Sure, there’s the engaging personality, the bountiful enthusiasm, the zest for life that emerges the moment one sits down to chat with Cal McGibbon. But rest assured, that’s not even close to what has allowed this self-made personal trainer to establish an ever-growing reputation in a field where credibility means everything.

McGibbon has taken a rather unique and quite fascinating career path that sees him now working with a good handful of Sudbury’s top young athletes, most notably hockey talent, but certainly not restricted to Canada’s sporting passion.

Born and raised in the Barrie area, McGibbon was also active in sports, wrestling being his favourite, despite remaining undersized by most athletic standards. Finding work initially as a labourer with a construction company after his secondary schooling, he admits that it was a life-changing experience on the work-site that likely forever altered his life.

Witness to the death of a co-worker, McGibbon reacted by throwing himself into learning everything he could about first aid and treatment, courses that would soon merge with an ever-increasing need to understand, as much as possible, about the human body.

His background in wrestling gave way to an interest in boxing and he began to spend hours on end at the gym, tapping into the knowledge and training methods of Ian Walling, a successful proponent of natural bodybuilding.

McGibbon’s natural curiosity and willingness to learn from every conceivable source would lead him to try a wide variety of approaches and techniques, constantly expanding his base of knowledge.

Although the personal training business in the mid-1990s remained heavily influenced by the body-building culture, that was about the change. McGibbon noted an influx of athletes from a wide variety of sports, including hockey players, who were beginning to look at ways of maximizing their game day performance by maintaining far better care of their bodies away from the game.

More than any other, the hockey grouping fascinated McGibbon and in very typical fashion, he looked to every possible source to find a locale that might suit his particular skill-set. “My dad had lived in Parry Sound and we had gone camping a few times across Northern Ontario for a few weeks. And I read somewhere that Northern Ontario produced more pro hockey players per capita than anywhere else”, McGibbon explains of his decision to relocate to Sudbury.

In 2003, McGibbon opens “Healthy Living”, a retail store that focused on natural nutritional supplements, primarily looking to establish a direct link to the athletic community.

Enduring the normal growing pains of any small business, McGibbon finds himself traveling three times a week back to Southern Ontario to continue working with his Toronto-based clientele, living out of his car in order to keep his head above water.

Initially targeting the Sudbury Wolves for his product and services, McGibbon remains ever-thankful to coach/GM Mike Foligno for his support early on. “It probably took Mike about three visits before he started to see that there was far more that could be done in this area.”

Before long, McGibbon would be working closely with a pair of up and coming athletes in Nick Foligno and Tessa Bonhomme, and the snowball effect soon began. “It didn’t take long for word to spread at that point – who is this guy? What’s his background?”

Spend just a few minutes chatting with Cal McGibbon and you realize that part of the attraction is the grounded reality he maintains, the fact that he knows all too well that he doesn’t know everything. Not even close.

I swear sometimes that McGibbon views the world around him as one large encyclopedia and he lives by the mantra that one can never have too much knowledge. The self-comfort in not having any reluctance to tap into countering perspectives, differing viewpoints is what has led in part to the next phase of his business.

Enter Laurentian University swim coach Alain Delorme, a diametrically opposite foil to McGibbon. If Cal McGibbon is all about street smarts supplemented by an expanding awareness of written material, Alain Delorme is much more the pure academic.

Where some might view the book-smart ways of Delorme as a threat, McGibbon embraces it. “I think differently. Right away when Alain and I got talking, I thought diversity always trumps ability.”

“I think that bringing somebody in who thinks exactly the same way as I do is useless”, says McGibbon. “I think that every single athlete that works out with us is blessed with the fact that someone with a completely different point of view has come in.”

A competitive swimmer in his youth who worked his way up to the national level, Delorme was schooled in radiation therapy by trade, moved to Sudbury in 2002 with his wife and soon began helping out coaching with the Sudbury Laurentian Swim Club.

A stint in Australia working alongside Sudbury-native Alex Baumann substantially expanded Delorme’s exposure to elite athlete development. It’s a background that excites Cal McGibbon with it’s endless potential, where the sum is clearly greater than the total of the parts.

And that excitement shows through every time McGibbon talks.