I have been living sports and movement in general all of my life. As a little kid I did competitive swimming, picked up my big love waterpolo and started playing professional level as a teenager. For my club PSV Eindhoven I played several european cups and I have also represented my country, The Netherlands (under 21 years old).

When I started to travel the world after my waterpolo career and studies, at the age of 25, I got hit by a car. The hit was so hard, that the clip of the helmet cut my neck open and I suffered two brain bleedings. I don't remember a thing, but luckily the cut just missed my artory.

From the moment I came back to The Netherlands I suffered from disorientation, emotional problems, concentration- and other mental issues and I was losing all muscles around my left shoulderblade because my nerves were damaged aswell. All in all a very difficult period in my life. Luckily I got great guidance from mental- and physical health professionals and so after half a year I started picking up life as usual.

First thing I did was going back to my number 1 passion: sports. We know about all the advantages of movement and one of these is the release of the hapiness hormones. The other advantage was getting physically stronger and getting the neural signals back around my shoulderblade, so my muscles would grow back. Another pro, maybe even more important, is that my training and complex movements had massive advantages for the development and rewiring of my brains.

And so I recovered fully, regained my confidence and took my first serious job as an accountmanager. I wanted to prove to myself and others that I could do it. It was not going to take long though, because I had far too much physical energy to be sitting behind a desk or in a car and I should be pursuing my physical talents and understanding and use that for a profession.

Again I went back to my roots, picked up training hard and started studying at several international top personal training and movement educations. During all these years I learned from all kinds of movement professionals and started to work as an outdoor private and corporate grouptrainer for my outdoor company CAVEMAN®; barefootrunning, lifting logs, climbing trees, throwing objects, all in all moving naturally as humans have been doing for centuries.

While doing this I also started my personal training career, being an intern at the first personal training studio in Amsterdam, while building my own clientele elsewhere. After years of experience and building a steady base of clients this led to my dream of co-founding STAETSGEHEIM. In the meantime I have been putting myself in challenging situations by learning totally new sports and movement practices. Think of gymnastics, calisthenics and olympic weightlifting. On the age of 33 I started playing rugby and Brazilian jiu jitsu. After doing this for a couple of years I fully immersed myself in bouldering.

Nowadays I feel stronger than ever and keep on traveling and learning from the best in their fields. The last course I got certified in is the Human Foundations course of Functional Patterns. Amsterdam has only a couple of teachers that know how to use it. It focusses on improving human biomechanics and movement patterns.

Let me listen to your life and explain me your physical challenges,
so I can use my experience to support you towards your greatness.