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Home » Fitness » Fitness coach turns to baking bread as coronavirus changes life in almost every way – MLive.com

GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Brandon Morrison used to spend about 30 hours per week in the gym lifting weights and training his clients as a fitness and nutrition coach.

That was before Michigans response to the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic closed his office and nearly put him out of work. Now the former amateur strongman is hoping his newfound passion -- baking -- can not only stop the financial bleeding, but maybe even open a new career path.

My life has changed in almost every way," said Morrison, who moved from Grand Rapids to Hesperia earlier this year.

Ive been the bread winner, ironically, for the last two years while my wife has been in nursing school. We depended on that coaching income to make ends meet. Its really hard to know what life will be like after this but Id love to be the bread man in this town."

Morrison, 32, is still pretty new to baking. But he said he goes through phases of obsessions" where he studies and spends hour upon hour consumed by the desire to know more about a given topic.

Right now, its baking.

The Seattle native made his first bread sale on March 10. Three weeks later, he had pushed his home production capacity to 16 loaves of bread, 65 biscuits and 96 cookies in one day.

Working with one oven and no mixer, he has begun filling orders and making deliveries to nearby cities like Grand Rapids and Muskegon. He has aspirations of opening a bread truck, but time will tell if his new brand -- Forest and Flame -- can take off.

Forest and Flame encompasses everything from nature to the stove top and everything in between, Morrison said. Following the concept of closing the loop, I want to eventually make my own wheat, get my own cow, feed the cow scraps of food I create on the land and sort of create my own ecosystem as much as I can.

I wanted to get big

Before baking, Morrisons obsession was fitness.

In college he started getting into CrossFit -- a strength and conditioning type of exercise that consists of aerobics, calisthenics and Olympic weightlifting. Then he transitioned to more heavyweight lifting.

I remember sitting in a nutrition class in college and looking at photos of old-time strongmen," Morrison said. They were all huge, with big beards. I wanted to look like them. That moment stands out to me on my timeline."

The 6-foot-5, 165-pound Morrison bulked up. He increased his diet, including drinking a gallon of milk a day. As a result, his weight climbed to 287 pounds.

Over the next six years, his passions were powerlifting and strongman competitions, which include a variety of strength events like vehicle pulls, tire flips and keg toss.

Morrison hired Alanna Casey, a three-time winner of the title Strongest Woman in the World, to be his coach. He took part in more than a dozen competitions, fairing best in atlas stones, farmer walks and deadlifts.

At its peak, his fitness brand, Lift Big Eat Big, had sponsored athletes and assistant coaches working with him. He sold apparel and fitness plans for his clients.

In addition to taking on the physical feats himself, he got into coaching along the way. He coached Olympic weightlifting at his alma mater, Seattle University, and has spent the last decade coaching strength and fitness in gyms and online.

You dont have to be a great athlete to be a great coach, he said. "I have a really good eye for small technique errors, combined with a compassionate way about correcting them.

While he says he might look like a drill sergeant with his size and grizzly beard, thats not the case.

Im really a quiet and reserved person," he said. Im into getting people to lift more weight in a way thats safe and so they can do it the rest of their lives.

Most recently, Morrison has coached clients at a gym in East Grand Rapids. He estimates that he had around 30 clients before the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown gyms across the state. Now hes seen most of his business wash up, at least temporarily.

He still offers at-home fitness programming. But with limited revenue there and his wife, Kara, finishing up nursing school, he needed to shift gears in an uncertain time.

Baking

Much like fitness coaching, baking requires careful timing, calculation and minor tweaks in technique to get the ideal end product. Both take time and energy to perfect.

In recent years, Morrison has grown more interested in experimenting in the kitchen. That too has evolved, from cooking to baking.

I never really baked much before this, he said. I go through these phases where I become obsessed with something. I get tunnel vision and Im all about it. For a while now its been baking.

Out of bed long before the sunrise, Morrison has found baking helps combat his very active brain and difficulty relaxing. Nowadays, he begins his process around 3 a.m., and with no cable television and limited internet on his Hesperia ranch, work in the kitchen consumes much of his day.

He likes to tweak recipes to take them to the next level." That means things like toasting his flour or browning his butter and running it through a smoker before baking his cookies.

I try to create more flavor with the same ingredients, he said. I love the chemistry of cooking and baking.

Forest and Flame offers bread (sourdough, white, wheat and rye), brown butter cookies and buttermilk biscuits. His bread sells for $10 a loaf, cookies are $15 for six, and biscuits are $12 for six.

Morrison hopes to begin growing food on his Hesperia ranch. His goal is to eventually bake with all of his own ingredients.

To place an order or follow Morrisons new business venture, visit the Forest and Flame Facebook account, here.

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Fitness coach turns to baking bread as coronavirus changes life in almost every way - MLive.com

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Home » Fitness » Fitness coach turns to baking bread as coronavirus changes life in almost every way – MLive.com