AbOUT coach andres
FROM Columbia TO colorado, BUILT THROUGH RESILIENCE.
I'm Andres "Dres" Gonzalez, founder of Get Up Fitness and creator of the ARK8 Hybrid Training System. My path to becoming a coach and business owner in Denver has not been a straight line. It was built through movement, reinvention, hard work, and a belief that we're capable of becoming more than where we started.
I was born in Medellín, Colombia. As a kid, I loved sports, movement and the idea that I could train my body to do whatever I wanted. What I loved most was seeing how practice could turn something difficult into something my body could learn and eventually master
My professional education began with functional training through the Institute of Human Performance in 2009 and ECAF in 2010. Those early experiences helped me understand training beyond appearance and gave me my first opportunities to coach others beyond physical education, and bodybuilding and apply what I was learning in the field.
early days and a recurring problem
Later, I was hired as a strength coach by high-performance athletes across different sports: MMA fighters who knew me from the field, underwater rugby athletes from the swimming league, most of them players for Team Colombia, and marathon runners from the athletics league in Medellín. Along the way I moved through different disciplines and ways of understanding performance: bodybuilding, strength training, functional movement, CrossFit, combat-based training, calisthenics, mobility, and recovery.
What I kept running into, across every one of those populations, was the same problem: fitness was split into separate worlds. People trained to look strong without moving well. Others got highly conditioned but never built real strength. Recovery was treated as an afterthought instead of part of the process. And too many people were handed programs that had nothing to do with their actual bodies, histories, or lives.
Big changes and a fresh start
In October 2019, I moved to the United States with my family as a new father, and I had to completely start over. The fitness background I'd built over years in Colombia didn't carry over in the USA. If I wanted to coach professionally here, I had to rebuild that path from the ground up, in a new country and a new language.
So I learned English while working as a prep cook, and took on painting and house-cleaning jobs to provide for my son and build a foundation for my family. I spent close to three years working toward my national certification, all the while working toward my goals. The day I received my certificate…that was a really good day.
In 2022, Get Up Fitness Denver became official, but the idea behind it had been developing for years. I wanted to build the kind of coaching environment I felt was missing, one where strength, movement, performance, and recovery worked together instead of competing with each other.
What started as a coaching business in Denver has grown into a full system: personal coaching, assisted stretching and sport recovery through Epic Stretch, and ARK8, my hybrid training method built around eight training disciplines.
Today Get Up Fitness is going strong. We work with people across different ages, backgrounds, and ability levels. Some come to build strength. Some want to move without the limitations that have followed them for years. Some are rebuilding after setbacks. Others just want to become more capable, and stay that way.
My job isn't just to coach the skills; it's also to listen, ask questions and connect to the person in front of me. To teach them how to move with real intention and build a path that makes sense for their body, their goals, and their life.
I look forward to meeting you!
About our phoenix
The phoenix at the heart of Get Up Fitness more than a logo. It honors my mother, who has fought through four life-threatening illnesses over the course of her life, and who is still fighting.
Watching her endure, adapt, and keep moving forward shaped the way I understand strength, not as the absence of struggle, but as the ability to rise through it.
That's what the phoenix means to me: resilience, transformation, and the courage to rebuild. It's a reminder of where I come from, of the woman whose strength helped shape mine, and of what Get Up Fitness is built upon: the belief that difficult chapters don't have to be the final ones.
This or that:
COach Andres Edition
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Morning
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Arepas, always.
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Colombian sunshine.
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Figuring it out as I go. That’s real life.
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A simple day with Luca and Noah.
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Building something of my own—even when it’s hard.