about out.here.

History and EXPERIENCE.

My journey into health and fitness started with the dream of one day being a professional athlete. I played team sports throughout high school, focusing my attention on football and on playing in the CFL. I was not naturally gifted with the attributes or aesthetics of a professional football player, so I started to focus on weight training. I was lucky to have a great strength and conditioning coach at my high school who was truly ahead of the game when it came to fitness. I learned a lot about the fundamentals of weight training and started getting into Olympic lifting. My coach recommended I read the book Becoming a Supple Leppard by Kelly Starrett. Which has become my movement bible to this day, and I highly recommend it everyone should read this book; actually, it should be taught in school. I would go from 165lbs my senior year to 190lbs by the time I graduated, I continued to train under my coach but also started to add in sport-specific plyometrics as well as some CrossFit for fun. I was recruited by universities to play football but was not ready to go to school, so I decided to play a year in the CJFL. It was at this time I decided to study to become a personal trainer. I took my BCRPA and started training clients part-time while playing JR football. I decided to play a second season in the CJFL as our team was chasing a championship and I was enjoying working and training clients. I would unfortunately suffer a season-ending shoulder injury that would place me on the sidelines not only on the field but also in the gym.

After my injury, I had to take a whole new approach to my training. I would learn to focus on the rehab side of things working on rebuilding strength and stability. I was lucky to again have someone in my life to help guide me through this phase as my sister was studying yoga at this time. She opened my eyes to a whole different world of strength training and also the importance of stretching out and allowing the body to recover. I would spend the next 6 months rehabbing my shoulder and creating my own nightly yoga practice, as well as studying under NSAM on training clients through injuries. This was a rough time, but it really gave me an appreciation for rehab and recovery training. I would go on to play 2 more seasons of football accumulating a few more injuries throughout the years and finally hanging up my cleats in 2014. I enjoyed every second of my pursuit to become a professional athlete and along the way, I was able to learn a lot about the human body and its requirements if you are going to push it to its limits.

In 2015 I went through what I call my “Quarter-life crisis” I decided to sell everything I owned and book a one-way ticket to Vietnam. This was my first year not preparing for a football season, I was unsure what I was going to do, so with not much thought at all and a little inspiration from the movie “The Beach” and listening to my first audiobook, vagabonding by Rolf Potts, I decided to detach from everything and everyone I knew. I booked a one-way ticket as I was unsure of what to expect, where I was going, and how long I was going to stay. After spending 3 months cruising around the jungles and mountains of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, on my 110cc Honda Win, I decided to head to Thailand to train and study in Muay Thai. The long days on the bike gave me lots of time to reflect and ponder on what would be my next focus in life. I was always fascinated with martial arts and loved to learn from the source. I figured learning Muay Thai in the heart of Thailand would be as pure and raw as it gets. I would spend 6 months training at AKA Thailand where I would not only study Muay Thai but also BJJ, MMA, Yoga, as well as strength and conditioning. this would lead me to get into the best shape of my life, being a well-rounded mover with endurance for days. Training at AKA Thailand would teach me so much about martial arts and how the highest level of athletes in the world would train their bodies. every month, there would be a handful of professional MMA fighters, from all around the world, training for their upcoming fights. As well as champion Muay Thai fighters and Black belts in BJJ training daily. After I maxed out my stay in Thailand due to Travel Visas, I would take my talents to Indonesia to pursue my next great endeavor and a lifelong dream, Surfing…

My first experience on a surfboard was lackluster at beast I rented a board from a local at the first beach I could find and went for a paddle. Unfortunately, it was not what I imagined it would be as there was not much swell and the board I rented did not look like something Kelly slater would ride. After spending a few days in Kuta beach and asking where the big waves were I was informed by some Aussies that it was pumping down in Uluwatu. So, I rented a bike and a shortboard ish and headed down south, where I would experience one of the most humbling moments of my life. I paddled out to overhead waves with next to no experience and sat out back dodging mountains of water until the sun started to set, it was either paddle into one of these monsters or spend the night in the ocean. I remember falling down the face of the wave and only being able to get to one knee my own kooky expression of “Pig Doggin” anyways the fun only lasted for a few brief moments as I flew down the line into an exceptionally large and heavy closeout section. cut to two more of these monster waves on the head and then finally being spit out onto the rocky cliffs of Uluwatu. I then had to paddle back out in the dusk of the sunset and around the cliff to get back to the only little cove with access back to the island. That was it I was hooked. I moved to Australia to learn how to surf which I then altered my style of training again to more endurance-based and surf-focused.

It was in Australia where I would adapt my training from in the gym to outside in the elements. I started doing a lot more bodyweight training as well as beach workouts, swims, runs, yoga, Pilates, gymnastics, and of course martial art training. I would also get into Boxing and Kickboxing, anything that would sharpen my movements and push my cardio to the next level. there is nothing worse than being denied from getting outback. You can’t learn to surf if you can’t make it out day after day so I altered my training to help me excel at surfing. After 365 days in Australia surfing 355 of those days, I would say I learned more about the human body and its requirements to learn a new movement pattern than how to get barreled or toss a backside reverse. (I am still working on the latter) After Australia, I would go on to backpack through Mexico and the US until finally finding my way back home to BC.

To wrap up this short story, which was meant to only be one paragraph, I will end where I am now and what I have learned from my travels and experiences. I am grateful to call the west coast of Vancouver Island home for the last 5 years. My goal is to create a training environment for people who want to live as optimally as possible, tapping into some of our primal human requirements, which in today’s modern world are being neglected. I hope to bring my own unique view on health and fitness and what it truly means to be a healthy human. How long can you stay at your peak, how fast can you recover to do it again tomorrow, how many more reps can you get if you are able to train every day? how does it feel to operate at your optimal human frequency? Well shit, let’s find out!