Brian Zancewicz

Ask Brian Zancewicz what he does here and you get a title that tells you most of what you need to know about him: "CrossFit coach and membership experience extraordinaire."

Then he grins and adds, "That was take two."

Fourteen years ago, Brian and Mike were the only two people in this building. First ones to coach. First ones to clean the floors. Since then he has become the coach most people at Prototype simply call BZ — and if you have ever stood on this floor unsure whether you belonged, he is very likely a reason you stayed.

Concord, Nova Scotia, and back again

Brian was born in Concord, Massachusetts, and spent his first couple of years in Maynard. Then the family moved to Nova Scotia, where his mother is originally from.

"The Millbrook Reservation," he says. "Right out, probably an hour out of Halifax." They also lived off-reservation for a stretch, in a place called Blind Bay. "A really nice area, but cold."

He came back to Massachusetts around eight or nine years old. It is the thing people are most surprised to learn about him — not because he keeps it quiet, but because it never comes up unless you ask.

These days he lives in Clinton with his wife Lisa and their two kids.

A squat rack in the living room

Brian got into this the way a lot of people get into anything. It was already happening in his house.

His stepfather, Big Al, coached strongmen and powerlifters out of their living room. Not a garage. The living room. "We had a big squat rack in here," Brian says. "We had a low row, we had a bench, we had a bunch of stuff there."

He started his own career at Pep's Gym in Maynard, which he describes as where he figured out what he actually wanted to do. From there: Gold's Gym in Millis, a mom-and-pop gym in Stow, then trainer and eventually fitness service manager at Boston Sports Club.

He did not stay on the strongman path, and he is honest about why. "You get injured enough and you get banged up. I'm not really built for that type of thing. You kind of figure things out, like what you need to do to help yourself." That led him toward mobility, toward movement quality, toward the kind of coaching that keeps people in the game instead of grinding them out of it.

The phone call that started Prototype

Before there was a gym, there was what Brian cheerfully calls a fight club.

"We'd go in there for two hours at a time, put the gloves on. Jiu-jitsu, Muay Thai, wrestling, all those different things." A mutual acquaintance invited Mike down one time, and Mike kept coming back for a few weeks.

Then, one night, Brian's phone rang while he was driving home.

Fourteen years of it. He remembers Mike riding a scooter around the place. He remembers Mike's stepdad Bob and his son pulling all the wooden slats off the walls — and Brian bouncing between ten jobs at once, finishing none of them, until Bob finally turned and asked whether he had mental problems.

"That's a core memory right there," Brian says. "And I'm like, yes, Bob."

What fourteen years actually changed

Ask him which era of the gym was the best one, and his answer is immediate. This one.

"Egos have lessened significantly," he says. "Admitting mistakes when you're wrong." He includes himself in that, without being asked to. "I know for me when I get in my own way. Being passive aggressive for no reason. Not taking things so personally."

Part of it is just time. "We're all older now. This is fourteen years later. So the natural progression of things — you learn, and you grow in maturity. I think that's the biggest change across the board."

And part of it is arithmetic. "There's four or five of us in this little tiny box, eight to ten hours a day. We've got to figure out how to get along and how to push forward what we're trying to get across. And that's helping people through exercise. Very simple. It's not easy."

How he coaches

Brian's best advice is the least dramatic thing you will ever hear in a gym.

He credits Mike for the shorter version: consistency over intensity. "That's probably the best advice I could give somebody coming into the gym."

It also explains who he likes coaching most, and it is not the people who do exactly what he says. "I probably like Jean, because she gives me the most amount of flack. Kathy Bridge, same thing. I appreciate them not just doing whatever I tell them to do." Keith is on that list too. The ones who push back are the ones he enjoys the most.

His pet peeves are equally specific: dropping empty barbells, bad push-ups, and — the real one — "an individual not thinking about what they're doing first, and then wondering why things may have gone wrong."

If he had to pick one exercise for the rest of his life, it is the clean and jerk. Pull it from the ground, squat it, put it over your head. All of it in one movement.

And what fills his cup at the end of a shift is not complicated either. "You leave at the end of the day, you know if you did a good job or not. I walk out of here, put my stuff in the car, sit down, drive off. If I know that I've helped people — yeah. That's probably what fills my cup the most."

Mornings, movies, and fantasy football

Every morning looks the same. He gets up, sits in a space on the front porch, puts headphones on, and listens to the Bible for about half an hour. Then a Celsius, then breakfast, then — during the school year — getting the kids up around 6:15 or 6:30.

"That's pretty much every single morning from September until the end of school," he says. Summer throws it off. By mid-August he is ready for them to go back.

He says he only likes about three things. One of them is his family. One of them is fantasy football. He never quite lands on the third.

He played football in high school, he has been Prototype's fantasy commissioner for something like twelve years, and he will tell you himself that he is bad at it. Best player he ever rostered? No hesitation. "Rob Gronkowski, first round pick, kept him for like five years. You get the best tight end ever. You keep him. That's easy."

Favorite movies, and he insisted on four: Nacho Libre , Napoleon Dynamite , The Green Mile , and Step Brothers. If you have spent any time on this floor, you have heard lines from all four.

His favorite thing to do now is watch his kids play. His daughter plays softball, soccer, and basketball. His son plays golf and basketball — they made a deep run in the state playoffs last year — and runs track. His son is a senior; his daughter is heading into her freshman year.

Which raises a question he brings up with his clients, and clearly thinks about himself: what do you do after they're done?

"That's something that I keep in mind a lot," he says. Then, deadpan: "And I'm going to start playing video games. So, good to go."

His parenting advice, for what it is worth, is the same shape as his coaching advice. Don't listen to what other people think is right, because everybody is different. And don't react immediately. "Giving things space before you start yelling or before you start pointing fingers. I think that's probably the biggest one."

The people

Ask Brian who is on his mind and the list does not stop.

Pete and Keivan. Keith. Marybeth. Shellie. Sandy Brock. Betty Lee. Jean and Kathy. Steve Benya. Jay, Debbie, Todd, Peg, Dennis, Annie, Bonnie, Carolina, Sheehan.

"I can name hundreds of names at this point," he says. "A lot of people on that Hall of Fame wall."

Number one is Lisa. "She's been here through all of it. She's seen the different iterations of things and how things have changed. For the better." He calls her, with obvious affection, the most disciplined undisciplined person he knows.

And then there is the one he misses.

"Big Marc. Marc Mespelli. That's my guy right there. One of my favorite people of all time." A giant of a human being who drove around in a Mini Cooper. "Just a real person. Grumpy facade, but basically a giant teddy bear. I miss Marc a lot."

The one thing he'd change

Asked what he would help one person change about themselves, Brian took a long time to answer. It was not about training.

"Things don't have to be that serious," he says. "There's never anything that's really all that serious. We're here for a finite amount of time. I get caught up in this too. If you let things bother you, it takes away from your experience with life."

Then he adds the part that says the most about him.

It is the same instinct behind how he describes the gym to someone who has never set foot in it. No talk of programming, no talk of results, no pitch at all.

And what keeps him here, after twenty years in the industry and fourteen in this room?

"People. Easy. That's an easy one."