Meet Stephanie Webb and Ryan Trificana of GenFit in North Downtown

Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephanie Webb and Ryan Trificana.

Stephanie and Ryan, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I am passionate about shifting fitness culture away from diet trends and painfully difficult workouts to the understanding that humans are meant to move.

We live in a culture where most people limit their movement all day: desk jobs where we sit for hours, living rooms that ironically encourage sitting or laying still while watching TV, and cars where we are forced into limited positions for extended periods of time.

I was stuck in these patterns. Eleven years ago, I was working a desk job, typing for hours, and my body was reaping the consequences. I was breathing with my shoulders, I couldn’t squat lower than 90 degrees, and I simply did not feel good.

My partner, Ryan, recommended that I try yoga. After my first class, I was hooked. I was taking classes daily to counteract sitting still all day. Soon, I took teacher training.

During training, I realized that I needed to do something for myself. I had just started my PhD program, and I needed more movement. So I tried pole dancing. It struck a chord in my soul, and I needed to do as much pole as possible. I was training consistently, but also kept up yoga.

After a year or so, the women who I started pole with had to stop due to injury. I was concerned, and then it happened: one day I woke up and it felt like I couldn’t breathe. I had a stabbing pain in my back and anything pole exacerbated it. I went to the doctor, and she told me to stop poling. This was not an option.

That was when my perspective changed. I realized that I couldn’t sit all day and then jump into a high-level class and expect my body to hold up. I needed foundational training and time to recover. I also needed to incorporate more movement into my everyday life.

At the same time, Ryan was going through his own fitness journey. He started as a boot camper at Genesis Fitness (what is now GenFit), and he quickly accelerated to trainer. He then moved into CrossFit. The competition and challenge moved him, and he was all in. One day, during a basic movement he had many times, Ryan injured his wrist. The wrist injury forced him to see his movement differently. He couldn’t keep up the intensity of his workouts at CrossFit without injuring himself more.

A few years and a lot of education later, we were offered the opportunity to purchase GenFit. We had no idea how we were going to make it happen. Ryan was a professional bartender, and I was just finishing my PhD. However, everything fell together.

We decided we wanted our facility to be the place we never had available to us: a location that offers amazing classes that also seek to teach. We wanted our people to feel connected to us, to learn and grow with us.

Today, GenFit offers conditioning, strength, mobility, skills, flow, recovery, and play classes. We offer ongoing education about everyday nutritional movement you can do whenever and where ever. We are looking forward to developing a space where people can eat together (and think about how they access and cook food – how can we move differently in the kitchen?).

I am moving toward also changing diet culture. Everyone feels the pressure to have a perfect body, and often that leads to pushing through injury and deprivation. I want to bring pleasure and pain relief back into the picture. I want to change the idea that as we age our bodies deteriorate, and it is to be expected.

We need more movement, all the time. We need varied movement, and challenges. We need to understand that the brain is a part of the body (and there isn’t a false binary of brain/body connection).

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
It has not been a smooth road.

Both Ryan and I have experienced injury in our own movement endeavors. I want others to learn from our mistakes: you don’t have to experience pain and injury. We can mitigate the aches and pains of “aging” as well with good, nutritional movement. It doesn’t have to be hard, It should be fun.

We have had to move within a year of owning the facility.

We are not just touting fitness. We are also having to encourage people to deconstruct messages from society about body image, diet, and the role of fitness. This has been slow and challenging. It has been a wonderful process seeing changes. But it hasn’t been easy.

We are always learning and growing, and that means that we are also finding a way to merge comfort with the discomfort of healthy growth. In a culture that fosters “numbing out,” we are trying to teach people how to listen to their bodies.

GenFit – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
GenFit is a gym in Denver that encourages people to understand the need for basic movement. We have structured our movement curriculum to build foundational movement patterns (mobility and strength classes, to establish the interconnectivity between the brain and the body (flow, mobility, conditioning), to explore the idea of community and connection (play and conditioning), and to celebrate movement capabilities (conditioning). We offer additional workshops to further education and bring in new ideas.

As a company, we are most proud of seeing the development of quality movement in our students (physically, emotionally, and mentally). When we started, many of our boot camp students could not squat below a 90-degree angle (they were sitting in chairs all day – so it makes sense!). Many of our students have deeper squats, move without footwear pain-free, and feel more physically capable than they did five years ago. It is like reverse aging!

GenFit is different than other organizations because, as owners, we value curiosity, growth, and connection. We aren’t predictable, and that makes some people uncomfortable. Our instructors are all challenged to bring their best to class – they create their own classes and can showcase what lights them up. We encourage conscious, thoughtful growth, and encourage recovery and reflection.

We want to be the last gym people attend.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
I, personally, define success as a deep feeling of contentment, like I am making positive contributions to the people and world around me, and that I have the opportunity and resources to help others.

Pricing:

• 30 days for $30 intro offer (beginning May 1)
• $129/month unlimited membership
• 8x/month $96
• 4x/month $60
• Drop in $20

Contact Info:

• Address: 2243 Curtis Street
  Denver, CO 80208
• Website: www.genfitdenver.com
• Phone: 5054363481
• Email: info@genfitdenver.com

Image Credit:
Trevor Bennion

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