100 in 100: Nicole Croteau

Nicole Croteau doesn't just have a membership at Prototype — she has an origin story, and I got to watch it happen. Long before Wodify tracked a single sign-in, before our program looked anything like it does today, she was already there with me: painting the walls, unpacking boxes, helping put the room together before it ever had members in it.

It didn't start that way, though. Back in 2011, I was training her at BSC — she was a year out from her wedding, working on a mix of strength training and triathlon prep, laps in the pool, track workouts and hill sprints at Westborough High. Neither of us knew we were building a gym yet. She was just trying to do a little more than she had been.

Somewhere in that stretch, I told her I was opening my own gym and asked if she wanted to come. She said yes — and when the space was still just an empty room, she was one of the people who helped me build it. She helped paint the walls. She helped build the original plyo boxes. She unpacked more equipment than she can probably remember.

Thanksgiving weekend of 2012, I suggested she get certified and start coaching. "Yes, definitely," she told me — and just like that, she became our first coach outside of Brian and myself. She was nervous. Coaching wasn't her strong suit yet, and she'd never told a room full of people what to do before. But she had good coaches coaching her up, and she figured it out the way everyone does: by doing it.

Before There Was a Program, There Were Just People

There was no Wodify back then — just books to write workouts in, a board to write scores on. The equipment was simpler. The technology didn't exist yet. What Nicole remembers most, though, is what hasn't changed: the feeling of walking in. Brian and I were there sun up to sun down. The early crew — Big Marc, Jay Chung, Jesse Dimick, Jon, Nate, Jean — became the kind of people you build a life around, and some of them are still on the floor today.

Her funniest memory from those years is a small one: double-unders took her forever to get, and she ended up coaching members to nail them before she could do one herself. She was thrilled every time someone else got it — and every time, just a little envious.

In April 2016, Nicole had her daughter, Brianna — and I still remember her being in the gym on her actual due date. She trained straight through the pregnancy, modifying, never stopping, and credits that consistency for how strong her recovery was afterward. She kept coaching for a while after, bringing Brianna along in a stroller, before eventually stepping back to focus on being a new mom.

Today, Brianna is 10 and running her own small business making things with a 3D printer — she's actually made unicorns and butterflies for my own daughters. Nicole says the lessons she's tried to pass down are simple: be strong, prioritize your health, do what you love, and find what makes you happy. Watching her daughter build something of her own out of exactly that advice might be the fullest circle in this whole story.

Fourteen Years, Still Counting

Nicole's numbers tell their own version of the story: 1,367 lifetime sign-ins, 325 personal records, and a 300-pound deadlift that's grown steadily since her earliest logged workouts back in 2012 — the same year she was learning to paint walls and build plyo boxes instead of lifting off them. She's watched our equipment, our technology, and the program itself grow up around her. What she tells me hasn't changed is the feeling of coming in.

She's also, quite literally, part of the gym's history in ways that go beyond her own training. When the world shut down in March 2020, Nicole was the last person in the building — alone on the floor, mid-way through "Annie," when word came that everything was about to close. It's the kind of detail that only happens when someone's been with us long enough to be there for all of it.

She's also been there for the harder moments — including coaching Jean through her cancer treatment, and watching our whole community show up around her. That's the part of Prototype Nicole comes back to again and again: not just the workouts, but the people who show up for each other when it matters.

Life today looks different than it did in 2012. Nicole works long days as a pharmacist, and home now is a quieter, simpler place an hour away in Hardwick, where she lives with Brianna and her niece, gardens, keeps chickens, and comes in to Prototype on the days she doesn't work. She's moved three times since she first walked through our door — Shrewsbury, Rutland, Hardwick — and every time, the drive back to Westborough has only gotten longer. She still makes it.

"Even now, it still feels like a second home," she told me. Nobody came to Prototype for what they actually found. Nicole didn't come looking for a second home, a coaching career, or fourteen years of memories — she came in to train for a triathlon. What she found was the first thing she ever stuck with, and a room she helped me build with her own hands. She's still in it, and I'm so glad she is.

"The community, the feeling like you belong, the atmosphere, the people, the camaraderie. Even after moving so far away, I still wouldn't go anywhere else."

This is a special 100 in 100 for me, because Nicole was one of my very first clients back when I started my career as a personal trainer at BSC. I was training her aunt Kathy — an amazing human being — who told Nicole about me, and I ended up helping train her for her first triathlon. If you'd told me 14-plus years ago where Nicole's story would go, it would've blown my mind: from client, to one of the first people to buy in and trust what we were building at Prototype, to helping us literally build it from the ground up, to learning to become our first coach outside of Brian and myself. It's truly amazing.

One of the coolest things is that Nicole's life has gone through its own changes — she's moved a few times, and every move has taken her a little further from Prototype. But she still makes the journey here, because it's that special to her. That means more to me than she probably knows: that this place has had that kind of impact on her life, and still does. I don't see her as much as I used to (we used to see each other almost daily), but when she comes in, we pick right back up where we left off. That, to me, is community.

This was also just a fun one to work on. Going back through the early days of Prototype for this interview took me right back — finding these old pictures brought back all those memories of building out the space, of Bri being so little and basically growing up in here, and now she's got her own 3D-printing business, making unicorns and butterflies for my little girls. It's just so cool.

Nicole is a special part of what makes Prototype's origin story what it is. If you're still reading this and you don't know Nicole, I hope you get to meet her someday. She's always smiling, always positive, and works her butt off. She's an impressive athlete, an impressive mom, and an all-around impressive human being. We're so proud of you, Nicole!

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