About
Hi, I’m Colleen.
I’ve spent more than two decades helping people move better — and most of what I know, I learned from the people who walked through my door with something that didn’t fit the textbook.
I didn’t set out to be a trainer. I started my working life as a technical writer and computer instructor, building corporate training programs. Then a horseback riding injury sent me into physiotherapy, and I got a close look at how bodies actually recover — and how much of that recovery is teaching.
That turned into a gym. Then three of them, with a team of trainers and all the noise that comes with running a growing business. By 2013 I’d had enough of the noise. I went looking for somewhere quieter to do better work, found the Sunshine Coast, and opened Oasis.
What I’ve built since is a private studio in Gibsons where the training is genuinely individual. Not a program printed off a template. Not a room where you’re one of forty. We assess how your body moves, build around what we find, and adjust as you change — whether you’re an athlete chasing a season, someone rebuilding after surgery, or a person who simply wants to stay strong and independent for a long time yet.
Along the way I’ve kept writing and kept teaching — course material, training manuals, workshops, and now the certification courses that bring new trainers into the field. The “Education” in Oasis Training & Education has always been half the point.
The client who changed everything.
Years ago I started making house calls to a client named Frank, who’d had a stroke and couldn’t get to a gym. Working with him — in a living room, with none of the usual equipment and none of the usual assumptions — taught me more than any course I’d taken.
Frank is the reason I stopped starting with the workout and started with the assessment. What can this body do today? What does it need first? Everything I’ve built since traces back to those sessions, and eventually became the methodology I now teach as The Preston Method™.
A private studio, not a big-box gym.
Twelve hundred square feet in Gibsons, fully equipped, and deliberately never crowded. It’s a place to work, not to be seen working.
- Classes capped at eight people
- Full strength, cardio, and functional equipment
- Hybrid classes so you can join from home
- Open Gym time for clients who train independently
- Live online coaching, anywhere you are
Coach, occasionally muddy.
Fitness that lasts is fitness you take outside — up mountains, through mud runs, and everywhere the Sunshine Coast lets us go.
That’s Benny on the right — official studio morale officer. You’ll hear about him.
The formal part.
Credentials matter — but they’re the floor, not the ceiling. What you actually feel in a session is the twenty-odd years of practice behind them.
The method behind the studio.
Everything we do here runs on The Preston Method™ — the assessment-led approach I’ve developed over two decades of practice. Oasis is where it’s delivered; the method is where it’s explained.
Come say hello.
The best way to know if we’re a fit is a conversation. No pressure, no hard sell — just a chat about what you’re after.