Our Leadership Team

Meet the team behind the Action Potential Fitness vision

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Meet Toni And Zita

TWO FOUNDERS. ONE VISION.

Toni Harris and Zita Dube-Lockhart met at NAIT in 2016, as they were both completing their studies in the Personal Fitness trainer program.


Described by their instructors as a "dream team" and a "force to be reckoned with", they formally merged their two pre-existing companies, Generate Fitness and In Your Boots Fitness, in March of 2020 at the onset of the Covid 19 pandemic.


While the rest of the world settled into an unfamiliar and terrifying stillness, Toni and Zita set to work to find creative ways to keep their clients moving and their passion alive.


From there, Action Potential Fitness was born and, within two short years, has established itself as one of Edmonton's leading Personal Training and Group Fitness boutique studios.

"Everything is better when we do it together!"

Being both known for their drive, passion and unrelenting commitment to providing the highest quality training services possible, it didn’t take long for this ‘dynamic duo’ to begin making waves in Edmonton’s local fitness community.


In an industry that favours competition over collaboration, Action Potential Fitness stands apart. It was conceptualized as a true partnership, where all work is completed in a collaborative model with both partners contributing equally and meaningfully the operations of the business as a whole.


From client care to program design (and everything in between) both partners contribute to all aspects of the operation, each bringing their unique skills, knowledge, experience and worldview to the table in order to provide an exceptional Whole Person Health experience. They operate as one functional and cohesive unit, ensuring that every single client receives the very best of everything they have to offer.

MEET TONI (they/them)

Bodies are designed to Move !

Toni Harris (CSEP CPT/NASM CES) is passionate about human kinetics and helping bodies create safe, pain free, functional movement patterns.

As they were graduating from NAIT, Toni Harris founded In Your Boots Fitness in Edmonton in January of 2016. Their vision was to create an inclusive, holistic personal fitness training business that specialized in providing skilled programming for people who are typically intimidated to go to ‘the gym’.


Reaching out specifically to marginalized populations including seniors, LGTBQ2IAS+, new exercisers, and plus size bodies. Toni moved their services to the Generate Fitness studio in April of 2019.


Toni is passionately curious about how the human body moves, and works to help bodies move and feel better! As a queer professional, a single mom, and someone who has struggled for decades to develop their own mind-body connection due to trauma, Toni’s approach to fitness has always been to consider the whole person beyond the body.


Through her own journey with mindful eating and exercise, they learned that every health journey is a highly individualized process.

This ignited their passion for personal training, which affords them the opportunity to tailor their programming to every client’s individual context. They believe in functional fitness and body positivity – assessing your particular needs (physical and emotional) to design fun, safe, and effective training programs to steadily progress towards getting you ‘in your boots’, on your own terms.


Toni is a certified Personal Fitness Trainer through the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology, and is a Corrective Exercise Specialist through the National Academy of Sport Medicine trained through the Northern Institute of Technology’s nationally-recognized Personal Fitness Trainer program. In January 2020, they co-founded Action Potential Fitness with Zita Dube-Lockhart.

Toni specializes in muscle and joint dysfunction, corrective movement strategies, and injury rehabilitation. They are also highly recogized for their work in Transgender fitness considerations.




MEET ZITA (she/her)

Health Is Physical, Mental, and Social

Zita Dube-Lockhart (BA,CSEP CPT/NASM CES/BCS/GFI/PN1) is passionate the relationship between the physical and psycho-emotional aspects of the body.

Zita discovered her passion for studying human behaviour while completing her Baccalauréat en Arts (Sciences Politiques et Sociologie) at the Faculté St. Jean (University of Alberta). It was during this time that she was introduced to the concepts of social marginalization and systemic oppression, learnings that would continue to influence every aspect of her work twenty years later.


As a young child, Zita dreamt of singing and dancing for a living. She could imagine no greater life than one spent helping people experience the joy and freedom that comes with expressing yourself physically and emotionally. However, through life’s many twists and turns, Zita’s path took her away from the stage and into the boardroom.


But her passion for movement, music and free expression would never wane, and would eventually lead her to a surprising career change into Health and Wellness, with an emphasis on Group Fitness and Personal Fitness Training in 2016. She completed the NAIT Personal Fitness diploma program in only 14 months, and launched herself wholeheartedly into the mission of helping others rediscover joy in movement.

Zita’s approach to fitness is largely informed by her background in Sociology, and- even more so- her parenting and family experience. As the neurodivergent parent of two neurodivergent children, Zita views the world through the lens of social equity, recognizing that economic, social, psycho-emotional and physical barriers are the major contributors to a person’s health outcomes. Her interest in the behavioral aspects of health would eventually pull her towards furthering her education in the fields of behaviour change management, the neuro-mechanics of pain, and- ultimately- to the role of stress, trauma, and social inclusion in fitness behavior. This research would ultimately lead her to designing the 6A Framework for Trauma Informed Fitness and spearheading the development of Moving Through Healing, an education series for fitness professional in collaboration with Toni Harris and Janine Groeneveld (R. Psych). Zita is also the founder of DiversiFIT, a non-profit focused on providing family-integrated fitness services for children with disabilities.


In her short career, Zita has already received great recognition for her commitment to supporting under-privileged communities and promoting a superior health and fitness culture. She is the recipient of the Edify's (formerly Avenue Edmonton) Top 40 Under 40 Award (2019), was a Finalist (Alberta) for Impact Magazine’s Canada’s Top Fitness Trainer (2018), a finalist for YEG Fitness Magazine’s Edmonton’s Top Personal Trainer (2017, 2018), and the recipient of two Autism Edmonton Community Champion Awards (2016, 2017) for her work with DiversiFIT.

Zita specializes in inclusive and adaptive exercise, pain and behaviour management, movement therapy for stress and trauma, and the biopsychosocial aspects of fitness and health.




MEET JAMES (he/him)

Everyone has a right to Physical and Mental Health.

James Foley (CSEP CPT, NASM-CNC) is passion about creating safe and exciting opportunities for people to experience the healing powers of movement and wholistic nutrition.

James is excited to be joining the Action Potential Fitness leadership team following his promotion to Head Trainer and Studio Manager.


He completed his Personal Fitness Diploma at NAIT in 2021 and went on to immediately acquire his Certified Personal Trainer designation from the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology and his Certified Nutrition Counselling designation from the National Academy of Sports Medicine. He is currently working on completing his Corrective Exercise Specialist course, and in enhancing his knowledge and understanding of wholistic health through his work at Vitality Health Foods.


When seeking out a career, James knew he wanted to work in a field where he could help others cultivate a greater sense of physical and mental wellbeing. As a human who had experienced first hand the healing power of fitness and mindful nutrition, James knew he had a powerful message to share with the world:


You deserve to feel good in your mind, body and spirit.


James is known for his inquisitive approach to the body, always looking to better understand how clients engage with movement from a physical and emotional place.

His approach to fitness is simple: start where you are, as you are- because who you are is exactly the person you need to be. He promotes self-acceptance, self-celebration, and self-compassion, compelling his clients to remember that exercise is only one component of their well-being and that it is meant to serve them and help them create the best possible life they can. He is particularly passionate about working with those who are new to exercise or who have fallen out of active patterns due to physical or emotional barriers, particularly those surrounding mental health and LGTBQ2SIA+ accessibility.


James recently joined the Action Potential Fitness leadership team as studio manager and Head Trainer. He is extremely excited to play a larger role in helping others rediscover healing through movement and social connection.


James specializes new and returning exercisers, injury prevention, nutrition considerations, therapeutic exercise for mental health, and LGTBQ2SIA+ considerations.