Our Coaches

We have a dedicated team of coaches, trainers and athletes that will work with you to help you achieve your fitness goals.

Jeremy Martin M.Kin 

NSCA CSCS / NCCP Weightlifting

(Co-Owner/Head Coach) 

Jeremy is a life-long competitive athlete. His experience ranges from team sports (basketball, football and rugby all at the provincial level) to combat sports (competitive mixed martial arts) and individual strength sports (provincial level powerlifting and strongman and national level weightlifting). He has coached all of these sports at some level and has been coaching for nearly fifteen years. Jeremy began writing strength and conditioning programs for friends and family members while in high school and has not stopped since.

What sets Jeremy apart from other coaches and trainers is his combination of high level education, self-directed learning, personal athletic experience and natural intuition for human movement and performance. Jeremy attended UBC for his Bachelor’s of Kinesiology degree and was then offered a full scholarship by the UBC strength and conditioning center. He used that scholarship to obtain a Master’s degree in Kinesiology, while working as a graduate assistant strength and conditioning coach for the UBC varsity sports teams. Jeremy was fortunate enough to work very closely with the Thunderbirds football team, helping prepare them for their 2015 Vanier Cup winning season.

Working as a varsity level strength and conditioning coach helped expose Jeremy to levels of athletes ranging from still-developing 17-year olds to seasoned Olympians. He also developed his skills with large groups, as some sessions were lead by just him and involved an entire 80-person football roster. This has provided him with a sharpened ability to lead and provide quality instruction, feedback and proper programming for groups in a variety of formats.

Gustavo Bellene B.A

CPT/ NSCA CSCS

(Personal Trainer / Kettlebell and Weightlifting Coach) 

Gustavo is a natural movement trainer. As a well-rounded athlete, he started practicing martial arts at a competitive level at a very early age. He developed a profound interest for sports such as gymnastics and rugby during his adolescence that took him to bodyweight, weightlifting and kettlebell training. These disciplines gave him the tools to thrive and evolve in the fitness world.

As a Personal Trainer and coach, his focus is achieving a healthy lifestyle based on natural human kinetics from a biological and evolutionary perspective. He has been coaching and training people of all ages through many years. As a former co-owner and Head Coach of his own Crossfit gym in Argentina he gained extensive knowledge and experience in functional human patterns of movement.

Always learning about human capabilities as an individual and species, he is passionate about outdoor life and mountaineering, driven by the Russian evolutionary biologist Christian Theodosius Dobzhansky’s premise: “Nothing in Biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”.  

Mitch Johnson

CPT/Precision Nutrition Level 1

(Strength coach)

Growing up just outside of Manchester, UK, Mitchell never had a keen interest in sports. In fact he struggled with his weight his whole life, going through cycles of weight gain and weight loss. It wasn’t until he was around 16 that he embarked on, what has since been, a lifelong journey into learning more about health, fitness, and nutrition.

Throughout the course of his fitness endeavors, Mitchell has worked with numerous trainers and coaches; as well as becoming a Certified Personal Trainer in 2016 and Precision Nutrition Level 1 Coach in 2021 – all the while absorbing as much knowledge as possible, while experimenting with his own nutritional and training practices. In 2019, Mitchell competed in his first local powerlifting meet coached by co-owner of Loaded Athletics, Jeremy Martin.

He has since competed in several meets, local and provincial, whilst building and coaching his own small team of powerlifters ranging from Junior to Masters 2 categories. In Mitchell’s career as a trainer, he has worked with clients of all ages and backgrounds. From Chartered Accountants, to Software Engineers, to aspiring Amateur Powerlifters. Even though he has a strong passion for powerlifting, it never outshines his desire to help people move and feel better; to accomplish the things they thought were left back in their 20’s or achieve something they didn’t believe they could.

Mitchell’s approach puts the “personal” in personal training; focussing on the whole person, not just a body. Taking a measured, yet adaptable, approach to your goals together, you will leave feeling better than when you walked in.

Tara Martin B.Kin 

(Co-owner/Operations Manager) 

Tara is the brains behind the scenes at Loaded Athletics. A life-long fitness enthusiast and recreational weightlifter, Tara has long envisioned growing and running a fitness business that she can be proud of. 

Tara graduated from the University of British Columbia with a Bachelor’s degree in Kinesiology. Tara soon realized after graduation that her passion didn’t lie in providing fitness training or hands on therapy directly, she instead thrived in a managerial role. Since then, Tara has been growing her experience in the fitness and health industry, first in a private gym setting and more recently as the general manager of a thriving downtown Vancouver physiotherapy clinic. She is taking these experiences and combining them with her passion for strength training to fill the role of co-owner and operations manager at Loaded Athletics. 

Tony Giannikouris

NSCA CSCS

(Strength Coach)

Tony is a function-focused trainer. While attending McMaster University as a kinesiology student, he was a varsity track athlete in sprint disciplines and student strength coach for the football and women’s soccer teams. This led to him graduating into full time strength coaching (track, rugby, soccer, and football), rehabilitation coaching (with a focus on ACL return to sport) and becoming a varsity sprints coach.

He’s driven by getting to know a person’s motivations and goals and crafting purposeful workouts to help achieve them. Having worked with everyone from recreational to professional and Olympic athletes, he’s a strong believer in fundamentals, consistency, and incremental progress adding up big over time.

Whatever function and performance means to you, Tony has the tools to get you moving and feeling better. He takes a lot of pride in watching clients grow not only in their abilities, but also their knowledge, feeling a real sense of control and mastery over their own training.