Joaquin (Coach Joaq) has been a distance runner most of his life and competed as an NCAA Division 1 XCTF athlete at Wake Forest and Cal Poly, where he was a top 5 runner on the team that won the Atlantic Coast Conference championship and got 5th at the 2022 NCAA cross country national championships. As a coach, his philosophy stems from tried a true methods that consistently improve his athletes. In his opinion, if your aerobic capacity and top-end speed are getting better every week, then you’re headed in the right direction. Coach Joaq also believes in training at the right effort, which means that for most workouts, you won’t be going all out (that’s a good thing!). This is largely inspired by the Kenyan and Norwegian training model, where workouts are dictated by effort levels and listening to the body, rather than strictly hitting certain times. Coach Joaq bases his training on a healthy balance of feel and science to write unique programs for the athletes he coaches.