Kristin is a personal trainer, strength and conditioning coach, CrossFit coach, competitive strength athlete who works out of the well known San Franscisco Crossfit gym alongside Kelly Starrett, Diane Fu, and several other big names in the fitness world. I had the pleasure of meeting her at the Motivate Summit in Utah and knew interviewing her would lead to an excellent blog post. Enjoy! - Matt

Matt: Kristin, tell me a bit about your fitness journey. How did you first get involved in the strength and fitness world? How did it lead to what you do today?

Kristin: It’s been a roundabout journey for sure. I’ve always been physically active, starting with ballet classes when I was five, competing with my high school dance team, judo in college, judo and CrossFit in graduate school, which eventually lead me to Olympic lifting, powerlifting, and Strongman.

I didn’t always think this is where I would end up, career-wise. I went to school to study Genetics and Medical Sciences, and my first job out of graduate school was in environmental consulting with a focus on human health. This was 2009 when the economy was tanking. When I got laid off, I thought about how much I enjoyed being the person that people usually came to for fitness advice and decided to pursue that instead.

I’m super lucky that through my time spent as a competitive athlete, I’ve met some very smart, kind, and experienced coaches, trainers, and physical therapists that were able to help guide me to the gyms I’m working at today. And I’m still meeting so many people that inspire me and challenge me to think differently.

Matt: Who were these mentors and coaches you had while transitioning full-time into this industry? What were the most important lessons they passed along to you?

Kristin: This goes way back.

First was my dance team instructor, Betty Buchner. As head of the high school dance team and often in charge of running practices and choreography sessions, her guidance helped me better understand dealing with large groups of people and having the confidence to put myself in front of others and make decisions. I didn’t know it at the time, but that is critical when your teaching a large class of peers. You have to have the right combination of congeniality and “this is how it is” attitude to get things done safely.

Then my judo sensei Bob Perez. He was very good at getting people interested in judo, a relatively fringe sport before MMA became a thing. He was great a celebrating any successes and helping us learn from our mistakes.

I’m also very lucky to have known Kelly Starrett and Diane Fu for years before getting into the industry. Kelly’s passion for always thinking and learning and experimenting is infectious. I like to say that he inspires unicornification of his coaches. None of us are okay with mediocrity, thanks to his passionate nature.

And when I decide to take the plunge, I would hang out at SFCF to watch Diane with her clients. As an athlete, it’s easy to lose sight of where people begin when they come in for training. I have a lot of drive for competition, but that’s not most people. It was good to watch another competitive weightlifter work with someone who needs that something else to get him or her going.

Since starting this job, all the coaches I work with at United Barbell and San Francisco CrossFit have influenced me in some way. We bat about ideas, programs, hard cases and the like. Conversations of “how might you teach this” to “how do you influence someone with this situation” are happening a lot.

Meeting Stevo was a big change for me, too. Up until then, most of my focus had been on “what can I do for the client while they are with me”, and now I’m thinking bigger. What can I do to make my influence extend beyond our session? How do I talk to and influence someone without seeming like I’m trying to judge or change them? This is where I’m currently trying to grow.

Matt: We were lucky enough to both attend the Motivate Summit in Salt Lake City last month and discuss similar questions with fitness and health professionals from all over the country. Was there anything that you took away from the one-day event that you’ve started to test out and see positive results from?

Kristin: The Motivate Summit was amazing and it took nearly two weeks for me to process stuff enough to figure out implementation. The one thing I took away immediately was focusing on trying to guide the client into making suggestions for habits to change. I’m used to, and have been taught, that as the coach/trainer, I’m supposed to do the guiding and suggesting, but you can be more effective by having conversations where you get the client to find those areas of improvement themselves. Often times, it’s something you might not have considered, and when it’s their idea, they’re more likely to stick with it.

I was able to have a conversation with one of my clients about cues and triggers throughout the week that cause her to do things she’s not happy about doing. By dissecting those situations together, we came up with a strategy to help ease those triggers. In subsequent conversations, she didn’t implement the strategy exactly as discussed, but she was more empowered to not let the situation trigger her in the first place.

Matt: Even though you are surrounded by some amazing coaches you recently started having an online coach, Joy Victoria, do nutrition coaching for you remotely. What were your reasons for doing this and how has it been going so far?

Kristin: None of the coaches I’m around focus on nutrition counseling. Except perhaps Stevo, but he’s more towards handling habits and psychology around food, which isn’t something I need right now. In fact, working predominantly in the CrossFit world, I hear A LOT about “good carbs” and “bad carbs”, “war on carbs” and various fad diets that people swear aren’t fad diets. While intellectually I get the importance of all macronutrients, calories in vs calories out, and sit firmly in “Team Aragon”, emotionally it’s hard to separate yourself from your surroundings. Just like with my programming for Olympic lifting and Strongman, too close is too emotional and I just wanted someone to tell me what to do.

Joy Victoria came highly recommended by Jacob Tsypkin and Jahed Momand, two guys I have a lot of respect for (and would also be interesting interviews). She had a wait list, but that corresponded nicely with the end of Strongman Nationals. First thing that happened was my carb intake nearly doubled and fat was cut way down. It’s a completely different way to think about food, and maybe I freaked out a little, but within two weeks, I had dropped two inches from around my waist without any change in my weight. I’m sold.

We’re starting a calorie/ carb cycling protocol this week and I’m excited to see how it goes.

Matt: How has it been being coached remotely so far? Was there anything that challenged or surprised you?

Kristin: Being coached remotely is fine for me with this. Joy is responsive by email and we have set Skype meetings every few weeks. And if I have a question she doesn’t know an answer to immediately, she’s looking up something for me quickly. I just really need someone to give me the framework and I’ll stick to it pretty easily.

Matt: So you coach people in-person and online. When comparing the two environments what do you think is important to know from coaching perspective?

Kristin: So far, my online athletes have been very self motivated, so it’s easier in one regard. In another regard, since they are very self motivated, sometimes it’s hard to get all the information from them that I need. They’ll push themselves to the point of breakdown, tell me about it,  and then get really down that they’re not more of a machine than they thought they were. So there is more teaching about when to pull back the reigns and read your body with these clients, generally.

This is in contrast to the people that come to me for face-to-face training, they need to be pushed and empowered not just in what they can do physically but in their interactions with the world to make better decision for themselves. These conversations tend to have to be… delicate isn’t the right word… but encouraging in a way that’s suggesting they have it in them all along and just need to find it. It’s hard to put into words, but it’s something that the Motivate Summit helped me understand better. Also, the book “Motivational Interviewing” has been super helpful in learning how to interact with these clients.

Matt: That’s super interesting. So you’re saying that your online clients have already bought into what you’re offering and the clients who have paid to come in to your gym and train with you, amongst other coaches, need a little extra something to do the work. Do you think this is a reflection of the type of clientele SFCF has or something else?

Kristin: I definitely think so. SFCF is a CrossFit gym, after all, and pretty much everyone has heard of CrossFit, for better or worse. You’re generally not going to step into a CrossFit unless you’re looking for something more intense. The people who have hired me to program for them know of my competition history and are reaching out to me because of that.

Those that work face to face with me need that appointment to hold them accountable, and many times, whether they know it or not, like to have a person to bounce emotions and thoughts off of. I was warned before becoming a coach that part of my job will be therapist, and it’s true in a way. I’m an unattached, un-judgemental third party to their lives so they can complain, boast, or whatever. (Enter the meme “sometimes the heaviest weights we carry are our feels”)

Matt: So you’re very unique when you consider how diverse your background, experiences, and interests are. You’re involved in Crossfit, Powerlifting, and Strongman competitions all while training clients and being trained by other coaches. Having been exposed to these flavors of fitness that are currently helping expand the fitness market, what do you think is really working for these various sports and interests? Five years from now when looking back, what will we pinpoint as the reasons why these various fitness group stuck around and helped grow the market?

Kristin: What I think keeps people coming back is a sense of empowerment and some level of fun. And that fun can come in the form of the exercises themselves or a sense of camaraderie with someone, a trainer or other members in a group. I really try to pull ideas from my background, like using movement patterns I learned as a dancer or from capoeira and putting them into a warm up. Or using some of the odd object training I’ve learned in Strongman to break up what can be particularly monotonous barbell/kettlebell/dumbbell training. And I’ll make my CrossFit classes do silly things like bicep curl finishers. They groan and roll their eyes, but most of them also have a goofy smile, because bro moments are silly like that sometimes.

As coaches, particularly if we have a sports background, we can get mired down in the training aspect, that get from point A to point B and always improving mentality, but most people want to sweat, have fun, feel better when they leave than when they came in. Getting to long term goals ARE important, but immediate gratification will keep them on track.

I think that coaches that can tap into that balance between fun and functional will have the best retention and best results. CrossFit has done well because of the sense of community and camaraderie it builds. But it can also miss the mark because sometimes the focus is too much on progressive training rather than a blend of progress and play. Talking with Seth Munsey, it sounds like he’s got a good program that does blend progress and play well, and training at Dan John’s that one day in Salt Lake City was a great eye opener to how it can work at all levels as well.

Matt: Last questions for you – What’s next for you as a coach and as an athlete? Do you see yourself staying at SFCF for the long haul or transitioning over to the East Bay?

Kristin: I’ve been sitting on this question for a while because it’s something that has been rolling around in my head a lot lately.

I definitely see myself sticking around at SFCF for the long haul. There is something special here in the way that the coaches care about their craft, interact with each other, and how Kelly encourages us to learn and experiment. It’s totally normal for spontaneous discussions about how to coach, technical matters, matters of business and motivation, to just spring up between coaches. I say that Kelly is good at “unicornification” of his coaches, and this aspect comes naturally to him. Through SFCF Carl Paoli has created GymnasticsWOD and Free+Style. Diane Fu has created her Fu Barbell seminar series. Nate Helming has started The Run Experience.

But what’s next for me? I’m not sure yet. I’m really focusing on being an athlete right now. I’m closing in on master’s age for most strength sports, so I figure I’ve got a couple more good, really competitive years ahead of me and I want to make the most of it. In that time, I want to learn and absorb as much as I can, meet as many intelligent people as I can to influence how I think about my craft, and create something of my own from there. I still feel like a baby in this industry, and sort of like strength training, career experience is a lot of “time under tension.”

In the immediate as an athlete, I have The Arnold for Strongman in March, the first level for amateur international competition. I’ve been competing at a national level for Olympic lifting for years, but with the new qualifying standards, I still need to re-qualify for nationals in 2015. I don’t see that as a problem, but I also don’t want to treat it as a given.

Matt: Boom! Thank you so much for sharing your story and passion for your craft Kristin. Can’t wait to visit SFCF.

If you’d like to hear more from Kristin check out her social links below:

• Kristin’s Website
• Speed Power Strength
• Instagram – @Physical_Revelry
• Twitter – @KNewmanCSCS