Meet Fritz Nugent
MS, MA, CSCS, CCFT, USAW, SFG1
Coaching, with Intent
MY PASSION
Sometimes my athletes say that coaching is my calling, but I don’t feel that way. It has taken me fifteen years to realize this, but the reason I coach is because I can’t imagine doing anything else and enjoying it more than coaching. That’s not a calling, though. I didn’t grow up wanting to become a coach. I simply fell into it, and I am lucky and grateful for it. I love spending time with my athletes while teaching and helping them along their journeys to self-improvement. I learn an awful lot from them, too. I especially relish being a part of a preparation journey, the more challenging the better. Each athlete’s story is a hero’s journey, fraught with ups and downs, wins and losses, large successes and dark nights of the soul. I love it all. For life is to be lived!
Some of my favorite athlete success stories:
A smokejumper I trained had a bad parachute landing and fractured their femur, and the doctors said they would never run again. Since then, I have helped them rehab their hip, returned their strength beyond their previous bests, and they have completed three 100-mile races.
Successfully preparing four smokejumpers for rookie training
Over five years, helping a young collegiate tennis player transition into a decathlete, and then into a bobsledder. They are fighting for a spot on team USA for Bobsled this year!
Strength coaching the lightweight California’s Strongest Woman two years in a row
Helping a Division I collegiate sprinter in his senior year improve from 10.64 to 10.20 in the 100-meter, garnered a big PR of 20.70 in the 200-meter, and anchored the 4x100-meter team to a BigTEN championship.
PHILOSOPHY
Optimizing Performance
After coaching wildland fire athletes for almost a decade, I have realized that, like many professions that are highly physical in nature where the main demographic is young athletic males in their physical prime, the training principles that many within the space rely upon are not geared for long-term success.I like CrossFit and have been coaching in the CrossFit realm since 2012, but there are many glaring problems relying solely on this training strategy for season preparation, rookie training preparation, or in-season training. In my opinion, training which high intensity and high volume while underpinned by variety is a drastic combination of factors that can lead to short-term success and long-term burn-out for tactical athletes like wildland firefighters.
The physical demands of a wildland firefighter are intense enough, and athletes must not throw gasoline on the fire for too long. CrossFit methods have made their way into tactical realms (police, fire, military), and, in my opinion, the application of this training modality is misguided for this athlete population.
My training involves getting very specific about individual needs. Do you have a bad shoulder? Bad back? Are your knees achy? We can specifically address these concerns through your season preparation. Instead of loading athletes up with junk volume and running dozens of fast miles and dousing muscles with lactic acid, I employ anti-glycolytic training for power, Maffetone-style heart rate-constrained training for improving running efficiency and increasing aerobic capacity, and strategically craft progressions for improving PT scores to maximize returns on training investment while minimizing risk. That last part, risk management, is perhaps the most important factor of all for wildland fire athletes. More is not the answer. Better is.
Experience, Education & Certifications
QUALIFICATIONS
I have been coaching for 15 years now, well over 10,000 coaching hours, 3,000 athletes and clients. I currently specialize in preparing wildland fire athletes. My first wildland fire athlete was a woman named Heidi back in 2016 (I wrote a book about training her and two other female smokejumpers, which you can read more about here), and after her success, more wildland fire athletes hired me to help prepare them for fire season and rookie training. I currently coach a dozen wildland fire athletes each offseason.
For my full-time career, I coach and co-manage Invictus Fitness in San Diego, California, one of the top three brands in the world within the CrossFit space. At Invictus, I coach group classes, some small private classes, and personal training. I also co-run the Invictus Nutrition Program and have helped a large number of athletes make small and precise changes to their habits driving long-term habit changes. Along with managing, coaching, and the nutrition program, I coach the in-house Olympic Weightlifting team and write their programming.
I have a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from the University of Redlands in Southern California, and a Master of Science degree in Sport Conditioning and Performance from Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah. I have held a CSCS (Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, through the NSCA [National Strength and Conditioning Association]) for 14 years, USA Weightlifting for 12 years, CCFT for 10 years, and the SFG1 (StrongFirst Level 1) for 3 years.