042024_RV_E01_c_Business

SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2024 THE N'WEST IOWA REVIEW/SHELDON, IA E7
BUSINESS
Dukes’ fitness business helps seniors stay in home
Physical therapist works
on strength and balance
BY MIKAELA MACKEY
MMACKEY@NWESTIOWA.COM
REGIONAL—Finding a home can be
difficult but staying in a home can be
harder.
Tyson Dukes founded a company
called InHome Fitness Solutions in
Osceola and Dickinson counties in
2018 to help elderly folks strengthen
their bodies and minds, so they can
live in their home for as long as possible.
“Our health-care system, unfortunately,
it’s a little bit more reactionary.
You don’t get access to somebody with
knowledge and expertise until something
bad happens a lot of times,”
Dukes said. “So I thought, ‘You know
what, why not offer a service where I
can have some expertise and help people
stay in their home as long as they
can, provide that support and provide
that useful knowledge and expertise
that I have in helping people with their
exercise, helping people with their
balance at home, to at least maintain
what they had gained previously from
the hospital or care service that they
were undergoing?’”
Dukes worked as a physical therapist
assistant for more than 20 years before
starting InHome Fitness Solutions.
Although InHome Fitness Solutions is
not physical therapy, Dukes has been
able to use his previous experience
to partner with other senior fitness
specialists, like Heather Marco based
in Sibley, that families can hire to assist
seniors in unique ways.
“We go out and work with people
on strength and balance and those
type of things within your home. The
other division is we offer personal care,”
Dukes said. “Personal care is nonmedical
assistance within the home to help
people that might need assistance with
light housekeeping, they might need
assistance with meal prep, they might
need assistance getting a bath, they
might need assistance getting to and
from a doctor, they might just need
companionship. A lot of times the people
that we see, we might be the only
person they see during the week. So, it’s
important to have that social outlet at
times to the outside world.”
Although Dukes said he is familiar
with other agencies in the area that
work in personal care with the elderly,
InHome Fitness Solutions is the only
one to provide both personal care and
AT A GLANCE:
Business: InHome Fitness
Solutions
Owner: Tyson Dukes
Phone: 712-330-2670
Online: inhomeseniors.com
fitness training to improve strength
and balance. He hopes to expand
outside of Osceola and Dickinson and
into counties like Sioux and O’Brien.
InHome Fitness Solutions has
helped people in more ways than one.
Dukes said his specialists see 30-40
clients for fitness training weekly. For
personal care, that number rises to
70-80 clients.
“I’m not so much of a numbers
person, but I hope that we can grow
in the number of people that we can
help. I think that’s maybe the biggest
goal that we have. And so now our
challenge to ourselves, ‘How can we let
communities know that we are here,
and we want to be able to help them
in some capacity?’” Dukes said. “Our
mission is growth, but it’s more growth
in, ‘Can we help more people?’”
At the basis of InHome Fitness Solutions
is relationality. At the end of the
day, Dukes said even when life does
not turn out the way he hopes, his
clients and their families have been
abundantly supportive.
“You always want to help as much
as you can. And our goal is to help
somebody stay in their home as long
as possible, as long as it’s safe to do
so,” he said. “There was a point in
time where I was seeing a lady and
this family; everybody was trying to do
whatever they could to help this lady
stay in her home. She was just a wonderful,
neat lady, just struggling with
medical complications, strength and
balance. We worked and worked, and
I worked with her for several months.
Ultimately, home was just not the safest
place for her.
“I kind of felt like I maybe had failed
her or failed the family. As I was voicing
that to the family, that family said,
‘No, no. We appreciated every last
day that she got to stay at home, she
made it several more months than we
thought she could ever make it.’ So,
that has always really stuck with me
that I thought maybe I’d failed. But in
the family’s eyes, they were appreciative
of every last moment they got to
have their mom or grandma at home.”
InHome Fitness Solutions founder Tyson Dukes supports a client for a walk outside of her home. The goal of
Dukes’ business is to strengthen the mind and bodies of seniors to help them live in the home. Photo submitted