Muscle Up Protein Bars: The Official Bar of Team USA Weightlifting Was Born in CT

A few months ago I started buying Muscle Up Protein Bars at my local smoothie joint. The packaging advertised them as the first bar to be based on the much loved sweet potato, featuring grass fed whey protein, and all of the ingredients are clearly recognizable…nothing artificial.  I sampled the varieties, settled on the Peanut Butter & Cacao Nib as my flavor of choice, and went in deep. After stock piling these bad boys for weeks, said smoothie shop owner informed me that the creators of Muscle Up were actually CT residents, and had developed these right around the corner. Also, turns out, the bar of my dreams is the official bar of Team USA Weightlifting. Who knew??

Muscle Up creators, Tony Leonardi & Lori Aleks, had no ambition to get into the protein bar business. Tony relays their origin story. “I had a dream one night that I was making protein bars with mashed sweet potatoes, and I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. I like to tinker in the kitchen so I started messing around with the recipe I saw in my dream, brought them to the gym, and people loved them. We couldn’t find a bar we liked, and I thought we might have something here.”

Both Lori and Tony are accomplished weigh-lifters, and Lori chimes in, “we built the recipe around the way we eat, grass fed protein and sweet potato. We decided early on that we would only use non-GMO ingredients and as much organic as possible.” 

Toni and Lori are quick to mentions that MOST bars either have more sugar than protein OR they have some type of fake or chemical sweetener in them. Muscle Up Bars set out to create a bar that had twice as much protein as sugar, nothing fake, and something you felt good about eating. The bars are also gluten-free and soy-free, and come in three delightful flavors: the above mentioned Peanut Butter & Cacao Nib (their best seller), Cacao + Vanilla, and Collagen Double Chocolate Espresso.

“Once the bars started taking off, we realized we couldn’t do this from home, so we got a co-packer on the West Coast willing to do smaller batches of bars, 5000-7500,” Says Lori. “They have a great food scientist we like to work with. They mass produce the bars and we do fulfillment.” It’s worth mentioning that Lori hand packs every shipment and includes a personal note. They truly understand the value of a positive customer service experience.

When they are not brainstorming bars in their kitchen, Lori is a coach and personal trainer at Crossfit Westport. Tony is a weekend competitive athlete, Crossfitter, does Olympic lifting, and is a financial planner by trade.

So, where exactly can people find Muscle Up bars? Half of their business is through online sales. The other half is through gyms, including most Crossfit locations, Olympic lifting gyms, and a variety of others concentrated in the Northeast.

Muscle Up bars can be found on their web site or at a gym near you.