BIO
I was born in Calgary and grew up playing in the mountains of Canmore. I've always been drawn to adventurous sports, spending a lot of my time Snowboarding, Rock climbing, In-line Skating, and anything else involving high speeds and imminent danger. I first worked as a Lifeguard and Swim coach and studied Massage Therapy in College which gave me my first taste of the health industry.

Shortly after completing my program I decided the health field wasn't for me. I took on a temporary job as a waiter to make some cash and figure out my next step. 9 years later I was running a restaurant... So much for a temporary job. After 6 of those years I had successfully added 25 lbs of body fat and began to realize my lifestyle was catching up with me. It was at that time I jumped with 2 feet into a healthy lifestyle.

Over the next few years fitness became my passion. I began educating myself about diet and exercise and living what I had learned. I gave up dinning out and became the guy at the restaurant that brought his own food. As my results became evident my coworkers started to seek out my advice and I questioned why I wasn't doing this for a living.

Soon after I took my first personal training certification. It was the classic isolation movements, monitor your heart rate, bicep curls on a bosu ball type of training, but as far as I knew that was the way it was done. It wasn’t until I stumbled across an article titled "The World’s Toughest Workout".

This (life changing) article was a few fascinating pages about the up and coming style of training known as CrossFit. The principles and philosophies of CrossFit went against a lot of what I had learned but "the world’s toughest workout" was a big claim, so I figured I’d give it a shot. My first CrossFit workout was our own creation: Run 1 mile, 50 Deadlifts, 50 Pistols, 50 over head lunges, run 1 mile. I figured it wouldn’t be that bad, low weight, high reps, no problem... Not even halfway through I thought I might die.

For days after I couldn’t walk, and I knew I was hooked. I began following the main site WOD and in September 2008 I attended a CrossFit level 1 certification. I "drank the kool-aid", as they say, and haven't looked back since.

I adore CrossFit. I love the workouts, the results, and the community. I am excited to be a part of the CrossFit Nation and help the people of Saskatoon to forge elite fitness.

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BIO
I was born and raised in Saskatoon. At the age of 17, after finishing high school, I high-tailed it across the country to pursue new adventures in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Four years and one degree in commerce later, I still had not had enough of the Maritimes. Dalhousie University remained my home for graduate school as well, while I finished an MBA in finance and marketing management.

Appropriately armed with plenty of letters behind my name, I headed back west. This time I landed in Calgary, where I took a job with an investment firm. After a year and a half of sitting at a desk talking on the phone, I came to the stark realization that I would have stabbed any of the sharp (or dull) office implements through my eye, just for some excitement. I lived for my time in the gym – literally morning, noon, and night. My desk job had become an inconvenience that was getting in the way of what I truly loved.

A few night classes and exams later, plus one nervously submitted resignation letter, I made the decision to cut my losses and change career paths. Along the way, I did manage to pick up one rather handsome young man named David Rylee who shared a similar passion for health and fitness. He is the Hal to my JoAnne, you might say. Together we made the leap to move to Saskatoon and create a new business, where we could get fit and have fun all day long.

After a couple of years in the world of competitive bodybuilding, I found myself longing for something different. Without really knowing it at the time, I was looking for something tougher, more intense, and geared towards performance rather than aesthetics. One day I came across an article called “The World’s Toughest Workout” about the up and coming CrossFit philosophy. We checked out crossfit.com and decided to give this thing a try.

We programmed our own first workout based on what we gleaned from the CrossFit mainpage. After a 51 minute thrashing involving sprints, overhead lunges, single leg squats, deadlifts, and more running, we both felt like we might die. It was the hardest workout either of us had ever had and we had trouble walking for the next week. This was good stuff!

We attended our first CrossFit cert, drank the Kool-aid, and declared ourselves full-time CrossFitters We started applying the CrossFit philosophies not only to ourselves, but to our personal training clients as well. We saw phenomenal results, watched chronic injuries disappear, and knew this was our passion. With CrossFit BRIO we are excited to be a part of the growing nation of affiliates around the globe and to help the people of Saskatoon to forge elite fitness.

CREDENTIALS

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