Chris Cundari, (Owner of DSFN) grew up in Villa Park, IL. He began playing football at the age of six and participated in several other sports throughout his high school career. It was his participation in sports as a child that sparked his interest in training for performance. As a child, Chris noticed that the kids that were bigger and faster, despite not having a high skill level, tended to be on the field the most often. In high school, when Chris was introduced to the weight room, he soon realized that physical attributes were somewhat modifiable. These attributes were not strictly performance-based, they also affected appearance.

Working out in the weight room most days of the week to improve his physical performance and appearance, Chris struggled with his body image into adulthood. He often wondered why others naturally looked lean and muscular without having to lift weights as much as he did. This curiosity would eventually push Chris to challenge himself by enlisting into the most physically demanding task he was aware of at the time of his high school graduation – becoming a United States Marine.

Chris served in the United Sates Marine Corps from 2006 to 2010, where he completed two combat tours, achieved the rank of Sergeant and received multiple awards for leading and motivating others to uphold the physical fitness standards of the Marine Corps. The time spent in the Marine Corps taught Chris an abundant wealth of knowledge, especially pertaining to training people and motivating others. Most of all, the time Chris spent as a Marine only furthered his obsession with learning more about the human body’s responses to physical stimuli. The Marine Corps was layered with men and women exposed to the same physical training, relatively similar diet and living conditions, yet, all these people were different shapes, sizes, strengths and speeds. It was this great exposure that led Chris to pursue a formal education in health and human sciences.

In 2014, Chris graduated from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington with a Bachelor of Science with Latin Distinctions in Exercise Science. Upon completing his B.S., Chris studied the sciences of resistance training, plyometric training, speed, agility, speed-endurance development, and aerobic-endurance exercise training in preparation to becoming a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. Most recently, in December of 2016, Chris graduated from Benedictine University with a Master of Science in Nutrition and Wellness with a concentration in Health Education. During his graduate studies Chris researched the effects of bone health and exercise. In addition to this, he focused his studies on applying nutrition science principles into the daily diet of individuals in order to achieve personal and performance-based goals.

Upon completing his MS, Chris has furthered his training repertoire and has developed strong relationships through reaching desirable results with sports teams, athletes, fitness-enthusiasts, people looking to a make a lifestyle change, and even other trainers. As a nutritionist, Chris has worked with athletes needing to optimize performance capacity, athletes needing to gain and lose weight for competition, and many people looking to lose unwanted fat and keep it off. Whether an elite athlete, or someone looking for a higher quality of life, Chris opened DSFN to share his knowledge and experience with those in need of it.

Adam Prahl was born and raised in Prospect Heights, Illinois. Growing up in a neighborhood with many boys of similar age, he was constantly immersed in all types of organized and neighborhood competitions, challenges, and other high-energy community activities. It was a delightful way for him to stay active and avoid a sedentary lifestyle.

Adam's passion for sports began at a young age, and he became a lifelong soccer player, starting at the age of five and continuing through high school. In addition to soccer, he was also a four-year member of both the cross country and track teams during his high school sports career. In his junior year, he joined the high school's volleyball team in its inaugural year, expanding his athletic pursuits.

Despite being a long-time sports fan, it wasn't until the late 90's, during his freshman year of college, that Adam began investing in daily exercise and weight lifting at a gym. It was during this time that he started a job that caused him an abnormally high amount of stress, anxiety, and unease. Seeking relief, a childhood friend mentioned how he had overcome similar issues by hitting the weights first thing in the morning.

Taking his friend's advice to heart, Adam soon realized that physical fitness and weight training were so much more than just aesthetics and competition. They became a way of life for him, providing a means to relieve stress, gain confidence, and improve his overall health and wellness. This positive transformation inspired him to pursue personal training as a career.

In 2004, Adam befriended Dan, a personal trainer at Bally's, who introduced him to various training techniques and methods to properly train the body. Adam was captivated by the idea of personal training, and he soon started working at a personal training facility owned by two of Dan's former managers. He was even able to continue his studies while working, obtaining his first certification through the International Sports Sciences Association (ISSA). Since then, Adam has never looked back and continues to work as a personal trainer, helping others achieve their fitness goals and improve their overall well-being.

Soorya Raja Venkataramanan’s path to fitness ran through three very different areas. He spent his early childhood years in New Jersey before moving to Chennai, India in 2005, where he first picked up a basketball, one of his first introductions to athletic coordination and into a sport that continues to be a huge passion for him. By 2010, his family had settled in Naperville, Illinois, where American football became a genuine obsession alongside a stint on the swim team through middle and high school. Whatever the sport, Soorya brought the same energy to it: a competitive edge that refused to let anything be casual.

Underneath the athletic drive, though, was a quieter struggle. Soorya had always been a chubby kid, and that self-image followed him long after organized sports faded into the background of a focused academic life. It wasn’t until after college, in 2021, that he found the structure he needed, walking through the doors of DSFN and committing to real, consistent training for the first time. What started as an effort to finally change his body became something deeper in late 2024 and into 2025, when Soorya turned his attention to nutrition with the same intensity he’d once reserved for competition. Tracking, adjusting, and dialing in his eating habits in unison with his training, he brought his body fat down to single digits, which was proof to himself that the transformation he’d wanted since childhood was achievable.

Academically, Soorya has always lived at the intersection of logic and problem-solving, earning a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics in 2021 and a Master of Science in Computer Science/Data Science in 2024. But it’s his personal transformation through training that pulled him toward a different kind of application for that analytical mind: sports performance. With his sights set on a career in sports analytics, Soorya earned his NSCA-CPT certification in 2026, driven by the belief that you can’t build meaningful tools for athletic performance without first understanding movement and training from the ground up.

Much of that ground-up understanding comes directly from training under DSFN’s own Chris Cundari and Adam Prahl. Learning firsthand from two coaches with decades of combined experience gave Soorya both the technical foundation and the mentorship he needed to grow. He continues to learn from them today, treating every session as both his own training and an education in coaching itself. For Soorya, working at DSFN isn’t a detour from his sports analytics goal, it’s the foundation of it, giving him hands-on insight into how bodies actually respond to training that no dataset alone could teach him.

Today, Soorya brings that same enthusiasm and passion for training and nutrition to a wider audience. His approach is rooted in a simple belief: if he could do it, anyone can — it just takes dedication. Having lived through the frustration of feeling stuck in his own body and come out the other side, Soorya meets clients where they are, offering not just technical know-how but the lived proof that real, lasting transformation is possible for anyone willing to commit to it.