The beginnings:
Primal was founded by John Carden in 2018 as a company to train powerlifters while working at a corporate gym. John has been in the industry since he was a teenager and had a passion for training individuals from all walks of life, not just powerlifting and sports performance.
John has been involved in sports and fitness his whole life and at one point was on the National Cycling Olympic development team for track cycling, but after a series of serious injuries and some mental health issues, John left the sport for good, walking away from a pro contract in Europe. At 18 and still wanting to compete in sports, he was told to get bigger and stronger and fell in love with lifting heavy, and was very good at the movements. After a year, John decided to go to school for kinesiology
He originally wanted to be a varsity football strength and conditioning coach in NCAA at the Div 1 level or in pro football. But found personal training to be a true passion of his, in his words “helping others to become healthy and happy people is much more rewarding”.
John quickly noticed a gap in the industry, there were a lot of good coaches that weren’t supported by their employers. Many gyms only cared about selling the clients personal training but not if the trainer was good or if the client got a result that they wanted.
John saw that the standard was not great and decided to start Primal as a company that brought performance and high-level coaching to the masses in a way that was effective for anyone
Primal’s trainers go through a rigorous 6-month internship before being hired to ensure they, can get any client they train safely and efficiently to their goals and in a way that allows the client to sustain the results after the fact. We operate out of Forge Performance and Fitness on the border of Mississauga and Brampton, we have partnered with Forge as their in-house personal training company. Forge is an amazing facility that captures the primal outlook on training and fitness very well
Here’s a little look into Primal’s Training Philosophy. These are the pillars that build up the way we train any client no matter what their goal is!