The Good Life – March-April 2019
Featuring fitness trainer Jake Haile. Local Hero - F-M Ambulance, Having a Beer with Travis Hopkins, Scuba Recovery and more in Fargo Moorhead's only men's magazine.
Featuring fitness trainer Jake Haile. Local Hero - F-M Ambulance, Having a Beer with Travis Hopkins, Scuba Recovery and more in Fargo Moorhead's only men's magazine.
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individuals with disabilities to live and work<br />
independently. Jake said he had a client who<br />
was about 12 or 13 years old and in need of<br />
motivation to get healthy. Jake said he just started<br />
playing basketball with the teenager, and the kid<br />
“woke up”. <strong>The</strong> more engaged the teen became<br />
in playing basketball, the less he experienced his<br />
violent behaviors.<br />
That’s when it clicked. Jake went to the director<br />
at CLS and asked if he could officially start a<br />
fitness program. He received the all clear and<br />
some funds to outfit a basic gym, and he started<br />
cycling people through the routine. “And people<br />
got happier,” he remembered. “It improved their<br />
quality of life and was making the community<br />
better.”<br />
After he started bringing CLS clients to TNT<br />
Kid’s Fitness and Gymnastics to use their<br />
facilities and equipment, Jake partnered with<br />
the coaches of CrossFit Icehouse as well as<br />
TNT Kid’s Fitness and Gymnastics to create<br />
Fargomania. TNT hosted the October 2017<br />
event, which featured individuals with special<br />
needs showcasing their athletic skills learned<br />
during an 8-week training cycle in four timed<br />
workouts at the event. Jake helped write the<br />
programming and watched the individuals<br />
achieve great things. “We were truly being in<br />
the moment with these people,” he said.<br />
Shortly after, TNT Kid’s Fitness and Gymnastics<br />
approached him about providing adapted<br />
fitness programs full time, and Jake jumped at<br />
the chance. After developing the program, Jake<br />
said TNT decided to seek a partner to make<br />
the program sustainable, and the Marv Bossart<br />
Foundation for Parkinson’s Support stepped<br />
in. “If you surround yourself with good people,<br />
then good things will find you,” Jake said.<br />
<strong>The</strong> partnership provided support and an outlet<br />
for participants for the Rock Steady Boxing<br />
program. “<strong>The</strong>y are the most inspiring people,”<br />
Jake said. “When you are inspired, you become<br />
inspiring. I experience joy with them — how is<br />
that not the most intoxicating thing in life?”<br />
But Jake hasn’t always been this inspired, and<br />
he said it’s important for him to share that part<br />
of his story with people. He wants them to see<br />
that vulnerability is not weakness. Quite the<br />
opposite, actually. “To be vulnerable is to grow,”<br />
he said.<br />
And grow he has. As a young man growing up<br />
in Omaha, Nebraska, Jake said he was a “lost<br />
human being” who lacked self-esteem and was<br />
just trying to fit in all the time when his mother<br />
made him attend a conference where he met<br />
urbantoadmedia.com / THE GOOD LIFE / 21
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