When Michel Loomis, then a teacher at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School, co-founded a physical fitness after-school program in 2009, all she had to work with was a big gym.

In the years since, her program, Smart Strength, enlisted a corps of businesses to provide healthy snacks at every session. Then a dental hygienist starting visiting on occasion to talk about teeth-cleaning practices.

And now, in the past month, Loomis added some actual exercise equipment — chin-up bars, ropes and medicine balls — to the mix after receiving a $4,000 grant from the LiveWell Lawrence coalition.

Guthrie Bricker, a sixth-grader at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School, works on some ring rows during the after-school program Smart Strength. The program got a grant and used funds to purchase new equipment for students to use in the exercise program.

“I like that it exposes them to the kind of equipment they’ll use in the future in a gym,” said Angela Finch, one of four trainers from Next Level gym who lead the exercises. Smart Strength was also started by Next Level’s owner, Chad Richards.

“There’s only so much we can do with body weight exercises,” Finch said.

The program, which runs twice a week during three nine-week sessions throughout the school calendar, has attracted several dozen kids since its beginning, plus the occasional teacher and parent of a student, who are also invited to attend.

The hour-long program always begins with healthy snacks, followed by lengthy warmup involving things like lunges and heel flicks. These days, they get to break out the new toys after all that. On one Thursday afternoon, with 27 kids present, they broke up into three groups. One to do “battle rope” exercises; another to hop over mats and leap onto a taller ply box; and another to use the chin-up bars.

Kenzi Dowdell, an eighth-grader, said his favorite exercise is the battle rope, in which a person waves a thick, heavy rope up and down. He’s one of the five students at Smart Strength who earned one of the annual “scholarships” to train at Next Level for free.

“You can really get out your anger,” he said. “It’s really tough, though.”

Loomis, now retired from teaching math and physical education, said the equipment’s been well received among the rest of students. She said she hopes to spread the program to another middle school in the coming years.

“It’s really fun; it’s gotten me into great shape,” said sixth-grader Guthrie Bricker. “It’s made me tougher.”