Fitness guru Brian Mazza savors homelife in Pelham with his family.
Photo by Stefan Radtke
The Pelham wellness expert pushes fitness devotees toward a high-performance lifestyle while carving his definition of an ideal family life.
Stroll the streets of Pelham before sunrise, and you might bump into Brian Mazza on an early-morning run — he logs about 150 miles per month, after all. It’s a safe bet you’ll run into him on Instagram, too, considering his roughly 314,000 followers.
Mazza has created a sophisticated sports-bar brand, a line of men’s clothing, ran 50 miles and raised both awareness and 80 grand for infertility. He launched a business to help others reach their ultimate fitness and lifestyle goals and still holds the Rye Neck High School record for soccer goals. In November, he plans to run in the New York City Marathon for the first time.
Yet none of these accomplishments is the true raison d’être for this 36-year-old Pelham resident. At the core of it all, “family always comes first,” says Mazza without hesitation. “I love being a husband and a dad, and I’m home every day with my kids, on my own terms.”
Born and raised in Mamaroneck, Mazza says he’s also always been passionate about fitness and community — whether that was on the pitch in high school and college or schmoozing on the floor of a swank restaurant or nightclub. That ethos has been the driving force behind every athletic and entrepreneurial move he’s ever made.
“I’m blessed that I can make a career out of fitness, and I believe I’m meant to help and inspire others through my personal wins and losses.”
As the founder of High Performance Lifestyle Training, he leads retreats and seminars that help individuals discover their true potential. “Everyone is a high performer. I take people out of their comfort zones and show them what they can do when they put their minds to it,” says Mazza, who incorporates Navy Seal-style workouts and motivational coaching into his programs. As a result, his attendees and followers have become well-versed in his go-to mantra: “Nothing changes if nothing changes.”
An uncommonly high-level performer, Mazza is planning to run 100 miles (yes, in one shot) to eradicate the stigma surrounding male infertility and to raise money to support couples who can’t afford the costly in vitro fertilization treatments he and his wife, CNN entertainment correspondent Chloe Melas, pursued twice to have their two little boys.
At the time that Mazza and Melas were trying to conceive, it had been determined that low sperm count was half of the reason they were unsuccessful. And because he had learned that, potentially, 50% of all cases of infertility can be attributed to the man, Mazza ran 50 miles to prove that “infertility does not make you less of a man.”
In a symbolic and highly personal gesture, he set off from Weill Cornell Medicine on the east side of Manhattan, where the couple had gone both times for IVF, to his home in Pelham. By the time he made it to their neighborhood — the last half-mile while pushing his kids in a stroller — he raised $80,000 for the facility. As a result, IVF treatment was provided for free to three couples in need.
That was in December 2020, when all organized marathons had been cancelled due to the pandemic and hopeful parents nationwide had no choice but to put their assisted-family-planning efforts on hold.
With life now getting back to normal, Mazza is determined to keep running (“It’s a huge part of my life, even though I’m a soccer player in my DNA,” he says) while continuing to inspire others to achieve a high-performance lifestyle through the demanding, high-impact summits. “I’m blessed that I can make a career out of fitness, and I believe I’m meant to help and inspire others through my personal wins and losses.”
“I’m just trying to live the best life I can live,” he continues, “because tomorrow it can all end. Life is too precious not to be happy.”
That mindset is apparent to the thousands of fans who follow his every move on social media, proving that a picture, and a life well lived, can truly be worth a thousand words.
