Where do I start?

Raised on the water

I was born and raised in Kāneʻohe, on the windward side of Oʻahu. My dad was a waterman and he was in the Navy, so everything in our house revolved around the ocean and the land. Diving, surfing, snorkeling, all day, until somebody called us in.

None of it felt like exercise. It was just how we lived. That is the part I keep coming back to now, because it is exactly what I want to hand people. Not a workout you survive. A body you can live in.

The athlete years

Soccer was my first love and I still play it. Softball is what took me to the mainland, to Portland State and a Division I roster, and I studied exercise science because I wanted to understand what was actually happening inside the bodies I was asking so much of.

At twenty two I was coaching college softball with national championships on the line, which is a ridiculous amount of responsibility for someone that age. Then grad school for athletic training at Florida International, down in Miami. Every step was the same question from a different angle. How does a body learn to do something hard, safely, over and over?

Strength as medicine

I spent ten years at OHSU. I started in a medical fitness gym, moved into sports medicine as an athletic trainer, and ended up in clinical research studying cancer and exercise.

That last part changed me. I watched strength training work on people going through the hardest thing a body can go through, and not as a nice extra. As treatment.

There's nothing better in medicine than exercise, and I will die on that hill.

I am not being cute about that either. If the benefits of strength training were put into a pill, everyone would take it. Nobody hands you the pill though, so somebody has to teach you the movements.

The moment it clicked

Then the labs shut down. We moved the research programs online, which meant coaching strength through a screen, hands off, with nothing but my voice and the right words.

I was sure it would fall apart. It did not. People got measurably stronger while I talked them through it, and that is when it stopped being a maybe for me. If this works with words alone, it works anywhere, for anyone, and I have no excuse not to build it.

Why I built Kimi Fit

I built this program because I couldn't stop thinking about my loved ones. How is this not out there more? So I built this.

I have a habit of fighting the path I am on and then finding out years later that it was the right one. I just had to stop fighting it.

So Kimi Fit is not a workout feed and it is not me shouting at you to keep up. It is a learning program. You learn the language first, you hear the exact same cues every single week, and the repetition is the whole point. Confidence comes out of repetition, and mastery comes after that.

Strength training is kinda boring, but in the best way possible.

Where you start

At the wall. Everybody starts at the wall, because a wall gives you feedback you can feel, it is in every room you will ever be in, and it never changes. Your wall is always with you.

From there we stack your skeleton and we go at your pace. I'm not trying to coddle anyone, this is hard work, but I don't get people injured, and that's why people trust me.

And none of this is about how you look. If you think you're gonna beat time and gravity, you are wrong. It's not to look good. It's to feel good. I want you walking out to the picnic table and picking up your grandkids without once thinking about it.

You don't need to be fit to start. You just need to show up. Getting through the doors is the hardest part.