Dakota Lietka

Coach

I am married to Rachel Lietka and we are blessed with one son so far, Brooks.  Family is extremely important to me and my biggest motivator for everything I do.  Kearney CrossFit allows me to pursue a career I love without having to pick between it and my family.  At Kearney CrossFit we encourage making a healthy lifestyle a family oriented approach.  

I started CrossFit back in 2012 with a good friend of mine while we were in college.  We had already been working out and training for both athletics and later on health, from childhood.  We found ourselves looking for something more and better than the traditional way of working out.  Then we stumbled across CrossFit.  We dove head first into this and changed our garage at our college rental house into a gym.  We started inviting people to come workout with us and started training multiple people out of our tiny one car garage for about a year. That is when we heard about a CrossFit gym opening up in Kearney and they were having a grand opening soon.

Enter Kearney CrossFit.  My friend and I talked to the people that were working out in our garage to go check it out with us.  Little did I know at the time that that would turn into more great friendships and partnerships than I could have imagined.  Now fast forward about 10 years and I am still a part of this community and its mission to educate, entertain and inspire people on their journey to health and wellness. 

On a day to day basis you can find me coaching classes, working with personal training clients, nutrition clients, programming for our competitive athletes and online clients in addition to helping run the gym and building our community. The days are long but fast. I am grateful for every second of it! 

I still enjoy working out almost daily and competing in CrossFit from time to time.  Although that focus has shifted quite a bit from the competing side to the coaching and training of others.   

While I have been at Kearney CrossFit for the majority of my career I did gain valuable experience when I moved to Manhattan, KS Colorado Springs, CO and Omaha, NE.  All three of these locations gave me the opportunity to work with different people and learn from different professionals.  While I lived in Colorado Springs and Omaha I worked at Lifetime Fitness as a Fitness Professional.  LIfetime is a huge national Club that has an abundance of resources and potential.  I learned from some amazing trainers while I was there and worked with clients at a much wider variety of fitness levels than I normally had in a CrossFit gym.  Both of those things helped me grow and want to continue to grow as a professional.  

My goal is to be able to help as many people as I can no matter their goals or fitness level.  I am here to help the beginner, the broken and the high achieving athlete.  The misconception is that you need to already be in good shape to do CrossFit.  I want to help everyone realize that is so far from the truth.  I can help you not only reach a healthier happier life or your peak performance but also help you enjoy the process along the way.   

Credentials:

  • Bachelors in Exercise Science 
  • Bachelors in Sports Administration 
  • CFL – 1
  • CFL – 2
  • USAW Level 1
  • Certified Personal Trainer
  • Functional Movement Screening 
  • Corrective Exercise