I'LL DO IT ANYWAY.

Mobility-first training for people whose bodies have started sending invoices.

Tragically Fit is built for the rest of us. The ones who've lived hard, trained hard, broken a few things, and aren't done yet.

We're not selling you a highlight reel or a transformation photo. We're not going to tell you that 52 is the new 30. What we've got is a system that keeps you moving well for the next thirty years instead of buying you a good six months and a shoulder surgery.

Movement quality first. Real community always. Ten minutes on a bad day, fifty on a good one — and both of them count.

  • Gen X. The youngest of the old people. Nobody's checking IDs. If you struggle with mobility, this is the right place for you.

  • The whole thing is modular on purpose. Do one piece and you did the program — not a watered-down version of it. The program.

  • Run the full session, or bolt the mobility block onto the front of your CrossFit class, your lifting day, your trail run. Most warm-ups are arm circles and a jog. This isn't that.

It All Begins Here

Why Tragically Fit exists

I've been a CrossFit coach since 2008 and competed at the highest level of my sport as a professional CrossFit Games as an individual competitor. Seventeen years of putting myself and my athletes through their paces and chasing my own limits. I knew how to train. I thought I knew how to move.

Then on July 26, 2025, I landed wrong on a water jump and tore both shoulders and both bicep tendons. Not one shoulder — both. At 52, I went from Games athlete to surgical patient overnight. Two identical surgeries, back to back. Same procedure, same recovery, same humbling grind — twice. Most people would call that a tragedy. I call it the education I didn't know I needed.

Rehabbing the second shoulder, I stopped following the standard protocol and started building my own. I'd already lived the first recovery — I knew where the gaps were. What I discovered in the work, specifically in pushing the very edges of my movement range, produced changes in my shoulder mobility I hadn't felt in decades of elite training. The quality of movement I got from going to those fringes — carefully, deliberately, repeatedly — was unlike anything I'd chased in competition. I couldn't unfeel it. So I built a system around it. And then I built a brand.

That system is Tragically Fit. Built by a professional 50 + Games athlete who had to break completely to figure out what actually matters.

THE JUMP
Massive tears (4 inches +) on both rotator cuffs. Completely tore both biceps tendons. My surgeon said both shoulders were pulled from their sockets. Good times!

Meet Gabriel

Founder — Tragically Fit — Est. 1973  ·  Still Loading

Let's get the important stuff out of the way: I'm 52. I've been working out since before your favorite influencer was born. My knees have opinions. My shoulders have stories. And somehow, I'm still out here every morning in my driveway with my neighbors, moving weight like it personally offended me.

I’m a professional CrossFit Athlete - retired to be clear.

I've been a full-time coach since CrossFit was still being explained at dinner parties. CF Level 2, USAW Level 2, and enough hours on a competition floor to have developed a complex relationship with chalk. Before coaching, I was a football player and a wrestler — sports that gave me the athletic foundation, and the foundational love of athleticism, that shaped everything I do today.

CF Level 2

USAW Level 2

CF Games Individual

Coaching Since CrossFit began

The thing that changed my life more than any PR, any podium, any program I've ever written? Sobriety. Over 10 years clean. I'll be real: it rearranged everything — how I train, how I coach, how I show up as a husband and as a dad to a 12-year-old who is already making me look slow. (More on her soon. Watch this space.)

Tragically Fit isn't just a fitness platform — it's what happens when you combine 30+ years of real athletic life with the kind of hard-won clarity that only comes from genuinely blowing yourself up and rebuilding. This programming covers everything I know: Olympic lifting, CrossFit methodology, mobility, nutrition, movement quality, and the kind of raw strength work that doesn't care how many followers you have.

Skilled? Yes.
But skill isn't the point anymore.

You'll find me outside whenever possible. I wear outdoor brands on purpose — that connection to wild places isn't a vibe, it's a value. Nature is the OG gym, and I've been a member since flannel was first in style. (It came back. I waited.)

Husband. Father. Neighbor's favorite workout partner. Retired alcoholic. Active optimist. Gen X to the bone — which means I'll never, ever ask you to smash that like button.