Jeanne Daugherty Jameson each month embarks on a cross-country journey that has the unusual mix of providing athletic training in Coronado while working to become a plane mechanic in Virginia.
Confused?
Don’t worry about it as it’s all just part of a master plan with her husband, Phil, to embark on yet another career.
More about that later.
First, there’s the local angle on the island.
Performance Elite
Jameson started Performance Elite in 1995 to offer swimming and personal training, group fitness, and health coaching in greater San Diego.
Her background as a competitive swimmer, triathlon athlete, technical swimming advisor for a military special forces team, and her time in the Navy overwhelmingly prepared her for the job, she said.
Jameson has been teaching swimming since 1978 and weight training and fitness since 1985.
Through all of her coaching, she always focuses on the whole body, since the mental game is a huge factor to a person’s success in addition to the physical aspect, she said.
She remembers the head coach of her swimming team used to say, “your performance is 90% mental,” and she has stuck that saying in her back pocket ever since.
Training mentality
Jameson’s speciality is putting clients into programs to help them overcome injuries, specifically focusing on well-rounded health.
“With what I do, I tend to really excel with people who may have actually lost hope.”
-Jeanne Daugherty Jameson, fitness trainer for Performance Elite.
“With what I do, I tend to really excel with people who may have actually lost hope,” Jameson said.
Her in-depth knowledge of correct form and training techniques for healing comes from her own experience.
She said she started swimming at the age of 12 and was one of the top swimmers in Colorado, winning the Colorado Citizen Swimmer Student of the Year award her senior year of high school.
Competitive swimming continued until she injured her shoulders during her sophomore season at the University of Colorado.
She found that after six months of correct weight training techniques, with the help of her triathlon trainer, she could finally swim again without any pain.
Top triathlon competitor
After college, Jameson started to consistently compete in triathlons.
She excelled at mid-distance tries—never finishing below third place in the 15 triathlons she completed in three years, she said.
Yes, that’s five triathlons each year.
During this time, Jameson also took up sailboarding.
Her own training endeavors (and that of her coaches) is one of two things Jameson attributed her own seasoned expertise.
The second?
Home economics classes in high school.
“I learned so much about good posture, walking, balance and better food habits.”
-Jeanne Daugherty Jameson, fitness trainer for Performance Elite.
“I learned so much about good posture, walking, balance and better food habits,” Jameson said. “If you start doing it correctly, you start retraining your body and then your whole structure starts to change, your posture gets better and you start feeling better.”
Navy background
Her background expertise doesn’t stop there.
Jameson served in the Navy for five years as an Intelligence Officer from 1989 to 1994, she said.
She was recruited to be the swimming technical advisor for three weeks for the Competition for International Sports in the Military (CISM) team in 1995. CISM organizes various sporting events for the armed forces of 140 countries. It represents the highest level of military athletic competitiveness.
Jameson was the technical advisor for the swim team, made up of Navy SEALS and other special forces competitors and they won first place that year.
This training kickstarted her decision to start Performance Elite in 1995, and it’s still going strong today.
Jameson is in charge of all the programs and trainers at Performance Elite including outdoor fitness, personal training, training the trainers, triathlon training and virtual health and fitness coaching.
A new career endeavor
While continuing to develop Performance Elite, Jameson is also working part-time as a plane mechanic in Virginia.
Jameson and her husband are in the process of becoming pilots for Mission Aviation Fellowship, a faith-based organization that flies all over the world to help with disaster relief, medical issues and church support in remote locations.
Part of the certification requires mechanical training.
So while she works as a mechanic in Virginia, Jameson also flies back to the island once a month to run Performance Elite.
“One of the things I think is really important for people is to make goals, make resolutions and determine to be better,” Jameson said. “You don’t have to wait until New Years. You can make it happen now, because there’s so much hope.”
