When Home.BodyBK opened its doors in Park Slope in 2021, the world was still holding its breath. Gyms felt risky, community felt distant and most new business owners were doing everything they could to wait out the uncertainty. For Kat Hurley, owner of the queer, women-owned fitness studio, waiting was not an option.
“We opened up in 2021 at the second wave of the pandemic, which, as far as business choices, was not the most optimal time to open a business,” Hurley said. At the time, she had moved most of her work online, training clients over Zoom. “I was starting to get bored myself, and I could tell that really people just needed to be back in person and, and really back in community.”
Her instinct to center connection over convention became the foundation of Home.BodyBK, a small, intimate studio tucked into South Slope that has quietly built a devoted followings. Without advertising or heavy promotion, Hurley said the community seemed to find the studio on its own.
“It was kind of this natural, amazing discovery that like attracts like, and we just ended up having the best community just started showing up to our door without any advertising,” she said.
From the beginning, Home.BodyBK was designed to feel different from a traditional gym. There are no mirrors, class sizes are small and competition is intentionally absent.
“One of the things that we were trying to cultivate here at the studio was this non-competitive mentality,” she said.
That philosophy was shaped in part by the reality of opening during the COVID-19 pandemic. Each person has their own equipment, eliminating sharing entirely.
“People were intimidated by gyms, and truthfully, had the ick,” Hurley said. “Nobody wanted to share equipment.”
The precautions built trust, but it was the tone of the space that kept people coming back.
“They could tell immediately that our goal was not, you know, completely financial,” she said. “We really wanted to build an authentic community and it just kind of naturally happened.”
Hurley brings more than two decades of experience to Home.BodyBK, having worked in the health, wellness, and fitness sectors for 25 years.
“I never really wanted my own space,” she said. “I didn’t know that I wanted the responsibility.” But the pandemic created what she called a “natural severance” from traditional gym structures — and from restrictive non-compete rules — that allowed her to build something new.
The newness fully cements itself in Homebody’s philosophy. The signature Homebody class format is something Hurley developed herself, blending cable machines, balance work and constant motion.
“I’ve been basically cherry picking from every modality that I can do,” she said. Home.BodyBK clients train on individual cable machines while balancing on BOSU (both sides utilized) balls, moving continuously rather than isolating muscles. “I want everything to be done in motion.”
The approach is practical, not performative. Hurley works with clients well into their seventies.
“I really see what they can’t do anymore, and I want to make sure that we’re able to do that in our thirties, forties, and fifties,” she said. “So it’s almost like a process of reverse engineering.”
Balance, awareness and presence are central — physically and mentally. “When you are on top of a BOSU, it almost forces you to be more present,” Hurley said. “You can’t necessarily be thinking about your grocery list.”
The studio’s openness also reflects Hurley’s identity as a queer business owner, though she’s quick to note the community is broad.
“Not all of our members are queer,” she said. “I would say that many of them are progressive parents of some of their queer children.”
What connects people, she believes, is authenticity.
“There’s a beautiful thing about menopause and perimenopause, you stop performing and wearing masks,” Hurley said. “We are very real with our clientele about who we are and how we show up, and we also invite them to be that way as well.”
That realness extends to humor, conversation and even heckling. Hurley now works alongside her partner Keb, who became a certified trainer after years of taking classes.
“She was very intimidated, and now, she’s such a pro,” Hurley said. “It was truthfully my evil plan the entire time.”
As for the future, Home.BodyBK will continue — but it may evolve. Hurley is exploring online work, broader education and reaching more people beyond the studio walls, thanks to the confidence she’s gained with an online presence of over 50,000 followers.
“This has given me the confidence of creating a community and how valuable that is,” she said. “I want to build strength, I want to build resiliency and I want to build able capacity.”
For now, Home.BodyBK remains what it has always been: a place where bodies move, people talk, and community comes first. As Hurley put it simply, “Nobody’s ever left here feeling worse when they came in the door.”
