Chad Gourley

In my childhood and adolescence, I enjoyed being active almost whenever I had the opportunity.

I enjoyed playing basketball, football, and baseball. ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ

Whenever I could, I would be out on my bike or hitting up the parks in the local area.

Something unique about me, is that from the age of 5-16, I spent many weekends and summers working on my family dairy farm in Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania.

Those were some of the best times of my adolescent years and taught me many lessons I carry with me today.

For most of my life, I was always reasonably overweight.

One could say the genetic decision-makers did not bless me, nor were good habits instilled in me around my health.

There was a point in my life when I was 299.7 lbs and hated myself.

I couldn’t look in the mirror without a shirt and hated being in photos.

Being self-conscious was an understatement.

I was made fun of in school, making me insecure even though I did my best to hide it from the world.

My dietary choices consisted of fried, processed, fast, and sugary foods.

One could say that when I was at my highest weight in college; it was a turning point as I never let my weight get higher than that.

Over the past 13 years, I have done various fad diets and workouts that kept me on this up-down and spin-me-around lifestyle.

Have things gotten better during that time?

Yes, but I would do many things differently knowing what I know now.

In my 20s, I spent all of my time working either in a marketing/sales role, which was wearing on me day and night.

I was burning wicks at both ends of the candle, and it resulted in me ending up in a hospital at one point due to stress.

You would have thought that would have awakened me, but it only slightly did.

It wasn’t until I was 30 that I decided I needed to leave what I was doing and pursue something I was passionate about and could make money while performing the required tasks.

A year later, I became a partner at The Bar Athletics.

I wanted to do something that I could genuinely help people, instead of telling myself a story that I was helping people in the marketing world.

My turning point was in 2018, when I stopped doing kickboxing and CrossFit.

Training habitually and beating my body into submission got me “the body I wanted”:

10% Body Fat, 215 lbs, and aesthetically appealing.

Conversely, I was biding my time, as reality was about to set in, with all the dysfunctions I created, or made worse, through those specific training modalities.

My knees, hips, lower back, spine, neck, and shoulders were all causing me pain.

Running the proverbial gauntlet wore me out, and albeit appealing to the eye, my body was not functioning correctly.

I had a mindset that pain is gain and that pain let me know I was alive, but the reality was that this was leading me down a path to many potential surgeries.

Fortunately, right around that time, I found Mr. Ryan Manista.

I had seen physical and massage therapists, acupuncture, practiced yoga, and none of it was solving my pain.

Ryan introduced me to Functional Patterns, back when he was an infant in the field of human biomechanics.

In one session, just doing some Myofascial Release and a few basic postural techniques, I found the relief I had been searching for, high and low.

The problem came in when I thought that the relief meant “fixed,” so I went back to doing the same things and continued to worsen my dysfunctions until my pain became even more overwhelming.

At this point, I knew I had to stop everything and return to see Ryan, but things were different now.

I went from someone who needed help to someone who needed assistance and worked in the same field as Ryan.

He helped me, but was reserved because the information he was sharing could be used for my financial gain on my end.

It was about this time I realized that he was offering a superior service to any training I had done previously.

The thought came to mind that we needed to start shifting in this direction of Functional Patterns if we genuinely wanted to help people.

The problem would be convincing my team, who were ingrained in the traditional methodologies, to see the light.

It took two years of healthy civil discourse with my business partner, Heath, to get him to open his mind and see the light.

You can read his bio to get a better description of his turning point.

In 2021, after two years, I started to open Heath's mind, and we set the course.

Ryan joined our team, and we knew we needed to make this change in our entire organization, but it wouldn’t be easy.

Nothing worth it, ever is…

We are finishing 2023 and have successfully switched our organization to being fully Functional Patterns.

Something I realized in hindsight, was that the service we were selling to people before we made this switch to FP, which was cross-fit, was hurting people and not helping them in the best ways possible.

Now, I am confident that we are delivering the best service in the fitness and health industry when it comes to fixing the human body and helping it perform at its highest level.

We are the only facility within 300-400 miles practicing this life-changing method.

My mission is to bring this methodology to our region, giving people who feel lost on their health journey a chance to make sustainable changes that respect nature and our biology.

One where their genetics can change for the better, giving people a body that allows them to navigate life's mental and physical challenges efficiently.

Functional Patterns is for everyone, but it takes a certain mindset to be successful.

You have to rearrange your life and take note that you are beginning a journey of focusing on changing, sustaining, and growing for the rest of your life.

We don’t believe anything is impossible because that would limit what could be possible.

This method and lifestyle goes against most of what the fitness industry says about our health and fitness.

When training using this method, you need to prepare to relearn your foundation for movement, whether you are an athlete or someone who hasn’t been known for their physicality in life.

Most people say when they begin training, they don’t understand how moving slowly, and sometimes, not even at all, can be so intense.

The difficulty is mainly due to the integration of muscle groups we ask for in any given position or movement pattern.

Gone are the days of isolated movements.

We are trying to create proper tensegrity in the body, and to do so, requires the full integration of all your muscles at once.

For us, results aren’t just losing weight and gaining muscle, although, that is a byproduct of enhancing your biomechanics and improving your posture, gait, and structural integration.

Do you want a chance at having no pain in your body, avoiding structural-related surgeries, and being athletically capable for the rest of your life?

Functional Patterns is the method that will help you get there, stay there, and excel beyond your wildest dreams.