The WHY Behind InCharge Fitness

Washed Up, Retired Athletes and Weekend Warriors!!

Top scorer? MVP? Most dedicated? Locker room personality? Do any of these sound like you back in your prime!? Now you’re slowing down, feeling burnt out, tired, unconditioned?

You are a competitor! You always have been! Maybe you were a college athlete? Went over seas to play a couple more years? Always grinding, always working, always trying to improve your performance! Then you stopped playing. You ran out of eligibility, you started focusing on a career, a family, travelling? Whatever the case may be, you stepped away from the training aspect of the game.

Maybe you still play rec or beer league but you get frustrated when you feel your conditioning slipping away or your muscles are feeling softer than they ever have before because you’re only playing once or twice a week! While you were playing you had designated workouts during the season and in the off season. Why do you think that you can all of a sudden stop working out but still compete without sustaining injuries??

It is easy to feel like you’ve lost your identity after you’ve finished playing your sport! You take a step back and maybe don’t go to the gym because you miss being at the gym with your teammates, or you feel like you have no reason to workout because you’re not playing competitively anymore or you honestly don’t know what to do without someone telling you what to do.

Injuries might also be a huge factor. Its normal to take some time off to give your body a break and try and heal. But too much time off can be detrimental. You get into a vicious cycle of not working out and then feeling bad about not going to the gym that you go and then start trying to do what you were doing as an athlete even after you’ve been away for months at a time and then you end up tweaking an old injury or creating a new one that inevitably causes you to take more time off.

There's also the sense of not knowing what to do when you get to the gym. As an athlete it is amazing because you have a whole support team around you that is always letting you know what you need to be doing. We have coaches at practice, and strength and conditioning coaches in the gym. All you have to do is show up and put in the work!

Once you are done playing it is easy to get lost in the gym and unless you are going there with a plan you won’t have a very effective workout and that will deter you from getting back into it.

As “retired” athletes it is so important to stay on top of your physical fitness!

1. It will give you back your sense of self.
2. You will be able to compete recreationally with all your best buds without having to feel way out of shape or get injured.
3. Aging will eventually catch up to you!

Even though in those 10 + years of high school – college – pro years you put into your sport is probably more exercise than 50% of the population will get in their lifetime, your body doesn’t bank that time! You have to maintain what you’ve built to continue living a healthy life!

My Story

I, myself have struggled massively when it comes to motivation to workout after university. I played 2 years of softball and hockey at Rainy River Community college, and then went on to play 3 years of hockey at the University of Manitoba. These were my glory days! There was nothing I loved more that going to the rink everyday! Everyone was always together,  either for practice, workout, doing homework and just hanging out or watching the bachelor. There was always a sense of team and community!

It was extremely hard for me to go from spending 6 hours at the rink almost everyday to all of a sudden being done and playing just 1 or 2 games a week. So roughly 42 hours per week to maybe 4. There was so much time to fill!! At first I started coaching because I thought that would help, but that was very hard on me because I was coaching girls that were only 2-5 years younger than me and it made me just want to play. So I stepped away from coaching for a year and just played beer league hockey. After 2 years of beer league I was still frustrated and thought that was still able to compete, So I made the decision to try and go overseas to play but I unfortunately got a severe concussion 1 month before I was supposed to go and I missed the boat. Pun intended.

I started coaching 13U AA girls and loved it. I unfortunately sustained another concussion that had me off work for 8 months. The post concussive symptoms stayed with me for more than 3 years. At this point I was in and out of the gym. I’d go for a couple weeks and then take 3-4 months off. I was “fit enough,” meaning I was eating healthy enough and still playing rec sports like hockey, slowpitch and golf. I thought I was living an active lifestyle. And for the most part I was but I was missing that maintenance part. I wasn’t working on my strength or getting stronger. I was playing ball 4 nights a week, my shoulder was destroyed I had the worst imaginable shin splints and extreme hip pain, but I’m an athlete I’m used to playing thru pain.

A lot of you might be in that same boat. But one day that pain will become too much and you’ll have to work extremely hard to reverse it. I would go to physio for a new injury every couple months. But I wasn’t putting in daily effort to fix these problems or even listening to my body enough to rest. I did this all thru my 20s. Now that I am 31 I had to get hip surgery. 1/3 of my labrum was torn, and I remember this pain for at least 6 years.

It wasn't until I started doing consistent strength workouts and consistent mobility that I was able to notice a difference in my overall strength, not just while playing sports but in general during everyday activities.

This is why I wanted to create a program for washed up athletes like myself!

It is great that you want to play. And I know you are a competitor. We all are as athletes. You are probably playing on 4 different teams right now and feeling burnt out! But you don’t have to feel that way. If you can take 6 hours out of your week and dedicate it to maintaining and strengthening your body you will feel so much more stronger, faster, and conditioned while you are playing your sport.

I have a Kinesiology degree and have worked a lot with the aging population. It is very rewarding because they are (mostly) all so delightful and appreciative of everything you do for them but it is also extremely sad to know that if they had this program when they were younger they wouldn’t be in the shape they are now.

And I know how difficult it is to motivate yourself to go to the gym! I’m a personal trainer and I find it hard to get myself to the gym some days! But I know that the consequences of not going far outweigh the minor inconvenience during that particular day! 

I want to guide you to learn to love the gym again! I want you to feel like the athlete that you STILL are! I want you to live a long, healthy, mobile life with no pain or worry of silly injuries because you are still competing, but your body isn’t prepped for it! I know you know what you need to do but don’t necessarily know how to get there.

I will be your coach!

Brenley Anderson

Founder, CEO