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Signature: Melissa Eccles

AGE: 33
OCCUPATION: Corrective exercise specialist
HOMETOWN: Baton Rouge
Photo by Collin Richie

Being hip has gotten Melissa Eccles to where she is today, literally and figuratively.

Literally, because her hurting hips changed the dancer’s professional path forever.

And figuratively, because, well—if you’re a singer in an indie band who also plays several instruments—how hip is that?

Eccles is one of only three Level III Fascial Stretch Therapy specialists in Baton Rouge and also a Corrective Exercise Specialist at FITT. Her job is as fascinating as her titles are long. In laymen’s terms, she can get you ready for a fitness program, help fix what’s ailing you and help you maintain what you’ve got.

She danced from an early age and sang in the choir at St. Joseph’s Academy. Eccles wanted to go to an arts college, but because of Taylor Opportunity Program for Students (TOPS), she graduated from LSU with a major in kinesiology and a minor in dancing. She did ballet, but also jazz and modern, and she competed.

“My whole plan was to be a dance teacher,” Eccles says. But then she started to experience extreme pain in her hips and back, ultimately learning that she had torn labrums in her hips.

“And that intrigued me, because I wanted to know why,” she says, adding, “Things started not cooperating with me, and I wanted to learn how to fix them.”

Eccles became a fitness trainer, and after a couple of other jobs, she landed at FITT (gofitt.com) three years ago.

“I want to help people move better without pain,” she says.

But before getting to FITT, she went full time into music. She sings, writes music, and plays the piano and guitar. Her band at the time, We Landed On the Moon, toured the East Coast seven times and the West Coast a couple times. Their gigs included Voodoo Fest, JazzFest and South by Southwest.

Now she has another indie band, and it’s called Summer Fits (facebook.com/summerfits).

Her professional life runs the gamut from driving to New Orleans just to stretch some Saints to working at FITT with someone who decides to get fit as a New Year’s resolution. She seems excited about all aspects of it, but helping a person in pain seems to matter most.

“I focus on correcting muscular-skeletal imbalances,” Eccles says. “So when people start here [as patients], we do assessments to see what alignment is off, what is functioning or not functioning, and what’s tight and what’s too loose.

“There’s no perfect science to it, but you try to piece together a whole puzzle of what’s going on with this person’s body,” she says. “They come in with pain, and it’s fun and challenging to try to put that puzzle together.”