I didn’t grow up playing sports. But I spent most of my childhood outside running, biking, and exploring. That instinct to move has always been in me. Around Grade 7, something shifted. I started setting real goals for myself. I joined school teams like track and volleyball, and for the first time, I got a taste of structured training and I was hooked.
By high school, I was all in. I played football, kept running track, and spent every spare moment training to get faster and stronger. I wanted to be the best version of myself. I had mentors who shaped who I am today. I even won the school’s fitness award, which, at the time, meant everything to me.
After high school, I had one goal: become a firefighter.
To build my resume, I joined the Navy Reserves as a diver. The next two years were nonstop — basic training, Olympic security duty, naval environmental training, and dive school. By 2010, I was back in London and started coaching at a local CrossFit gym. That’s when everything clicked.
I loved fitness. But more than that, I loved coaching.
Watching someone progress, get stronger, and make a real change in their life was powerful. In 2011, I started my Kinesiology degree at Western. In 2012 I co-founded CrossFit Hybrid Competitive with Merrit and Tommy. From 2012 to 2015, I coached full-time, helped grow the gym, and leaned heavily into community-building. The early focus was on competition but more and more everyday people kept showing up. That started to shift my thinking.
In 2015, Brooke and I moved to Victoria, and I took on a new challenge: coaching in a different way. I worked with Fleet Diving Unit Pacific as a standby instructor and joined the base Urban Search and Rescue team. I also became a fully certified firefighter with View Royal Fire Department.
This was supposed to be the final step toward my goal of full-time firefighting.
But something unexpected happened.
View Royal responds to almost 1,000 calls per year and most of them are medical. Heart attacks. Strokes. Falls. And what I started to see over and over again was that most of them were preventable.
That realization hit me hard.
It came fully into focus while I was away on a leadership course in Borden. With fewer distractions, I found myself back in the gym daily and thinking deeply about what kind of impact I wanted to make in the world.
That’s when it hit me:
I didn’t want to respond after the disease.
I wanted to prevent it altogether.
I realized I could make a bigger impact through fitness. Not just helping people squat or lose weight but helping them take control of their lives before they got the call for help.
When I got home, I released from the military, got back into the industry, and started coaching at a gym in Victoria. Eventually, Brooke and I connected with Isaac and Will and MVMT Strength was born.
What I Focus On Today
Fast forward eight years…
MVMT Strength has helped thousands of people change their lives and we’re just getting started.
Today, my focus is on helping people bridge the gap between what they’re doing in the gym and what they’re working toward in life.
That’s why I see our quarterly goal reviews as one of the most important things we do. Every 90 days, we sit down 1-on-1 to revisit your goals, talk through nutrition, lifestyle, sleep, stress — all the things that influence your ability to train well, recover properly, and feel your best.
Because when things are dialed in outside the gym, you get more out of your time inside the gym.
And when you’re progressing in here, it shows up out there — in your energy, your confidence, your life.
That’s what lights me up.
Helping people connect those dots.
Helping them move forward with purpose.
That’s why I coach.
And that’s why we built MVMT Strength.
-Luke Amaral
Owner
MVMT Strength