Journey to Coaching-Yes, You Can!

From Crossfit Trainer to Laying the foundation of a great Coach. 2006 – 2019

Yes, you can!
I owned a boutique gym called CrossFit Guelph for 13 years, between 2006 and 2019. Our Motto at CrossFit Guelph from day one was Yes, you can! And it did not matter if you were young or old. Yes, you can! was what you heard. Over time, it became more than a motto. It became my go-to response to someone when they claimed not to be able to do something. Not to naively suggest that they could do something when they clearly could not but that there was always something they could do. There was always a Yes, You Can! to be found. My job was finding it, and I was very good at it.

CrossFit Guelph was founded in 2006 and operated from the Guelph Shorinji-Ryu Kudaka Karate Club, which I owned until around 2009, when CrossFit Guelph became a full-time entity.

CrossFit Guelph was the tenth CrossFit Club in Canada and the fourth in Ontario, and I was among the first trainers to be certified in Canada by CrossFit Founder Greg Glassman. To say we were pioneers is an understatement. We were blazing a trail that none of us fully understood at the time but would become a worldwide phenomenon, and that is not what this blog post is about.

The Transition Begins
This blog post is about the beginning of my transition from Subject matter expert and teacher to Coach. 
I had already spent years as a Sensei (One who had come before) in Martial Arts, and when I started my gym, the title of Coach was conferred to me by members. It was an honour and nice, but I was still a trainer, a teacher, a cheerleader and sometimes a confidant. I was not a coach; that certification was not earned until 2019, after I left the gym industry and acquired different training and qualifications.

My time as a Gym owner imbued me with many attributes I believe to be my greatest strengths as a coach. I was passionate about others’ success, developed a keen eye for their strengths and what held them back, and understood deeply that whatever they believed limited them was ultimately in their minds. I became very adept at motivating people and believing in them when their beliefs failed.

As I mentioned earlier, our Motto YES, YOU CAN! was not just blind faith or cheerleading but was born of my profound belief in others and my ability to support and challenge them to rise to the occasion as they progressed. I was an expert at making the impossible possible and the impossible ordinary.

Successful Clients

It’s all You! Became my motto, and it kept me humble. Although I often received generous praise and thanks for my role in supporting others to go beyond what they thought possible, my knowledge that it was my members who did the work helped me stay humble and develop my belief in others. I knew that no matter their challenge, they had it within themselves to progress. This belief has become foundational to my work as a coach. In coaching language, we refer to this as holding the client as creative, resourceful and whole.

I can’t even begin to count the success stories. We prepped future firefighters, police, and military for their physical fitness tests; we supported 100’s of everyday individuals, moms and dads, sons and daughters with their strength, conditioning, fitness and weight loss goals and worked MIndest with corporate executives, doctors,, professors and professional and college athletes across multiple sports.

CrossFit Guelph also impacted health and wellness with our nutrition counselling and made a difference in the lives of our members and our community, including helping people cure type 2 diabetes, relieving them of their reliance on CPAP machines, reducing blood pressure and heart rates from dangerous to athletic and helping people break habits and

In 2015, everything began to change as I awoke to my true vocation and embarked on my journey toward becoming the professional coach I am today.

But that is another story.