My Journey As A Coach

In this episode, I talk you through my history and journey as a trainer and a coach. Hopefully by the end of this episode, you will have a better understanding of where I am coming from with Summit Strength, and why I truly believe I am in a unique position to help hikers. 

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I started coaching when I was 15.

Not dabbling. Not volunteering at a school carnival. Actually coaching, helping kids develop sprint mechanics with the same coach who was working with me on my own athletics.

I'm nearly 30 now.

So when someone finds me and asks where I'm coming from with all of this, that's the honest answer. It's been almost my entire life, and definitely my entire adult life.

Here's a quick version of how that journey actually went.

At 15, I was coaching primary school kids on sprint mechanics. The big lesson from that wasn't technique. It was learning how to take genuinely complex subjects and explain them in a way that actually lands. That skill has never left me.

At 16, I started working reception at a gym. I was too young to be a trainer, but I spent every spare minute learning from the coaches around me. As it turned out, they were exceptional. One ended up as the national strength and conditioning coach for the Dutch women's hockey team. Another ran one of the top facilities in Australia. I didn't know that then. I just knew they were smart and I wanted to learn everything they knew.

At 18, I qualified as a trainer. At 19, I started a degree in sport and exercise science. Anatomy, biomechanics, neuroscience, sports psychology, models of fatigue. A lot of it didn't feel practical at the time. Years later, I kept finding myself going back to it.

At 22, I was working full-time as a personal trainer in London. Thirty to forty hours a week with people across a full spectrum of goals and backgrounds. That's where the hands-on coaching really started to sharpen.

At 23, I spent a couple of years as a behavioural change coach. Goal setting, habit formation, working through obstacles. A completely different facet of the job, and one that changed how I think about helping people.

At 25, I started working specifically with hikers. And I realized two things almost immediately. First, hikers actually need real help. Their bodies face demands that most generic training completely ignores. And second, the information available to them was genuinely terrible.

At 26, I launched Summit Strength. And then this podcast. And then, when people from the US and Canada and Europe started reaching out, the online program.

Now I'm nearly 30 and helping hikers all over the world, taking things I never thought I'd use and finding ways they apply directly to the trail.
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Every stage built something I still use.

Yours in trekking,

Rowan