The Evolution of Ambitious Athletics: From Coaching Workouts to Integrating Performance Medicine
As your life evolves, your health and performance need to evolve with it. And as much as science and technology have brought us forward, there are still data points missing - the ones that help us make the best, most calculated decisions for your health, performance, and longevity.
That’s the belief that has driven every chapter of Ambitious Athletics. And it’s the belief behind our most significant evolution yet.
Welcome to Ambitious Medical.
Nearly a Decade in the Making
Some things are worth being patient about.
The conversation that became Ambitious Medical didn’t start this year. It started back in 2016 and 2017, when Dr. Jack Penner was still a medical student at Georgetown and he and Carmen were already talking about what it would look like to bring proactive clinical care into a training environment like this one.
In Dr. Jack’s words:
“The start of this is really a full circle moment for me. Carmen and I started to talk about this back in 2016, 2017, when I was still a medical student at Georgetown. We were reflecting together on how there’s such an opportunity for good, proactive clinical care to integrate with the work that happens in an incredible gym community like Ambitious Athletics. And yet, these two areas that are so intertwined with health oftentimes stay siloed and completely separate.”
That observation, made nearly a decade ago, is still true today. Medicine and fitness rarely speak the same language at scale. Ambitious Medical is what happens when you stop waiting for that to change on its own and decide to build a model where they finally work together.
Where Ambitious Athletics Has Always Been Headed
Ambitious Athletics was never meant to be just a gym. The vision from the start was to create something that felt closer to a collegiate or professional athletics environment, but accessible to real people living real lives.
As Ambitious evolved, the standard kept rising. What began as boot camp and strength and conditioning steadily grew into a complete health and performance environment built around education, coaching, and structure. Early on, tools like InBody body composition analysis reflected a commitment to using real data instead of guesswork. Certifications and continuing education weren’t about collecting credentials, they were about building a coaching system grounded in substance.
Over time, recovery became a bigger part of the philosophy. In 2022, the new Ambitious Athletics space expanded that vision further bringing the MovementX physical therapy partnership into the ecosystem and adding cold and heat therapy so recovery became part of the plan, not an afterthought.
Every step forward came from the same question: how do we help people continue to feel strong, capable, and athletic as they age?
Life is your sport, and the system has to evolve with that reality.
Ambitious Medical is simply the next, most complete version of that vision.
“Within Range” Isn’t Good Enough
Here’s a real conversation that helped shape what Ambitious Medical is built to do.
At a routine annual physical, Carmen had to advocate for additional testing like Vitamin D, testosterone, and thyroid markers that typically aren’t included unless you ask or have something else wrong. Those tests were eventually run, and Vitamin D came back low. Not flagged. Not out of range. Just low.
Here’s why that matters: the reference range for Vitamin D is 30 to 100. A result of 33 is technically “within range.” But for an active adult who trains consistently and cares about energy, recovery, and long-term performance, 33 and a 70 are not the same thing.
That moment sparked a deeper conversation with Dr. Jack about the difference between reference ranges and optimal levels and it became one of the foundational ideas behind Ambitious Medical.
Standard care is designed to catch what’s wrong. Ambitious Medical is designed to help you understand what’s possible.
Most people walk away from bloodwork knowing they aren’t sick. What they don’t walk away with is clarity on whether their numbers are truly supporting the life they’re trying to live.
The Gap That’s Been Costing People
That experience isn’t unique, it’s common.
Training happens with structure, coaching, and accountability. Healthcare often happens once a year, in a different building, with a portal notification and a generic recommendation like “eat better and exercise more.”
Even when labs are run, they’re interpreted against population-wide ranges rather than the context of someone intentionally training for health and performance.
The consequences aren’t dramatic overnight, they’re subtle. Cardiovascular risk markers missed early. Inflammation signals explaining why recovery feels harder than it should. Hormonal context affecting energy and body composition. Nutrient gaps quietly limiting progress.
These are the missing data points.
Ambitious Medical exists to make them visible and to turn them into action.
What Ambitious Medical Actually Is
This is physician-guided lab analysis integrated directly into your training, recovery, and lifestyle inside the Ambitious environment, as part of how you already operate.
The foundation is a 50+ biomarker panel covering cardiovascular health, metabolic function, hormonal health, inflammation and recovery load, nutrient status, and long-term brain health markers. But the panel is only part of what makes this work.
It begins with a 30-minute intake visit with Dr. Jack to review your health history, training load, and goals so everything is personalized from the start. Labs are ordered and coordinated for you. Then you return for a 60-minute results review, a real conversation, not a portal notification, where results are explained clearly, prioritized intelligently, and translated into practical next steps with optimal levels in mind, not just reference ranges.
You leave with a Personal Health Plan covering training, nutrition, sleep, stress, supplementation, and prevention. And that plan integrates directly into your coaching at Ambitious so it becomes part of your weekly rhythm instead of something that gets filed away.
That integration is the whole point.
Lots of companies can give you information. Very few help you turn it into action.
Meet Dr. Jack Penner
Dr. Jack Penner’s path to medicine ran directly through sport. Before earning his M.D. at Georgetown, he was an NCAA Division I athlete and a strength and conditioning coach, which means he understands training not as an outsider looking in, but as someone who has lived it.
He completed both his residency and chief residency at UCSF, earning multiple awards for clinical excellence and teaching, and later founded Kuros to integrate rigorous clinical medicine with performance-informed, preventive care.
His approach fits this community because the goal isn’t chasing perfect biomarkers, it’s understanding the bigger picture so people can live the fullest, strongest version of their lives for decades to come.
This Is What “Ambitious” Has Always Meant
The people in this community already show up. They already do the work.
What Ambitious Medical adds is clarity, a complete view of what’s happening inside the body, interpreted by a physician who understands performance and integrated into an environment built for execution.
Standard care tells you whether you’re sick. Ambitious Medical helps you understand how well you’re actually operating and what to do next.
The conversation started nearly a decade ago. The timing is finally right. The missing data points now have a home.
And for the first time, training, recovery, and proactive medicine live inside one system built to help you perform not just for a season, but for life.
How to Get Started
Ambitious Medical is available to both current members and new clients in Washington, DC. Start with a Coaching Conversation and we’ll walk you through the right fit for where you are and where you want to go.
Book a Coaching Conversation → Learn more about Ambitious Medical → Meet Dr. Jack → View our Memberships
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