Today we’d like to introduce you to Cristian Plascencia and Natalie Higby.
Cristian and Natalie, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Cristian: I am the Co-Founder of The Durable Athlete. I have spent my whole life trying to find the best equation to life to help maximize daily function and the longevity of our career. It all began when I was twelve years old and sprained my ankle playing basketball. Having spent about two months in the physical therapy office, it was apparent that this was a setting that I wanted to surround myself with. I had always been into athletics and sports and the fact that this facility was helping athletes and general population move and feel better really resonated with my passions. I ended up spending 1000 hours at this physical therapy facility before leaving high school and heading into college.
While in college, I was able to intern with another physical therapy clinic out in Los Angeles County who exposed me to a holistic approach to health and fitness. It was the first time anyone had explained to me how nutrition, sleep, and our mental practices ultimately dictated the quality of everyday life as well as our physical performances. It was not too long after this realization and exposure to holistic health that I received a grant to conduct research on the effects of Whole Body Vibration techniques. This was a great exposure as it led me to eventually work with the strength and conditioning coach in assisting in the weight room with football and volleyball athletes.
Soon after graduating from California Lutheran University, I received admittance into the University of Texas, Austin and decided to move out to Austin, TX. Upon moving to Texas, I was able to land a personal coaching position at the Onnit Gym working with general population as well as elite professional athletes. Wanting to complement the structure of the gym, I decided that I would put all my efforts into helping people improve their quality of movement and more importantly, improving the quality of joint health for clients. Within my first two years working at Onnit, I was elected the lead Durability coach position which assisted other coaches at the Onnit gym better understand and implement movement and breathing techniques to assist in recovery protocols.
During my time at Onnit, I was able to travel and train with individuals like Earl Thomas, Andre Roberson, and The Taylor Swift ‘Reputation’ tour. One of the major themes I realized was regardless if you are a professional athlete or a 9-5 desk athlete, the principles’ that dictate your quality of life and performances are the same. If you are not sleeping enough or setting yourself up to sleep appropriately, then we can’t expect our physical performances in the gym and mental performances at work to be optimal. If we are not eating at the best times or eating the best type of foods, we should not expect our body to transform in the fashion that we are expecting.
This now brings me to today, where I work clients privately in my garage (general population), as well as co-own Austin Pro Academy which is a basketball development program based in ATX where we serve kids from 8 years old to professional level. Programs usually run all year with middle school athletes, eight months out the year with High School athletes, and 3-5 months with professional level athletes. Overall, we are privileged to serve over 200 basketball athletes spanning from San Antonio to Georgetown, helping them reach their full potential through the holistic development of their performance and lifestyle habits. That is exactly why the Durable Athlete was created, to help individuals find small wins throughout the day that eventually add up to more optimized YOU!
Natalie: I knew at a very young age that my purpose was to help people. Growing up as an athlete all of my life, I fell in love with the process of preparing for competition. Along with my passion for sports, I’ve always gravitated towards teaching and mentoring others as early as second grade. It was apparent to myself and others that I had the ability to communicate, build relationships, and lead.
As a student-athlete at the University of Texas at Dallas, I played basketball and majored in Education. Throughout my college years, I also studied in the areas of: Personal Development, Nutrition, Training, and Martial Arts. I gained the opportunity to coach at a local gym and absolutely fell in love with developing kid’s and women’s programs and touching the lives of many other everyday clients. During this time, I realized I wasn’t only interested in improving people’s physical fitness. I was also just as engaged with optimizing the mental and emotional side of people as well.
I decided to take my knowledge and skills to the classroom and challenge myself to educate kids on how to incorporate habits that would help them work through struggles and keep them healthy. After a few years in the classroom, I got the opportunity to go coach at the Onnit Gym HQ where I knew that I wanted to be the type of coach that focused more on Sleep, Nutrition, Breath, and Movement in order to optimize my clients’ overall longevity, performance and ultimately their lifestyle.
Through all of these experiences, I began to develop a much clearer vision of what it was that I wanted to provide the world. While I still enjoy and spend time training my athletes/clients one-on-one, I want to be able to take all of my previous experiences and acquired knowledge and build an online platform that allows me to work with people who are looking to better themselves in multiple areas of their life.
This approach is what The Durable Athlete is all about; helping people attain their full potential and become the best version of themselves mentally, emotionally, and physically. We believe a holistic approach is the key to maximizing our human potential. It doesn’t matter if you’ve lost sight of who you are, where you want to go, or if you have a crystal clear vision, the Durable Athlete was developed to assist you in your journey and to provide the services that will help you cultivate a healthy, happy and successful lifestyle.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
– Moving from California to Austin with no family and close friends. A completely new environment.
– Working long hours as a personal trainer and teacher without really feeling like we had enough time for ourselves.
– Not sure how to scale and run a business that was centered around empowering people through their lifestyle habits.
– Going full-time in our business right at the start of COVID 2020.
– Not having a consistent line of income when we left our salary job to run our own business full-time.
– Trying to balance all of the happenings now (app/brand awareness/basketball programs/online nutrition clients/family/engagement/relationships)
As you know, we’re big fans of Durable Athlete. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We believe that EVERYBODY is an athlete. Whether you are a 9 to 5 or get paid to play, we all have to perform. To perform at your highest level, achieve optimal health and well-being, and maximize success starts with daily habits. We are committed to spreading the word about how simple changes week after week can help you get stronger, feel better, and live longer. We bring a holistic approach to movement and health, and we’re committed to helping you achieve your goals by looking through the lens of our four pillars:
BREATH
Being able to optimize our breath is absolutely vital to our health and daily performances. Our breath has the ability to regulate (down or upregulate) the stress response within our body that controls hormone and biochemical secretion that ultimately drives our daily mood, energy, attention and sleep. By changing your breath, you have the ability to change your mental and physical well-being.
MOVEMENT
In a world filled with quick fixes and technology, our body’s innate ability to move is absolutely key when trying to optimize your health and performances. Other than all of the fantastic benefits of exercise, movement is our body’s mechanism to keep blood flowing throughout our system and allow for the recycling of dead cells and new cells to thrive.
NUTRITION
Simply put, food is fuel. We rely on food to give us sustainable energy for our daily mental and physical activities. Especially for individuals who are looking to make body composition changes through a fitness-related program, the quality and quantity of food you intake will dictate the success of your changes. Optimal nutrition can improve your health from the inside out.
SLEEP
When we talk about recovery, sleep is KING! Sleep is our body’s mechanism of riding of all the dead cells in our body and allowing the time for our brain, muscles, and joints to adapt to the daily stressors we place upon it. Without quality sleep, we cannot expect to show up as the best versions of ourselves everyday. When we sacrifice our sleep, we sacrifice our mood, energy, attention, strength, sex drive, hunger and much more!
What Separates Us:
Our holistic approach to optimizing health and wellness.
Services:
Online mobility + health app (breathwork + daily mobility routines + daily functional bodyweight and band strength training workouts + desk mobility videos + specific muscle and joint mobility routines to alleviate pain in that specific portion of your body + so much more)
In-person personal training and group training services.
Online nutritional and lifestyle coaching centered around improving your lifestyle habits around sleep, nutrition, movement, light exposure, food quality and overall stress balance and mitigation.
What matters most to you?
Our family, our health and improving the health of others.
Because we have seen our close family and friends suffer from the unfortunate product of “bad”/sub-optimal lifestyle habits and if we have the knowledge and ability to help educate people about how maximizing your sleep, eating high-quality foods, moving enough and balancing stress in your life, WHY NOT?
We often put our health on the shelf-we do not prioritize it until we absolutely need to reactive rather than proactive.
Pricing:
- Personal Training – $150 on-off or $125 package @ 10
- App: free 2 weeks, $24.99/month or $250.00/year
Contact Info:
- Email: support@durableathlete.com
- Website: www.durableathlete.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/durable.athlete
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/The-Durable-Athlete-110885526964357
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/CoachCristianGP
Image Credits
@Nico Lyoza @ShellyKnicks @Fitform
