Devon Kollar
Trains everyone — and rebuilt his own shoulder to do it.
Devon leads the Stony Brook floor and trains every kind of client.
Devon grew up playing sports and always trained to get better at them, but he never planned to make it his life — he was studying political science with fitness on the side. COVID changed that. The pause gave him space to focus only on training, and it made him happier than anything else had. He restructured his whole life to do it full-time, and calls it one of the best decisions he’s ever made.
In 2018 he tore his labrum and rotator cuff and separated his AC joint snowboarding. Told he’d need surgery he couldn’t afford to get back to the things he loved, he rehabbed it himself instead — obsessive about form — and has been rock climbing and bench pressing for years since. That experience is exactly why he coaches the way he does.
Who Devon works best with
Everyone. A college baseball player chasing the pros, an older woman staving off osteoporosis, a working dad with chronic back pain — he believes he’s the right coach for all three.
One client came in with no experience, constant upper-back and shoulder pain, and couldn’t raise his arms past forehead height. He started at one 30-minute session a week. As his shoulder opened up and the results came, he added sessions, then days on his own, then time before and after. Devon didn’t just restore his range of motion and fitness — he made training so fun that the client now works out around 20 hours a week, purely because he loves it.
What most people get wrong
Most trainers miss the forest for the trees, Devon says — obsessing over which bicep-curl variation is best instead of learning how the body actually works, or the perfect split instead of training intensity and recovery. Too many learn from Instagram bodybuilders, skip the fundamentals, then hand a 70-year-old a program that never teaches her how to bend down and pick up her grandson without back pain.
In Devon’s words
“I can help a college athlete go pro and help an older client move without pain — because I coach how the body actually works, not what looks good on Instagram.”
What it takes to coach at Redefine
Nobody trains clients at Redefine Fitness without passing a screening test, an in-person skill practical, and a written exam just to get hired, then testing out of a 30-day onboarding against our 100-page Training Master Guide. Every Thursday from 1-2 PM we close both gyms so the entire staff trains together, and every specialist sits annual exams on a tiered education ladder. We also created a New York State Department of Labor approved Fitness Specialist apprenticeship. Fitness is medicine, and this is what the standard behind it looks like.
Start with a complimentary consultation. Bring your history. We will build the plan.