To understand OPEX you must first understand James Fitzgerald as he is the visionary force powering OPEX as its owner and founder.

Transcription

1 The Story of

2 OPEX has emerged as a global leader in Fitness Coaching and Coaching Education but how did all of it begin? Where did OPEX come from? How did it grow to where it is today? The story is inspiring! To understand OPEX you must first understand James Fitzgerald as he is the visionary force powering OPEX as its owner and founder.

3 James was born in Labrador, Canada and, from a very early age, he was a ferocious competitor. His main sporting endeavors were soccer, hockey, and basketball. While he was a great athlete he also had an insatiable thirst for knowledge and intelligence. He didn t just play sports, he learned them and he learned about himself in the process. He knew from a young age that his journey would have a number of chapters but it wasn t until a brutal injury that his journey took a fork in the road. James had a scholarship lined up to a major university when he suffered a compound fracture in his leg. That was a major change of plans for somebody who had planned to remain a high level athlete for many more years. James changed his plans and headed to The University of Newfoundland where he not only played basketball and junior hockey, in 1998 he also graduated with honors in Physical Education with a minor in Biology. It was in University where his thirst for strength and conditioning began tie the theoretical together with the practical. His work in school lead him to being published in Physiology Canada, The Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology, and The Journal for Strength and Conditioning Research with topics that weren t just theoretical. He was testing his theories even at that young age.

4 The years of practical application and testing allowed James to begin to build his beliefs on how to progress different body types who also have different mind sets. The understanding that bodies and minds had to be considered in a training program would lead James to build a 360 degree, 3-dimensional way of coaching that would take him from the University lab into the real world. People say that big successes often happen overnight. But, as so many coaches do, James had to learn and evolve over YEARS of learning and experiential growth. That evolution took him 10 different trainer and coaching positions while he built Optimum Performance Training (OPT). Don t know what Optimum Performance Training is? That story began in a cloud. OPT was a training company that James used in numerous settings to help clients reach for their highest potential. Some of the settings were: YMCA Canada This helped James understand a globo setting, how it worked, how clients were being motivated, and how the higher ups both helped and hurt the progress of both coaches and clients Fitness Northwest Athletic Club This was a more niche club that helped James learn how a bit smaller setting could implement and utilize a quality system of training for their clients Fitsystems This put James in a model that was a bit more athletic in nature. James used a number of strength and conditioning models mixed with his own style of training to help those clients Poliquin Performance Center This put James back into the learning seat as a coach/intern within a highly well-known and quality system for training elite athletes

5 Those settings all played a major role in the progress of James and OPT but it wasn t until James and his wife, Leighanne, built the Compound that much of this experience came full circle. The compound was nothing more than a small training space on their property in Calgary where James built the system that is still in place to this day. James took the experiences that he gained in every one of his coaching roles and built a community where EVERYBODY had individual programming but they all enjoyed the greater community feeling through their own unique model of fun. The legend that was the compound took a major turn in 2005 when a new idea turned the fitness world on its head.

6 Aerial Shot from 2007 CrossFit Games In 2005 James found CrossFit. He began to participate in their online dot com workouts under the virtual name OPT. It was there where he began to compete against some of the OG s of CrossFit (think Khalipa, Mikko, etc ) and it was there that the name OPT began to catch fire. Over the course of the next two years James used his own training combined with participation in the online workouts to learn about how people were training and to learn how CrossFit pushed his own body to the limits. In 2007 CrossFit held their first Annual CrossFit Competition at the Ranch at Aromas. James took on the rest of the world and WON the first CrossFit Games. That win spread what James believed in to the entire world. CrossFit became the platform where James could explore what training meant and how training affected athletes of all types. In 2008 James was one of the featured athletes in Sevan Matossian s CrossFit film Every Second Counts. That exposure brought quite a large number of people knocking on James s door. It was here where EC was born.

7 Exclusive Coaching (EC) was how James began to make an impact on the larger fitness movement. But, perhaps, more importantly, it was how James solidified his beliefs in how individualized training needed to be for all clients in order to provide them with the best long term. It is important to remember that James didn t just prescribe workouts, he tried and tested them ALL. He was a high end sports athlete, he did traditional strength and conditioning, he did body building, he did CrossFit, he even had a good stint with stability balls amongst other things. Through the massive amount of information he gained from not only feeling those workouts, but also paying close attention to his clients all over the world he knew that the group model was not where he could place his confidence brought with it a huge new addition to OPT. That addition was The Coaching Certificate Program (CCP) that was solely designed to help make coaches PROFESSIONALS. James got so many inquiries about coaches who needed more knowledge and support with their coaching that he knew it was important to help develop a curriculum to turn them into higher end coaches. In a brutally cold weekend in Calgary, James held the first Program Design Course but it was that course that changed the entire functional fitness world. With the addition of CCP as well as the daily training blog, Big Dawgs Blog, OPT caught fire and never looked

8 From 2010 to 2013 James and an outstanding set of instructors created the first course of its kind in the market. James experiences earlier in his coaching career showed him that it takes quite a lot more than prescribing a workout was needed to get the most out of clients and athletes. His course now combined 5 of the most important pieces of coaching: 1. Life Coaching 2. Assessment 3. Program Design 4. Nutrition 5. Business Systems While the courses all have the vision that James knew was so important for coaching, there were and still are some outstanding advisors and instructors to those courses. Bernie Novokowsky and Sharon Prete for Life Coaching, Matt Lalonde, Dr Jeoff Drobot, and Dr Dick Thom for Nutrition, and Sean Greely and his team from NPE for Business Systems. It was through the countless conversations with these instructors and the growing number of coaches and athletes that James made the major life change with his family to leave Canada in favor of Scottsdale, Arizona in 2013.

9 When James got to Arizona he and Leighanne knew they needed more help with both coaching and event organization. It was then that the team began to build FAST! The Big Dawgs Blog was as popular as ever, CCP was evolving into both an in person as well as an online education system to allow everybody all over the world to participate and learn from it, and EC was getting countless athletes into the best shape of their lives and, in some case, into the CrossFit Games main event. But, something was still challenging to the beliefs that James and his team had. It was in 2013 when The Big Dawg Blog was turned into 4 different workout programs. The reason behind it.more INDIVIDUALITY. OPT believes in ONE CLIENT, ONE PROGRAM and this helped to publicly show that James actually does executes on his beliefs instead of just saying one thing and doing another.

10 2014 brought another exciting year for James and OPT. OPT became a part owner in the Phoenix Rise NPGL Grid Fitness Team. James, Jon Callahan, Mike Lee, and Matt Bryant brought the quality of training from OPT into the training for the Rise and continued to build the Scientific Exploration of athletes that continued to refine both the CCP program as well as the EC program. Along with the Grid team came On-Site training at OPT. Clients can now train on site with OPT coaches daily. That brought a great addition for the coaches at OPT because they could hone in on their continued education by working with clients in multiple settings. But, the biggest change for OPT came late in A NEW NAME. As OPT grew so did the importance to protect the programs that it created and the methods it used. In an effort to get an American Trademark on Optimum Performance Training it became understood that the name was not going to be usable. James didn t even flinch. It was then that he began to transcend OPT into its new name, OPEX. James knew that the business and the ideas were too important for him to be the only face within OPEX. Those changes were the perfect platform to take OPEX into James has always been very tied to a few major things in fitness: Training needs to be individualized to get best results over time Alignment needs to be in place between lifestyle and training to get the best dose response from a training plan As a coach and athlete it is the long term approach that leads to results, not a one and done approach Awareness is the first step forward in a great journey. That awareness must be based in truth

11 Those beliefs became more and more important to publicly show as the world of fitness began to see people who said one thing and did something very different. So, in 2015, OPEX decided to remove the Big Dawgs Blog even though it was exceptionally popular in the world of fitness blogs. It wasn t a question in James s mind, it simply was the path to long term success. When you look at James s and OPEX s beliefs you can clearly see what they believe in. OPEX will continue to refine their programs and platforms until it is as close to perfect as a model can be and then they will refine it some more. Formed its first ever CrossFit team and they made it all of the way to the CrossFit Games in Carson, California. Introduced its EC Global Coaching Program which bring coaches from all over the world under 1 umbrella Created a brand new Total Coach Education Program behind a state of the art education platform.

12 A year like 2015 is incredibly exciting but the most inspirational part about James and OPEX is that each year builds on the last. OPEX is a constantly evolving journey for coaches, athletes, instructors, and James and it will be a fun ride to see where they end up in the future