The short story is I, Jason, was a police office and, due to life circumstances, felt compelled to change. So my wife and I made the decision to build a gym in an effort to provide the community with a space to train, be social, learn new things and ultimately create habits that would serve them as individuals in a positive manner throughout their lives. And also to establish a different lifestyle that allowed more flexibility with our kids as well as our own personal interests.

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The long story is very long and includes perceptions changing as it pertained to my role as a police officer and my role as a husband and a dad and a friend and a son and as a human bean.

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Prior to building the gym and while I was a police officer I was already training with a handful of people at the local park after a friend insisted I train with her. We would train together at 6am on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday religiously outside on a concrete pad with minimal shelter from the elements provided by a large deck area above us which also had a pergola on top of it. There was a sensor light that lit up the "training area" and every now and again someone would have to stop exercising, run over to the sensor and wave their arms around until the light came back on before continuing on with their workout.

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Initially the training was free because I didn't need the money and I was just happy to be training with other people. Then eventually a few more people started to inquire and join us and eventually insisted on paying me. So everyone started giving me $5 per session and all that money just went towards purchasing kettlebells, foam interlocking mats (because burpees on concrete sucked ass, especially in the winter), skipping ropes and a few sets of gymnastics rings.

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Then every session often started with a brief laugh at the state of my poor Toyota Altezza looking like it was about to stand up on it's hind legs due to the boot being sacked out with kettlebells before everyone participated in moving the gear from the carpark to our sweet training area and setting ourselves up for the morning.

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And we would do this every training morning regardless of the weather thanks to a couple of OG diehards. Some evenings when the weather was stormy and the forecast for the morning was looking shit, I would text everyone something along the lines of "ooosh, this storm is pretty wild hey" in hopes everyone would pull pin on braving the weather. But two members would always reply "yep, see you in the morning" and I was always so stoked. Especially having to clear the ice off of my windscreen on the really cold winter mornings. And we did this for almost two years straight.​

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In 2016, while still a police officer and still training at the park, we built the gym on our 5 acre property before resigning from the police in 2017 and officially opening.