I am a pretty even keeled person, but my frustration will get the best of me from time to time (I am not good at hiding it) and in this particular situation it resulted in me basically getting fired from my job!  Here’s how it went down…

I started off in the fitness industry shortly after finishing my undergraduate degree in Physical Education.  I worked in one of the ‘big box’ gyms and learned a ton about interacting with different people, showing them how to adjust the seat on any machine and basically how to go through the circuit of machines and then head out the door.

I remember speaking to a club manager about this ‘idea’ I had back in the early days of personal trainers.  I was so enthusiastic about my idea of designing exercise programs that were tailored specifically for a client’s goals.  They would not all get the exact same program, but different exercises based on their needs and wants.

She listened patiently, then smiled and said “that is a nice idea Maria, but our business is selling memberships.”  Here is where my frustration with the industry first reared its head.  I walked out of that gym that day and applied to do my Masters of Science in Kinesiology so I could learn more about how the body works which would help me create efficient and effective exercise programs.

I loved my time in grad school learning about exercise physiology, heck I even liked the statistics course.  After graduation I went to work as the Exercise Specialist at the Fowler Kennedy Sport Medicine Clinic.  This is where I got my skill of helping athletes return to sport after injury stronger, faster and more agile than before their injury by applying athlete development principles to their rehab.

As the word started to spread that athletes were actually coming back from injury and performing better than ever in competition, some of the varsity teams at the University of Western Ontario came calling.  Eventually I was the Strength and Conditioning Coach to both men’s and women’s Basketball, Volleyball, Hockey and Track & Field teams.  This is before there were many college strength coaches in Canada – life was great!

Then opportunity came knocking!  I landed my dream job!  I became the head coach at a huge 10,000 square foot athlete training centre.  I was so excited to get to work, but there was a problem that ultimately led to my downfall.

You see the problem was this, my focus was on top quality training, but the business owner was focussed just on making money.  It wasn’t their fault, they didn’t know that if we provided the very best quality training available that the money would follow and we would all be happy.

So soon we started cutting corners.  We had to train 10 year olds like 16 year olds.  We worried too much about “following the script” and not enough about building relationships.  There was pressure to train teams just to make them tired, not necessarily better, so their parents and coaches would be impressed.

I couldn’t sleep at night.  I lost my passion for coaching (in fact I was starting to hate it) and eventually I made a decision to stop toeing the party line.  My frustration led me to the decision that I would act based on what was best for the athlete rather than what it said in the corporate manual.

Not a politically correct decision to say the least.  Imagine the head cook at McDonald’s starts pumping out organic bison burgers with brie and cranberries instead of the Big Mac…that would not go over well at all.  Well, I had pretty much the same outcome.   One of us had to go, either me or the business owner – yep you guessed right, it was me!

I remember clearing out my desk and heading straight out to run a session at a sports camp with no equipment, I even had to make up the workout on the fly because the workout I planned was using a bunch of equipment from the training centre.  You may think that this was an awful day, but it actually was one of the best days of my life.  I had a great feeling of liberation.  You see I was happier training a young hockey player in his back yard than I was pushing 40 athletes a day through the $500,000 training facility, because what I love the most is seeing my athletes achieve and I firmly believe that quality training is the path to achievement.

So I learned from that lesson; I stay true to my roots.  I train athletes in a small, very plain studio, no bells, no whistles, just top quality training.  I look forward to going to work every day, who wouldn’t love going to work every day with people who are pursuing their goals, living their dreams and achieving success?  Could I make more money if I ran bootcamps and was prepared to take all comers and run a volume business?  Yes, absolutely.  But I still think quality trumps quantity so I am going to keep going with that if it is okay with you.