Lincoln Alexander Law alum takes first place at the Canadian Functional Fitness Championships

This past summer, Julia Bayne, a corporate and commercial lawyer at Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP (“Blakes”) and member of the Lincoln Alexander School of Law’s inaugural graduating class, won first place in her division at the Canadian Functional Fitness National Championships. The annual event draws athletes from across the country to compete across six key fitness categories including strength, endurance, mixed modal, skill, bodyweight, and power. The win officially qualifies Bayne for the 2025 iF3 Functional Fitness World Championships, which will take place this November in Brisbane, Australia. This marks Bayne’s fourth World Championship appearance after three straight third-place finishes. 

But, as it turns out, Bayne almost didn’t compete. 

The weeks leading up to the competition were extremely busy for Bayne. She wasn’t sleeping well and barely had time to train. She told her partner that she was thinking of dropping out, but he encouraged her to stay in the competition. “He said, ‘At least you'll get to work out.’ So, I went in with that mindset,” Bayne recalls.

On the day of the event, rather than exhausted, Bayne felt invigorated. When she’s training and competing, she explains, “I feel free… it is one of the only times in my adult life that I don’t think about anything else. I’m not thinking about what I must do tomorrow, and I’m not stressed about what happened yesterday.” 

In one event, participants had to row for two kilometers, then do as many “double-unders” as possible in 10 minutes – which means spinning a jump rope fast enough for it to pass twice under the feet in only one jump – and then run for two kilometers as fast as possible. In another event, they had to lift as much weight as possible in an Olympic lifting sequence, including squats and overhead shoulder presses. Participants’ total scores for the competition were based on their performance across all six events, which included measures such as the number of reps performed, heaviest weight lifted, and time to complete the event.

The competitors only found out what the exercises were two weeks before the competition, so they couldn’t intensely train solely for those exercises. The philosophy of functional fitness is to train in a myriad of different ways and incorporate full-body movements that translate to everyday life, like carrying groceries up the stairs or lifting your kids, for instance. The unpredictability of functional fitness competitions “is part of what makes it so scary, but also so rewarding,” says Bayne.

The win was an important reminder to Bayne that “it’s not the days leading up to the moment. It’s the months and years of consistency that you put in.” Bayne says another key lesson from her competition is that “you never want to sell yourself short, and you never want to quit before you even tried.” 

Bayne brings the renewed sense of confidence and purpose from the win to her job at Blakes. Bayne’s practice encompasses a range of corporate and commercial matters, including the development of major power and infrastructure projects relating to nuclear and renewable energy (among others), mergers and acquisitions and corporate reorganizations. Bayne, who completed a PhD in inorganic chemistry before pursuing law, is noticing that certain skills from her PhD are transferring well to parts of her legal practice “In my current role, I still get to be involved in STEM, and I get to see its application in solving really important problems, like climate change.” 

Bayne, who graduated in 2023, is the inaugural winner of the TMU Gold Medal for Law, awarded to a graduating student who demonstrates exceptional academic achievement and significant contributions to their academic and professional communities. She also won the Wildeboer Dellelce Award for achieving the highest grade in the law school’s second-year Business Law and Practice course.

“I had a wonderful time at Lincoln Alexander Law,” she says. “I left with some great friends and memories, and my law school experience really prepared me for the human aspects and practical aspects of the job. I became a much better communicator, critical thinker and problem-solver.” When talking with graduates of other law programs, she realized that she’d been exposed to skills that they hadn’t, including negotiating and drafting contracts, and technological proficiency. “Lincoln Alexander Law provided such a good foundation for all of us to launch into the careers we wanted and to pivot when needed along the way,” Bayne adds.

Bayne stresses that her promising legal career hasn’t come at the expense of everything else. In fact, she credits her passions outside of law for helping her to stay grounded and fulfilled at her job. In addition to her fitness training, Bayne is also the owner of 6S Fitness+ (external link) , an inclusive and community-focused gym that offers individual training, group classes and nutrition coaching. Bayne says delegation is a big reason she’s able to pursue multiple passions – her manager and team handle the everyday aspects of running a gym, and sharing the load of Sunday meal-prep sessions with her partner are another big help.

“If you work at a big firm on Bay Street, the hours are unpredictable and sometimes very long, but you should never feel like you have to give up every other aspect of your life to do this one thing,” she says. “I am so grateful to be at a workplace that encourages me to be my authentic self.”