In January of 2017, Summit officially opened. It is crazy to imagine (at the time of writing this) that it was over 8 years ago. Some days, it feels like it has been 20 years, some days, it still feels fresh and exciting. If you want to read the whole origin story of Summit, check out a post I wrote about that……
Life, to me, should be about self-reflection and learning about yourself. A major factor in my life that I have identified in myself is that I like to keep things moving (physically and mentally) and to keep things fresh. This typically manifests itself in roughly 8-year cycles of changing up routines, changing up interests, changing up where I live, etc.
In my late teens and into my 20s, I made a big push following snowboarding to see where I could take that (more on that story for a future post). On the backend of that, I had a knee surgery, which forced a greater interest into climbing. I dove into climbing and put all my efforts into getting physically as good as I could. Then came a neck surgery (unrelated to climbing) which led me to starting summit. Fast forward 8 more years to where we are today. In the past year I have had two surgeries, last year was my knee and most recently my eyelid.
Recent Surgeries
I had surgery on my eyelid on February 6th of 2025. This surgery was related to the surgery I had on my neck removing a tumor in 2015. That tumor was wrapped around the vagus nerve, which runs the length of your entire body. When removing the tumor since it was on my vagus nerve, there likely was going to be some noticeable change physically with me. Turns out it caused my eyelid to drop. At the time it didn’t affect my vision, but now 8 years later it started to.
Now eight years post opening the gym, I am at a point where I am looking for change. Every time this happens has come around a surgery. What is ironic about all this, is the surgery I had on my neck led to starting Summit. Now the surgery I had on my eye was due to the surgery on my neck, which led me to open summit. However, this time the change feels like it is the culmination of everything I have learned about myself and how to capitalize on those learnings.
Stay Positive
Outside of being a father, managing the gym has been the hardest thing I have done (even harder than climbing 5.13 or learning to spin a 900 on my snowboard). Mostly because other people’s joy and livelihood are at stake, in which I am responsible for. When starting Summit, I did not know what to expect to happen. So, I didn’t truly know the direction I wanted to take it. Now that I have seen the positive benefit for our clients, members, employees, etc. I am 100% positive the direction I want to go.
Injury is an opportunity and I am going to fully capitalize on this opportunity to take Summit Strength and Fitness and its community to the next level of awesome. More on that to come in future posts. Until then, STAY POSITIVE.