realized how badly I needed a space of my own,” she says. “I didn’t know what to do. The thought of opening a gym with three kids at home seemed impossible. I had no idea where to start. But I kept coming back to something my Dad would always say whenever we came to him with some off-the-wall idea. ‘You will figure this out.’ He always believed that we could.”

Edmonds did figure it out, and The Vibe fitness studio came to be.

With a handful of supportive and enthusiastic instructors who she trained herself, Edmonds began offering up to five classes per day at the studio. “I’d like to think I’m a mix of fun, intensity, and an overall feeling of not taking it all too seriously,” she says. “I want each and every person who takes one of our classes to walk away feeling strong, accomplished, and most importantly, proud of themselves.”

The Vibe has been so successful that it has already outgrown its current space.

“We just signed a lease for a bigger studio in Wilmette that we hope to open just as the kids go back to school this fall,” she says. “It’s so exciting. You go from wondering if this idea you have is even going to work, to having to find more space because you have so many clients on a waitlist. I won’t say that having a business has been easy. There have definitely been days where I wanted to give up. But then I teach a class, and all of the hard stuff just goes away. It’s really amazing. I hope this is what our clients get from our classes, too.”

It’s hard for Telander to hold back the awe he has at his daughter’s success. As a journalist, he is also an entrepreneur at heart, taking risks and creating his own career path that his life would take.

“If I was still able to do the kinds of classes Lauren teaches, they are the ones I would want to take,” he says. “I love her energy, the music, everything she brings to them. Lauren belongs at the front of the class. She is a born teacher. I never had any doubt in her ability to make The Vibe a success.”

But Edmonds credits her parents for the career she has today. “I don’t think my parents really appreciate that I am who I am largely because of them,” she says. “My Dad always did everything his way. He showed me that when you find the profession you love, you can be the same person on the job as you are in real life. That has been such a gift.”