Garrett is a certified strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS) through the National Strength and Conditioning Association and is also an American Council on Exercise certified personal trainer. He holds a bachelor of science degree in kinesiology-exercise science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master of science degree in kinesiology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Garrett has been a personal trainer and CSCS since 2003. His work experience includes an internship with the Milwaukee Brewers as assistant to the strength and conditioning coordinator, group exercise leader at the University of Wisconsin Health Sports Medicine Fitness Center and recreational sports supervisor for the University of Wisconsin Intramural Department.

Q&A with Garrett Van Auken

Q. How long have you been a personal trainer and certified strength & conditioning specialist?
A. Since 2003.

Q. What areas do you specialize in?
A. I specialize in functional strength, core work and multi-joint exercises.

Q. What brought you to your current style of practice?
A. I realized quickly that functional and multi-joint exercises allowed me to get more “bang for my buck” while working out. I was able to hit many more muscle groups in the same amount of time as standard, single joint exercises. Plus, knowing that a majority of my clients would NOT be professional athletes, functional training allowed me to impact their everyday lives.

Q. What can a new client expect?
A. Obviously to work hard. I typically hit a lot more exercises with more variety than a lot of other personal trainers out there.

Q. What recent industry trends have you found most noteworthy?
A. More people and trainers are continuing to focus more on functional training. Also combining modalities, such as yogalates and cardio kickboxing, is becoming a hot trend.

Q. What are your current personal wellness goals and how are you addressing them?
A. I have always had a hard time putting on weight. People are probably going to get mad at me for saying this, but I’m pretty much the same weight since high school. So my goals are putting on 5-10 healthy pounds by continuing to lift weights and eating well.

Q. What is your favorite beautiful spot in Milwaukee?
A. For me personally, you can’t beat Bradford Beach on a perfect summer day.

Q. What is your favorite place to eat in Milwaukee?
A. I’m a fan of food, so I have a favorite Italian place, sushi place, etc. So way too many restaurants to name here.

Q. What are your top three favorite things to do/hobbies?
A. I’m big into sports. HUGE Badgers and Brewers fan so I’ll go to a lot and watch a lot of their games. As for me participating, I play volleyball, kickball, and softball. I’m also a runner so I’ll enter a lot of 5k and 10k races. Also in the past couple of years I’ve added miscellaneous races such as the Navy SEAL challenge, the Tough Mudder, the Warrior Dash, etc.

Q. What do you do to de-stress?
A. Nothing seems to work better than exercise and some good music while I’m working out. If it’s after a long day, I just like to go home and take off my shoes.

We are often drawn to yoga during times of existential breakdowns, injuries and close self-examination. It was no different for Jozi. She began practicing yoga as a freshman in college to balance her running, but it didn’t really evolve until she moved to the East Coast for her M.F.A. in creative writing less than a year after losing her father to brain cancer. Yoga became a tool to step back from the stress and trauma and observe its deeper effects on the psyche that were beginning to play out in the physical body. It became a method for redeveloping a relationship with the self that was getting lost in depression. This, unfortunately, isn’t an uncommon story in the yoga world. She was TA-ing in graduate school and had always known she was going to be a teacher, but teaching in academia had never felt transformative enough. She moved back to Milwaukee in 2010 and over the next couple of years, everything fell into place.

Jozi received her 200-hour certification from Core Essence Yoga in 2012 and her 500-hour certification from Jason Crandell in 2017, a certificate in trauma-informed yoga from the Street Yoga Project in 2017, a certificate in Yoga, Mindfulness, and Social Change and her first level of Yoga Therapy Rx from Loyola Marymount University in 2017. She is currently completing her academic Master’s Degree in Yoga Studies from LMU.

Q&A with Jozi Tatham

Q. How long have you been a yoga instructor?
A. I have been teaching yoga since 2012 and have been practicing since 2003.

Q. What areas do you specialize in?
A. I am trained in vinyasa flow, prenatal, yin, and trauma-informed yoga, and have begun my training in Yoga Therapy.

Q. What brought you to your current style of practice?
A. I mostly teach vinyasa flow that incorporates the emphasized aspects of all of my trainings for a challenging, creative and purposeful practice. I find that using all of the tools that we gather as teachers along the way, even just from walking down the street, provides us with a more well-informed approach to the individuality of a yoga practice. It took me a few years of teaching, a few personal injuries and throwing myself deep into the educational process to get to a point where I understood that I could use everything to inform my style – everything that life offered up as a learning moment.

Q. What can a new student expect?
A. A student can expect to be challenged because I believe that’s when we grow the most. It might not always be through physical exertion, though that’s definitely on the plate. It might be from learning how to find patience, ease, quiet, stillness or just balancing the breath.

Q. What recent industry trends have you found most noteworthy?
A. I just recently moved back from Los Angeles and returning to the yoga community in Milwaukee from that experience gave me a lot of hope for the future of this city. It’s still just a burgeoning scene here and still has so much growing left to do. I can already see a slight shift happening toward a widespread understanding that yoga is transformative in more ways than just the physical. I’m excited to continue to be a part of the direction that yoga moves in here – it’s exciting and inspiring.

Q. What are your current personal wellness goals and how are you addressing them?
A. My personal goals are to incorporate more mindful movement practices and trainings. I want to have a balanced understanding of how the body naturally moves and how we can build on what it instinctively already does. This works with the body on a deeply individual level and innately addresses personal needs and areas of limitation. I am currently working with personal trainers who teach mindful movement exercises.

Q. What is your favorite beautiful spot in Milwaukee?
A. There are so many that I love in this city: the Oakleaf Trail, especially between Locust and Capital, the riverfront walk that is being extended more and more from Riverwest to downtown, the hill overlooking downtown in Kadish Park in Riverwest, the view of the river from the end of my street on the lower East side that reminds me of a bridge in Florence, Italy where I would watch the sunset every night, the patio at night at The Noble in Walker’s Point…the list goes on and on.

Q. What is your favorite place to eat in Milwaukee?
A. There are the staples, like Bel Air, Thainamite, Odd Duck, Cafe Corazon – but there has been a recent explosion of new and noteworthy restaurants in Milwaukee in the last couple of years: All Purpose, The Noble, The Madrid, Vagabond, and so many more that I’m pumped to go try. Milwaukee really knows how to do food well.

Q. What are your top three favorite things to do/hobbies?
A. When I’m not in the middle of race season, running is just a hobby for me, but I also write a lot and entertain my dog.

Q. What do you do to de-stress?
A. Hot bubble baths, wrapping myself in my knit blanket, making a hot cup of Tension Release tea, reading a book, long runs with my dog, playing fetch with my dog, going for long walks with my dog – really anything involving my dog!

Katie is an ACSM Personal Trainer and TRX Level II Trainer. With each client, she has learned that a quality fitness routine carves the path to everything people want in life. More joy? Begin with fitness. More energy? Begin with fitness. Less pain? Begin with fitness. Focus at work? You get the idea! Her philosophy is that improving total wellness will open each client’s life to new opportunities and unimagined successes.

Katie’s energetic, thoughtful and creative approach to designing individual programs comes from an understanding of what it’s like to feel unhealthy. While taking care of others comes naturally, taking care of herself used to settle low on the priority list. Over time, her weight increased as her mind to body connection decreased. It was group fitness classes, yoga and massage that reconnected her to energy, strength and joy! In the five years Katie has been training, her knowledge and connection to fitness has allowed her to move clients toward goals in a way that is specific to their needs.

Katie works with each client to determine individual goals, abilities, experience, available time, budget and desires. She’ll provide positive, creative, focused sessions and integrate ideas for complete wellness into individual training programs. Start today and get to know the joy that movement brings into your life!

Q&A with Katie Hunt
Q. How long have you been a personal trainer?
A. Five incredible years.

Q. What areas do you specialize in?
A. I specialize in making fitness fun. My specialties include bodyweight training and TRX suspension training.

Q. What brought you to your current style of practice?
A. I believe in challenging myself to do things I’m afraid of. Believe it or not, it used to be the gym! Thankfully, when I began taking group fitness and yoga classes, I was welcomed, challenged and pushed in a supportive environment where I made countless new friends and built a better life! I’m here to bring that same experience to each person I cross paths with.

Q. What can a new client expect?
A. New clients can expect a carefully crafted session, an introduction to tools they can use for a lifetime and the satisfaction that comes from feeling strong and successful. Clients can also expect me to hold myself to high standards and be a constant source of up-to-date wellness information.

Q.What recent industry trends have you found most noteworthy?
A. It is incredible to see the fitness industry gearing up to teach people the importance of a mind and body experience. While I can teach anyone to squat, it is in connecting the brain to the muscle that makes the magic happen!

Q. What are your current personal wellness goals and how are you addressing them?
A. My top three goals are to balance high intensity workouts with a restorative practice, be able to do a freestanding handstand and spend seven minutes a day in silence. I attend a minimum of one restorative or yin yoga session per week, practice one or more of my handstand progressions daily and simply unplug my devices and set a timer for seven unplugged minutes in the morning. My planner has a chart to track each goal!

Q. What is your favorite beautiful spot in Milwaukee?
A. I love Atwater Park! The view of our lake, the amazing set of stairs, the quiet beach in the morning and the fun playground all make this my go-to spot for outdoor workouts and relaxing.

Q. What is your favorite place to eat in Milwaukee?
A. Beans N Barley is my spot! Variety, local, great people, healthy choices, smart portion sizes and reasonable prices all make this my favorite for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Q. What are your top three favorite things to do/hobbies?
A. Cartwheels, Aerial Yoga and creating simple five ingredient recipes.

Q. What do you do to de-stress?
A. Inversions, reading, acupuncture and thai massage are my top ways to de-stress.

Robert’s fascination with fitness started in the summer before freshman year in high school. That year Robert experienced a rapid growth spurt of six inches. The coaches wanted him to play sports because he was tall but because of his growth spurt he was very uncoordinated. His training started with weight-lifting, running cross country and training with the wrestling team. These activities helped him build movement awareness and increase his size, speed and strength. His training was so successful he went on to be a walk-on player for the University of Illinois football team!

With his degree in Industrial Design, Robert worked for a company designing fitness equipment. He was there for 11 years and came to appreciate that our bodies are the best designed pieces of fitness equipment. He left to attend the National Personal Training Institute. While there, he developed his philosophy, ‘Choose to move well, move often and challenge your body everyday’. His primary training approach uses full body, primal movements with resistance as well as other other unique methods, to help his clients move and feel better.

Q&A with Robert McDonial

Q. How long have you been a personal trainer?
A. I have been a personal trainer/fitness coach for five years. Before becoming a personal trainer, I designed fitness equipment.

Q. What areas do you specialize in?
A. I specialize in body weight and non-machine based training. You can accomplish strength, endurance and hypertrophy goals with your own body weight. I prefer to use kettlebells, sandbags, superbands, the TRX Suspension Trainer and the Rip Trainer when I do use equipment.

Q. What brought you to your current style of practice?
A. Having designed fitness equipment for 10+ years, I saw how people routinely discarded the equipment shortly after buying it. I also so how people became frustrated waiting for occupied gym equipment and being unable to take the equipment with them while traveling. I quickly realized that there was one piece of equipment, that everyone had: their own body. They just did not know how to use it. I began to learn and teach myself various types of body weight training, so I could show others how to use the ultimate training machine, their own body.

Q. What can a new client expect?
A. A new client can expect to receive a full assessment with an explanation of the findings and a road map for the fulfillment of their needs and goals. Clients will also be challenged to safely step out of there comfort zone.

Q.What recent industry trends have you found most noteworthy?
A. I like that primal/natural movement is catching on. If you can control your body, then you can control external loads and reduce your chance of injury. I also like that tools such a as kettlebells and sand bags, are starting to get programmed into training regimens.

Q. What are your current personal wellness goals and how are you addressing them?
A. My current personal wellness goals are to bulletproof my body from injury and to improve my handstands. I practice primal movement patterns to activate my entire body so I can move well and with intention. I also practice my inversions a little bit everyday.

Q. What is your favorite beautiful spot in Milwaukee?
A. I love being in and around water, so any place along the lakefront is perfect for me. If I had to choose one place, then it would be Atwater park in Shorewood. Not only is it a beautiful view of Lake Michigan and the beach below, but the stairs and the walkway are ideal for training.

Q. What is your favorite place to eat in Milwaukee?
A. Having lived in Florida, I love seafood, so I like Screaming Tuna for their sushi. I have heard that the Harbor House has excellent seafood, so I’m going to have to try them out sometime. Occasionally, I will go to Kopps for a burger and custard. You can’t eat perfectly all the time, haha!

Q. What are your top three favorite things to do/hobbies?
A. My three favorite things to do are going to auto shows, visiting unique architecture-both residential and commercial, and watching movies at the theater.

Q. What do you do to de-stress?
To de-stress, I love to listen to music while taking long walks with my dog.