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Taylor Miller stands in front of the future Colorado Fitness location. (Photo by Alex McCrindle)<\/p>\n
On Oct. 27, the Los Angeles Dodgers first-baseman Freddie Freeman ended an 18-inning, 7-hour World Series game 3 with a walk-off rocket to center field. Los Angeles Head Coach Dave Roberts called it \u201cone of the greatest World Series games of all time,\u201d as the Dodgers are now two-wins away from their second consecutive world title. But to one Gunnison local, the Dodgers aren\u2019t just a collection of global superstars \u2014 they\u2019re friends, former colleagues and part of a tight-knit clubhouse he once knew well.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
For the past three years, Gunnison native Taylor Miller served as the Triple A Assistant MiLB Performance Coach with the Dodgers organization. He helped rehabilitate World Series stars, such as pitchers Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Walker Buehler and infielders Tommy Edman and Max Muncy in route to the 2024 championship. Now with a World Series ring to his name, Miller is returning to the Gunnison Valley and re-opening Colorado Fitness \u2014 a new gym, kitted out with big-league \u201cbells and whistles\u201d but built with the Gunnison community in mind.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cColorado Fitness is a place for everyone,\u201d Miller said. \u201cIf your goal is to lose weight, to build muscle, to prevent skiing injuries, to be a better mountain biker \u2014 if it\u2019s to compete in weightlifting competitions, if you\u2019re a college athlete, professional athlete \u2014 this is a place where everyone should feel welcome.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Colorado Fitness, formerly located at 405 W. Tomichi Ave., closed in 2022 after more than 20 years of operation. Miller considered purchasing the old business, but lived out-of-state at the time and couldn\u2019t make his passion project a reality. The new Colorado Fitness will be located at 881 Bidwell, Unit B and will be open 24\/7 for members through a bluetooth app.\n<\/p>\n
The facility will include modern physiotherapy tools, such as force plates, blood-flow restriction technology and movement screens. Combined with individualized training, these resources will give athletes new insight into their fitness, injury risks and development plans. In the big leagues, Miller said athletes come into the gym on their own schedules and the coaching staff is there to provide support. Similarly, Colorado Fitness will incorporate an \u201copen gym,\u201d culture, where members can work out at specific time slots and receive consultation and programming from on-site trainers.\n<\/p>\n
The new facility will open on Dec. 1 with a hard-launch celebration featuring live music, fitness presentations and food.\n<\/p>\n
But long before Miller resurrected Colorado Fitness, or climbed the ladder as a performance coach, he starred as the starting centerfielder and quarterback for the GHS baseball and football teams. After graduating in 2014 and being \u201ctoo stubborn\u201d to choose between his two passions, Miller pursued both sports at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
The year after, he followed his freshman football coach to Southern Utah University, but only played one season of D1 football before tearing both of his hamstrings. Sidelined with injury, Miller sent out emails to other collegiate programs, hoping they would take a chance on an injured athlete. He only received a single response. It was from Western Colorado University, so Miller moved back home.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
While at Western, Miller stepped away from the gridiron, but fell back in love with baseball. He joined the club baseball team, ran the GHS weight room and helped train the high school varsity team. Before earning his bachelor\u2019s degree, Miller met Todd Ward, the former sports medicine director at Gunnison Valley Health, who convinced him to pursue his master\u2019s degree.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
For the next handful of years, Miller worked alongside Ward at GVH, took on a performance training role with the Western NCAA teams and accepted the head coaching position with the Mountaineer club baseball team. On top of it all, he completed his masters thesis.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI look back on two of my coaches, and they are two of the biggest reasons why I coach,\u201d Miller said. \u201cTom Percival, who is still the head baseball coach at GHS, really planted that seed of pushing myself and loving baseball. Brandon Haas was a Western football player at the time and helped out in the weight room. He taught me about delayed gratification and how to invest in my future self.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Armed with a masters degree in exercise sport science, Miller applied for nearly 150 collegiate programs. Louisiana State University called him the following day, and within a few weeks, he started up the car and headed to Baton Rouge as a strength and conditioning intern. While working with the Tigers, Miller spent 90% of his time with one of the top-ranked NCAA baseball programs in the nation. He spent the other 10% training the football program, and working alongside now NFL superstars Joe Burrow and Ja\u2019Marr Chase. Although initially signed on as a \u201cshadow intern,\u201d Miller helped develop a red shirt program that prepared underclassmen and oversaw rehabilitation and injury development.\n<\/p>\n
Miller\u2019s experience at LSU prepared him for a career in strength and conditioning coaching at nearly any Power Five university. But when LSU baseball strength and conditioning coach Travis Roy asked him what he wanted to do next, Miller said what most childhood baseball fanatics only dream of: \u201cI want to go to the show.\u201d He began a grueling application and interview process and competed against nearly 1,500 applicants, but still, the Gunnison kid earned his spot with the Dodgers organization.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI moved down to Phoenix for the offseason, and was thrown right in with the wolves,\u201d Miller said. \u201cWe had over 60 minor league guys there when I first got there, and I was like a deer in the headlights. I walked into the weight room and was just like, \u2018There\u2019s Julio Urias, there\u2019s Walker Buehler,\u2019 and you\u2019re just awestruck \u2014 and then I realize, \u2018I\u2019m the one that\u2019s supposed to help coach these guys.\u2019\u201d\n<\/p>\n
In his first season, Miller worked as the Single A MiLB performance coach, and spent the majority of his time helping with major league rehabilitations in Rancho Cucamonga, California. But he still got his first glimpse of the big-league lights at Dodger Stadium. Miller worked 24 games with the major league squad that year \u2014 and on his very first day with the Dodgers, worked one-on-one with three-time Cy Young Award-winning pitcher Clayton Kershaw, who coincidentally knows the Gunnison Valley well.\n<\/p>\n
After two years, Miller earned a promotion and moved to Oklahoma City with the Triple A side. There, he played a major role in the rehabilitation of big league players like Yamamoto, Edmond and Buehler. In total, Miller oversaw six players who made the leap back to the show for the world-series winning campaign.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
But it was the friendships he made inside the clubhouse \u2014\u00a0 playing Rocket League with Cody Bellinger, talking about snowboarding, fishing and topics away from baseball \u2014 that helped take the players\u2019 minds away from the \u201ccircus\u201d of the major leagues.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cMy connection with the players is what I think helped me skyrocket within pro ball \u2014 I was able to build a connection and be relatable,\u201d Miller said. \u201cThen, getting these guys rehabbed and back to the bigs so they could make a contribution really made me feel like I helped us win the World Series. That was a pretty amazing experience.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
At the end of 2024, Miller decided his \u201cchildhood dream was complete.\u201d He missed the Gunnison Country and decided to step away from the Dodgers organization and move back home. Now, he runs his own remote training business for professional athletes in the MLB, NFL and NBA \u2014 all while fulfilling his dream of re-opening Colorado Fitness.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m most excited for the open gym atmosphere \u2014 to be able to walk around, talk to people and create connections and relationships,\u201d Miller said. \u201cI\u2019m really looking forward to being a central hub of social connection and a bright light in the community.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Miller expects the renovations to be complete next month, with the hard launch set for Dec. 1.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
(Alex McCrindle can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or amccrindle@orourkemediagroup.com.)\n\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taylor Miller stands in front of the future Colorado Fitness location. (Photo by Alex McCrindle) On Oct. 27,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-261378","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}