Train like a pro at Ignite Athletics

One-stop shop for improving your health and reaching goals, writes Erin Petrow.

Whether you’re a pro athlete or simply looking to get off the couch and get more active, Ignite Athletics wants to help you meet your fitness goals and become the most fit you’ve ever been.

Josh Saulnier, who used to own JB Performance Training, and Jordan Harbidge and Joel Lipinksi, who previously owned Ignite Athletic Conditioning, have merged their businesses under the Ignite Athletics name after moving into the Gordie Howe Sports Complex.

“When we started our businesses originally this was our long-term goal — to have a facility like this one,” explained Saulnier. “Being in this facility, and being in this area has been really good. It’s really opened up some opportunities for us to work with different sporting bodies and different clientele.”

Offering training targeted to the needs of individual athletes, the new facility has allowed the Ignite Athletics team — which specializes in training for basketball, football and hockey — the opportunity to expand their training skills to help athletes from a wider range of sports, whether it be lacrosse, baseball, swimming or golf.

“We’ve really grown into an intelligent training environment where everybody has a periodised plan, everyone is training toward a goal,” Lipinski said. “You don’t come here to work out, you actually come here to train from a performance perspective.”

And with high school and university athletes training alongside professional athletes, the centre showcases how attainable fitness goals are as long as athletes are willing to put their minds to the task.

Ignite Athletics started with a focus on athlete development, but the centre started seeing an influx of interest from lifestyle athletes looking to get healthier, return to activity after injuries or work toward their own goals. Lipinksi says that demographic now makes up about a quarter of their clientele.

“It kind of just grew out of nowhere,” Lipinski said. “We’d be working with (student) athletes and we would have parents coming in being like ‘When are you guys going to create an Ignite fit for us?’”

When these lifestyle athletes walk through the door they sit down with the Ignite team, share their goals and then the team creates a program that will get them where they want to be.

And kids are welcome too; Ignite offers the Spark Park, a space that offers games and a climbing wall for kids aged seven to 12 where they can build a foundation of movement skills that will benefit them no matter their future athletic endeavours.

Ignite Athletics is proud to have created such a close family feeling with its clients and coaches regularly spending their off-time going to games and watching their athletes play.

“People don’t care what you know until they know that you

care,” Lipinski said. “We know pretty much everyone in here on a first-name basis … the staff really has a genuine, sincere passion for what we do and I think that translates to what our athletes end up seeing.”

Ignite Athletics boasts more than great coaches; with physiotherapists and massage therapists on site and a dietitian expected to join the team soon, the gym has become a one-stop shop for improving your physical health and reaching your fitness goals.

IGNITE ATHLETICS

Owners: Josh Saulnier, Jordan Harbidge and Joel Lipinski

Address: 1303 Avenue P South

Hours: 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday

Phone: 306-665-9927

Website: igniteathletics.com

Check: Facebook and Instagram Erin Petrow is a reporter at The Starphoenix. If you have started or moved a small business in Saskatoon within the last year, contact her at epetrow@postmedia.com