Meet the Owners of Will Power Gym: Mouss El Bakkouchi and Jon Witty!
Mouss and Jon first met 10 years ago around sushi and from there they became really close friends, like brothers. One night while sitting around a nice meal, they start to talk about the goals and dreams they have for the future, and found out that they both had the same goal and dream to open their own gym. From then Will Power Gym was born and the rest is history. They first opened their doors on February 20th, 2016.
Meet Jon:
Jon has had a passion for bodybuilding starting in the early 1990’s. His first competition was the San Francisco in 2000, when Jon was in his forties. Since that time, he has entered and won his class in many local and national level shows with his best placement at the Master’s Nationals in Pittsburgh in 2016, taking first place with Mouss El Bakkouchi as his prep coach.
Jon has had a long and distinguished career as a senior leader for companies like Microsoft as a general manager in San Francisco Bay Area and Timberline Software (Sage) as VP & General Manager in Portland. His other passions include flying (Jon holds a private pilot license), remodeling houses, and music. Now in his seventies, Jon loves to share his passion for training, discipline, and inspiring others to live their best life by following a bodybuilding lifestyle to stay young at heart, healthy, and energetic.
Meet Mouss:
Born in Morocco, made in France, achieving the dream in the United States.
Mouss was born in Morocco but grew up in France for the first 26 years of his life and has been here in the U.S. for the last 10 years. When he was young, his first love before the gym was martial arts after discovering Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies. Mouss was incredibly skinny at the start of his fitness journey with sitting about only at about 115lbs. But being that skinny is what first made Mouss step foot into a gym with the goal to start putting on some size and muscle in order to improve and keep pursuing martial arts. From then on he became the mascot of the gym, all the other lifters would try to help and guide him in the gym in order to help him achieve his goals.
In that gym is where he first saw a picture of a muscle man, Arnold Schwarzenegger of course, and that picture now hangs in Will Power (Picture to the Right). Mouss then went on to watch the movie Pumping Iron and his life completely switched gears from there. He knew pursuing bodybuilding was what he was meant to do and was going to make it happen from blood, sweat, and tears.
Serge Nubret being his first mentor, of course Mouss couldn’t have been in any better hands. From there his quest was to win as many titles as he could with some of his bigger winnings being:
- Mr. France 2007 Overall 1st place
- 2 Months later, NABBA Mr. World Overall Winner 2007, 1st place
- 2010 Excalibur California Overall Winner
- Emerald Cup 2012, 1st place Overall Winner
- IFBB World Champion 2013 in Morocco
- Mr. Olympia Amateur Classic Physique, 5th place 2019
- Competed many times at Mr. Universe NABBA, UK
- Last show on stage Amateur Mr. Olympia 2020
Mouss retired from competing in 2020 with closing his competitive career by competing at the Amateur Mr. Olympia to focus on passing on his knowledge that he has gained from over half of his life and through trial, error, and experience. He chose to run Will Power to lead and give back to the people who want to change their lives and take their fitness goals seriously, whether that be to lose weight, build muscle, or just to improve their form while working out. He wanted to be able to share the love and respect that he has for the sport that changed his love and his life in so many ways.
Will Power Gym is the type of place that goes back to old school bodybuilding gyms, not in the way where we are only competitors, but in the way of it is people of all fitness levels coming together to work on their goals in a supportive and committed environment. Here, you have the community behind you and everyone wants you to succeed in your goals. Here, our members are part of the gym family and we treat them as such. This community and environment is what they both work so hard to create and keep for our members so our members have an amazing training experience in an old school gym environment where the community is supportive of each individual goal.
