Our Instructors
Matthew (Coach) Keen
Golf
I began my golf journey 20 years ago in Ottawa, ON. I was 18 years old and working at a used sports equipment store. A high school friend had a tee time and needed a partner, so he called me up. Yes on a phone. Yes, surprisingly I answered. Yes, I’d try golf for the first time. I purchased a cheap set of graphite shafted cavity backs and borrowed a driver from my store and we were off. We had to pit stop on the way because I didn’t own a collared shirt. The round was a total disaster. If I’d been keeping score it would have been in the 120s. But there was one shot. I had duffed a driver, barely making it past the front tees and my second shot was over a big pond. I’d have to carry it around 180yds. Not knowing any better I pulled out the longest club I had and put the nicest swing of my so far 3 hour career on that ball and it cleared the water with room to spare. It felt and sounded different. I’d pured it. I asked my buddy if that’s what it was supposed to do. He just said ‘Yep, that’s about as good as that club can be hit’. I was hooked.
Fitness
Shortly after finishing high school I moved to Vancouver and got a job at a gym on the UBC campus selling memberships while I slept in my best friend’s den. The job was good enough, but the staff was awesome! The manager (Chris- now owner of Fitness 2000 in Burnaby- look him up if you’re near) was very member oriented and it resulted in a busy gym full of happy people. I watched the personal trainers working with people and they were having a blast helping people exercise! That’s what I wanted. So I quit and enrolled at Langara College in the Human Kinetics program.
Three years later I was working at a big box gym as a trainer. But I started getting hurt. I don’t remember the first time I threw my back out, but I was too young for it. You never forget the feeling. It was like feeling the sound of snapping your fingers, but in my spine. It felt like nothing at first, then it got hot, then it got excruciatingly painful to the point it would take over an hour to walk home (4km). This took over my life for a full decade. It was bad enough that clients started offering to load their own bars (if you’ve worked any amount of time in fitness, you know this does. not. happen. ever). I felt useless. I was afraid. At one point I was resigned to the fact that I needed surgery. But I happened to travel to Portland to take a course called ‘Clinical Athlete for Movement Professionals’ because I’m obsessed with learning. There were some exercises we did in this course that would look like nothing to an onlooker (lying down with your heels on a bench, barely lifting your butt off the ground), but to the person performing, felt like everything. The strangest thing too, they made my back feel really good! So I found out where the exercises were inspired from (Postural Restoration Institute- it was a 90/90 hip lift variation) and went on a crusade to learn as much as I could about it. I’ve since taken 5 of their courses and religiously did the exercises for 3 years and I haven’t had any back pain since. I went from thinking I knew the body to knowing that I know nothing about it because (to quote the best movie ever made) ‘the limit (of our body’s complexity) does not exist’.
I’ve spent the past few years ‘gymifying’ the rehab process so clients don’t feel like they’re on a slow moving hamster wheel; They’re compound lifting, their pain and fear avoidance decreases while their bodies get stronger, and they have fun!
Putting my obsessions together
Given my passion for golf and my love of fitness, it just made sense that the next step would be marry the two and become certified through the Titleist Performance Institute as a golf fitness professional. So I did.
Hire me. You won’t regret it.