100 in 100: Garret St. Onge- Day 90

Everyone at Prototype calls him G-Man. Garret St. Onge is a Level 2 coach who runs the fun classes — the evenings, the Saturday partner workouts, the ones that need someone comfortable with a little chaos. But before any of that, he was just a guy trying to pass a fitness test for a job he never ended up taking.

No direction, just the weights that were lying around

Garret grew up in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and started lifting at 12 years old — no program, no coach, just whatever weights were around. High school friends talked him into track and cross country; he ran varsity track for four years and cross country for three. Somewhere in there he pestered his cross country coach so much for access to the weight room that the coach finally handed him a key.

He spent so much time down there, in fact, that his own coach eventually told him to ease off. College pulled him away from all of it — school and full-time work took over, and fitness fell to the back burner for years.

"Do you guys need a cleaner?"

By 34, Garret was a member at Boston Sports Club, doing circuit training without much of a plan, when he met Mike and Brian. He'd started talking to Brian about applying for the U.S. Marshals and knew he needed to raise his fitness level for the test — Brian introduced him to early CrossFit to help him get there.

Two weeks before the Marshals application period opened, Garret went to find Brian to talk through the physical test. Brian had something else on his mind.

He never took the Marshals test. He came on to Prototype in its earliest days instead, and has been growing his own fitness — and the gym's — ever since.

The first Open, and a 135-pound snatch

Garret's favorite memory from the early years goes back to the gym's first CrossFit Open — before there was a rig, when snatch weights were marked with lines taped near the ceiling on the old Toe-to-Bar. Ninety-five pounds, most people could muscle through with rough form. A hundred thirty-five was a different story.

That's the version of the gym Garret remembers best — a small, tight room where a number that would barely register today got the loudest ovation of the day. After class, more often than not, the crew ended up next door at the old Sapporo's for a beer, or just closed the place down together.

From rigid to relaxed

Garret didn't come from a sports medicine or training background. He learned to coach by coaching, and by his own account he was nervous early on — he wanted to make sure he was doing right by the gym and the people in it. Ten years in, he describes that version of himself as rigid. Getting to know the members changed that.

Now he runs the Saturday partner classes — a looser format built around teamwork and built-in rest periods, where members pair up with a friend or a spouse and push each other through the work. From a coaching standpoint, he calls it "herding cats." It's also where he says he's found his real style: figuring out what someone's nervous about and helping them work through it without losing the workout.

Thirteen years on the board

Garret's Wodify history goes back to May 2013 — 2,215 lifetime sign-ins and 4,386 logged results across thirteen straight years, with at least one sign-in logged in 160 different months. He's not just present. He's still setting numbers that stack up against members half his age.

His deadlift tells the story best: 405 pounds in July 2015, and 405 pounds again — for a double — in August 2026. Eleven years apart, same number on the bar. His back squat, front squat, shoulder press, push press and push jerk all currently sit at the top of his age bracket at the gym.

Beyond the gym floor

Garret's carpentry background surprises people who only know him from the gym floor. His wife Bethany, an original Prototype member, has been a steady part of his life since long before this story starts. Between coaching, training, and the friendships he's built here, he says the gym has become as much a support system for him as it is for the members he coaches.

Trust the process

Ask Garret what he tells new members, and it comes back to patience.

He applies the same philosophy to himself these days, thirteen years and a body full of hard-earned lessons later. "There's no reason I can't still get stronger," he says. "Just keep at it. Find your people, and always be supportive of others — it's going to keep the gym positive and keep your workouts going well."

G has been with us from the beginning — before the beginning, really. He worked with Brian and me at Boston Sports Club, and when we opened Prototype, he wanted to be part of it.

I remember those early days — G being helpful with building out the place. When something was broken or needed fixing, he was on it. To this day he still has that ownership mindset. He cares deeply about this place.

It's been cool to watch G develop over the years — from his own self-described raw, stern coaching approach to someone much more empathetic and patient. He brings a depth of knowledge that comes from his own experience in the arena: navigating his own injuries, working with other coaches here on how to fix certain things, then applying it to help others.

One thing Garret didn't talk about in the interview is his ability to command a class — how he briefs at the whiteboard, how he explains the "why" behind the warm-up drills, how carefully he breaks down movement technique for veteran members and brand-new folks alike.

Writing this story really brought me back to the early days — searching through old photos, seeing what the gym used to look like, the people, what we were focused on back then. Life has shifted and changed a lot since. I think the community and the care haven't changed, but we've learned a lot of lessons fourteen years in. It's pretty amazing.

And it's pretty special to have people on the team like Coach Garret who've been here the entire time. They've stuck through the changes, the challenges, and all the iterations of building a place where people can check every box on their health and fitness — with community as the foundation.

Cheers, G. We're proud of you, proud to have you, and proud to share your story.

— Mike Collette
Founder & CEO, Prototype Training Systems

This story was developed through a recorded video interview and shaped with the help of AI writing tools. The facts, quotes, and experiences are Garret's own — AI helped organize and present them in a format worthy of the story he's lived.