Welcome to the Your Revolution Podcast hosted by Revolution Performance Training. Welcome back to another episode of the Your Revolution Podcast. I am your new host. My name is Coach Liam McGuire. I’ve been working at Revolution Performance Training for a your be edition one of the new version of the podcast, having the opportunity today to speak to UK’s very own coach Jason Curtis. So Jason Curtis, also known on his Instagram handles as strength and conditioning course is a longtime strength and conditioning coach from over in the UK has been doing some fantastic work over a long, long duration and owning his own strength and conditioning gym.

But also to this point now, he’s starting to roll out within the new fascination with these fitness races across the world. He has capitalised on that and is rolling out what seems to appear one of the most accessible fitness races on the planet and one that I would dare say quite soon will start to really explode internationally wise. So it was fantastic today to be able to sit down and have that conversation with Jason Curtis. He’s such a smart guy and you’ll hear that if you do manage to get through the entirety of the podcast.

Might be one of those ones to shop up over a couple of drives. It does go for the better part of an hour or so, but really fantastic insight from Jason in terms of his journey to where he is today. Some of the tips and tricks that he can give to other business owners out there as well, but also really dive deep diving into some of his philosophies as a strength and conditioning coach and how he likes to utilize this upcoming fitness race in which he does want to change the fitness landscape with it. So let’s dive in, have a bit of a chat to Jason Curtis.

Again, if you’d like to follow him, he’s strength and conditioning course on Instagram, or you can go to his website, strength and conditioning course as well. And flick through all of the programs, mentorships, everything that he has available for other coaches but also for the general punter in the strength and conditioning world. If you are a client or you are a general population, you can definitely get some really good resource from him. So let’s have a chat. Cool. Yeah. All right. So I’m sitting here while online with coach Curtis or Jason Curtis.

Thank you for joining us today, Jay, to the Your Revolution podcast. We have to get a bit of a kickstart back up on this, but Jason has 14 years to date as a strength and conditioning coach. I think I’m right in saying that. He’ll correct me if I’m wrong, but he was in the British military as a physical training and structure. com. He owns a strength and conditioning gym, delivers programming, workshops, mentorships, all under the coach Curtis Banner. So I can imagine it keeps you busy, Jay He has three kids and from what I’ve seen he loves his movies so hopefully that’s enough of an intro but thank you for joining us Jay.

Yeah no reason it’s great to be here thanks for having me on. Fantastic no I guess to intro it Jay tell us a little bit about sort of what you do over on your end as a strength and conditioning coach over in the UK. It is firstly where you’re based over in the UK, what your gym does and I guess sort of how you got into things. So I’m based in Matlasfield in the UK, which is a small town in Cheshire, which is just outside of Manchester. I own a strength of conditioning gym there, as you mentioned, and we work with both athletes and the general population, so just normal folk.

There’s probably more normal folk than anyone else. I say normal, but a lot of them these days. A big part of my brand is average is no longer average. Normal folk are doing ultramarathons. They’re doing obstacle course racing, fitness racing. They’re doing all sorts of sports. And I’m even normal people that aren’t competitive athletes are training too. And which I have standard, they’re wanting to do a little bit weightlifting. They might be doing cross-fit, they’re doing powerlifting. So it’s my client base is a broad spectrum, really, spectrum, right across the whole range that you can think of.

I got into it basically because I’ve always been into it for as long as I can remember. I was a combat sports athlete, not going anywhere, but enjoyed it as a kid, as in cross country teams. I was always naturally very fit, always know I wanted a gym, but I also wanted to be in the military. So I joined the infantry at 19 after doing a sports course at school and became a physical train instructor did that for six years while serving in the infantry knew that I always wanted the gym still. Originally as a kid I thought it’d be a combat sports gym you know I used to watch a lot of pride and very early days of UFC boxing, Thai boxing stuff like that and but obviously as I became more experienced as a coach and learned more about the industry, I became more interested in the physical training aspects of Moi tie, which was my main sport, rather than the technical aspects.

And that’s where I started to lean more into physical training. The military doing conditioning certifications, personal training, everything I could get my hands on really left the military around eight to 10 years ago. Set up a gym, worked with lots of different people, ended up setting an academy because I wrote, I’ve published today around 20 books on strength conditioning, warming up Olympic weightlifting and turned a lot of their books into courses, then went on to sort of qualify personal trainers and strength conditioning coaches internationally.

And now my main sort of objective is building a fitness race, which is the sport that I’ve got into over the last few years. I’ve developed my own fitness race. We’re going UK wide next year. And that’s where I’m currently basically. Yeah, awesome. That’s a good little summary of a good 20 years. I reckon they’re Jay. – Yeah. – There’s a few things in there that you said that I’d love to touch on a little bit further. Coming back to right at the start when you’re mentioning that we’re working in more of your general population setting, but also have worked with a bit of elite athletes.

Obviously there’s some commonalities across the two, because old training is training at the end of the day. But I guess working with some of those elite athletes, is there anyone out there who you’ve worked of in particular? Are you happy to sort of note off? – Try to think now of who are the main ones that I’ve worked with, there’s no one that’s particularly overly famous over them. I’ve worked with a few boxes over the years trying to think of the biggest names really. We work currently with athlete, factory and in Chester and some of the athletes there.

I’ve got a company called Combat Sports Performance Coach and one of my business partner Paul Reed, he works closely with and Patty Pimla, who’s a UFC fighter. Veronica Hardy and Meatball Molly. So he’s working with a whole range of athletes. In terms of my athletes, it’s been a lot of sort of ultra athletes that do ultra sports. We’ve had a few like, like I say, British champions and people that have broke records in powerlifting, young athletes, stuff like that. In Germany, I had quite a few athletes in combat sports in Muay Thai and whatnot.

But as a whole, yeah, really, off the top of my head, I don’t think there’d be many people that people would know of in Australia that I’ve really worked with other than sports teams like I was head of strength conditioning at Marcus Field Ruby Club. I’ve worked with a few football teams. But yeah, off the top of my head, I can’t really think of anyone that would be of major note as a celebrity style of athlete. It’s more just sort of sports like across the board. But if one pops up, I’ll let you know. – Definitely shout out for sure.

I mean, but that’s the thing though, isn’t it? Like there’s so many different, quite unquote athletes who exist out there and never gonna quite get the name because they’re sports sort of off Broadway a little bit too, isn’t it? That’s sort of half the battle a little bit. – Yeah, yeah. I mean, to be honest, like most of the athletes that I’ve worked with have been, you know, maybe British level, some have trained, you know, on a higher level, but most of them in all honesty are not earning big money from their sports.

And other than when I’ve gone and done, you know, I worked with like a sports team. And for example, for a day, I’ve done like a little bit of a seminar where there’s been various individuals there like CrossFitters and fitness races, for example. And the majority of them are into the professional athletes. So one of them is like professional skier and stuff like that, telemark, skiers. And but no one would know the name, you know, unless to a part of that sport, really. Yeah and I’ve had some cyclists in the gym. Some have broke world records and I could say it’s I mean I barely remember some of the names over the years if I’m honest It’s just the way it is.

Yeah, exactly. That’s right. Isn’t it? You know his sometimes a record is made and then it’s broken quite quickly as well So yeah, it’s half the battle and you make a really good point too. You would look at the fact that some of these guys you wouldn’t know the name of and probably that revenue that comes back in for the amount of money that they spend on to be a part of their sport can be a really hard industry to be a part of some of them sometimes, you know, especially when it comes to rehabilitation from injury too.

And I mean, at the end of the day, these people do it completely because they love it. And that’s such a different piece to some of the bits and pieces that we’ll talk to today, comparatively to people who might do it because it’s their job. They have to do it as part of their job versus doing it just because you completely love it and it might even become a little bit of a financial burden at time, but it’s such a such a hard thing to let go because it is such a big piece of your life. So it’s an interesting industry sometimes in that sense, isn’t it?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, like I say, most of the, I would say, especially combat sports athletes, people see like Conor McGregor and it’s multi-millions, but in a lot of these sports, you see football. So some of the footballers I’ve worked with, and they’re sort of low level football players, but they’re earning three or four grand a week. And so they’re earning good money, but not like the hundreds of thousands. But when you take most of the other sports I’ve worked with, like some of the best, some really good power lifters.

And they’re earning pretty much nothing other than from like brand sponsorships. And then when it comes to like some of the other sports, like skiing and stuff, I mean, a lot of the skiers that I work with, the families are quite wealthy. But yeah, there’s zero money, like I’m sure the top 1% of the top 1%, you’re not earning money. It’s only the big, big sports where you see, you know, you heard of footballers and crazy money, their household names, their celebrities, the majority of athletes are not earning a great amount of money.

They might get sponsorship. For example, one of the individuals I train, she trains in the gym, she teaches Paralympic swimmers, she was a high level swimmer herself, and a lot of their athletes like us in, you know, world-class swimmers, Olympians and stuff, it’s hard to get them funding to just sustain them. So yeah, it’s a hard industry, but in all honesty, the higher the levels that I’ve worked with, which I didn’t go down really a true S&C route where in the UK, the EIS English Institute of Sport, they distribute S&C coaches.

So I’ve not gone as much down that route because I’ve gone sort of a private route. And I’ve actually found that when I’ve worked with sports teams, like when I’ve been the S&C coach so head of SNC at McInsear, Robby Club, you were far more restricted in what you could do than working with lower level athletes, especially like hobbyists athletes that were Navy armatures, or they were, you know, decent ultra athletes, but they also worked a full-time job because they were coming to you to get the full package. Yeah, when you were working as an SNC coach at sports team, it was like, right, you’ve got 15 minutes here or you know, you’re, you’re far more restricted.

And then you are working with the general clientele, basically. Right. Yep. Exactly. Right. You know, high performance can be a thorn on the side sometimes, can’t they? And they say, no, we’ve got an hour that we’re doing the coaching side of things and you’ve maybe got five minutes for your warm up and then you got 10 minutes to work on whatever you want. So in terms of what’s in your programming and across your bigger picture piece. So yes, it’s, it’s, it’s challenges in that industry for sure. And even, you know, just back to the point that you make before when somebody hears that maybe a, a lower, you know, quote unquote, lower level soccer or football player is on three or four grand a week.

That still sounds pretty good, but there’s a lot of reinvestment that goes on there as well because, you know, in some of these clubs that don’t quite have the funding, they’re not going to be able to afford all the bells and whistles. And there are sort of non-negotiables that as one of those even semi-professional athletes, you still do need to get into your regime across a week. So it doesn’t end up just being, you know, three, four grand of pure profit. There are definitely expenses that you have to wear as well.

And it starts to look like just a general wage at the end of the day. And, you know, the challenge with that is a lot of us who are on general, or ages to have the job security to be able to, you know, have a permanent position. If you’re a contracted player, you know, Contracts certainly aren’t as tight across the world as maybe they once were. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re safe for your two years ever. You’re one and only up six months to sort of prove yourself. So anyway, we can talk about that for days. That’s a big, big pace.

But let’s go to what you sort of mentioned before in terms of these fitness races. So So fitness races for those who maybe aren’t so much aware, sort of are coming under that. High Rock Spanner is a really popular one that’s literally just been in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago and had, God knows how many people there were stupid, some amount of people going through there, you know, getting sweaty in the big place. And God knows, you know, what would have been going on with a few of those pieces of equipment. But it’s definitely one of those things that looks to be taking the world by storm.

And you’ve mentioned before that it’s something you’re working on. I believe it’s under the deadly dozen brand. Is that right? Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Yeah, tell us, tell us a bit about that, Jay, sort of how you got into it, where you sort of saw the gap in the market, I guess the wise, why you started it up and what it’s turning into. Yeah, so basically, like, obviously, I started as a sort of army physical training instructor, went sort of down the S&C route, but more sort of general worker, general clientele and athletes and rather than the truest and see.

And what I realized when I left the military was obviously that in the military, they often said that, you know, cities are lazy and they’re useless and they don’t work very hard. And it was almost like propaganda to keep you in the army. And then I left the military expecting, you know, these normal folk to be exactly how the army described. And what I found was it was the opposite. You know, they were paying me to train and actually the more sort of high intensity training I did, the more I sort of spoke about the, you know, without overwhelming the client, but the more I sort of took an S&C approach with individuals, the more buying I got.

So the more of a professional strength and conditioning, real bringing expertise, you know, training like an athlete doing performance based warmups, including plyometrics, doing barbell lifts, stuff like that. Things that people at the time, even 10 years ago, it wasn’t as common, crossfit was getting bigger. So that was opening people’s eyes to the barbell a little bit more. I realized that the gym industry was just growing and growing and growing and people want to do more and more and at the time when I left the military, OCR was a big thing so obstacle course racing was blowing up.

So people often drink and have a good time through the 20s and then they hit that sort of into their 30s, maybe start having kids and they start going, I’m going to run a half marathon. I’m going to run a marathon, start getting fit again. Right. And what that shifted into was obstacle course racing, things like spa and tough mudder. And then at the same time, cross fits or blow up. And that was essentially fitness racing. And it can involve anything. However, it’s very much focused towards Olympic weightlifting and gymnastic type movements.

So realistically, it’s quite specialist. So if you take the average person that let’s say has the best VO2 max in the world, the best muscular endurance, incredibly strong. But if you just throw them into the average crossfit competition without technical proficiency, they’re going to struggle if it’s got like ring dips or muscle ups or, you know, or handstand so it’s quite a technical thing there’s even though it can involve anything and you can regress everything there is a sort of barrier to cross with and now the gym industry is growing and growing and what you know in the UK from what I see is all the youth now are just going to gyms and very much that’s a static base they want to build muscles they muscles.

They want to look better. They want to spend time with the mates. But people are leaning into the fitness industry. You know, it’s one of the biggest things on Instagram, social media. Now, what Hyrocs did was they essentially did what CrossFit could have done with some of their competitions and they just went like, here is the race. It doesn’t change. And it’s what I coined as conventional fitness racing. So it’s not specialist, it’s just you could take anyone off the street and just say, all you’ve got to do is get fit enough.

There’s not any real technical barre to entry. And another key component is there’s not a major strength barre to entry. At the end of the day, if something’s too heavy, you can’t do it. If something feels a bit light, you just go faster. Right. So there’s got to be some level of strength by it. Otherwise you’d be using no weights, but it can’t be so high that it’s like CrossFit where it’s 120 kilo clean and jerk. So that’s what high rocks did. And Birmingham in the UK sold 5,000 tickets in a matter of minutes. Yeah.

And it’s blowing up worldwide. Like in the UK now, unless you’re affiliate, Jim, you can get on the race. It’s near impossible to book on a high rocks. And it’s going to be the same around the world. You’ve also got deck of fit, which is Spartans version of it, which is 10 exercises. Now, what I thought was, I’ve always thought as an S and C coach or just a gym owner, when someone has really good 5k time and then is also quite strong they’re a bit of a beast and there’s a machine right so what gave me the idea was one of the most infamous workouts to develop the 5k time is 12 times 400 and it just so happened the park opposite my gym has a 400 meter loop point so I So I was like, oh, you could do 1200s in between each 400.

You could do an exercise which I want to be laborsome. So I’ll call them labors, like the 12 labors or Hercules. And I thought, I don’t want them to include barbells. I don’t want to include a, I don’t want any specialist equipment. It’s going to be the most accessible training system in the world. It’s not just body weight, it can be progressively loaded. So it’s body weight exercises, dumbbell exercises, kettlebell and weight plate. That’s all the equipment it uses. So it’s, it’s kettlebell farms, carry, kettlebell, deadlift, dumbbell, lunge, dumbbell snatch, burke, broad jump, kettlebell, goblet squat, plate front carry, dumbbell push press, back roll, plate clean and press, plate overhead carry and dumbbell devil press.

So that’s the 12 exercises. So you’re doing, and it’s all off a duodecimal, like a dozen or system where everything’s like 60 reps, 240 meters, 120 meters. So that absolutely labor some. So what happens is, so I thought at that point, I was like, great event for the gym, then I then I thought well actually let’s get to an athletics track. I’m lucky to live in a town in the UK that has an athletics track. So I was like this is perfect. Athletics tracks are £1,000,000 stadiums and they’re fairly cheap to hire because they’re there for athletics clubs and sports and schools.

Right? So then you get in a £1,000,000 facility for a fraction of the cost of any of a facility like it. So we’ve got a timing company that basically you run a loop of the track, it gets the chip times that 400. You cross into the centre, you do the labour and there’s 12 labour lanes all set up. So you run a 400, do the farmers carried, run a 400, do 60 deadly, do a 400, do 60 meters of walking lunges, do a 400, do 60 cowbell, dumbbell snatch. And it’s all bed simple, all moderate weight, but it’s like one of the hardest things you’ll ever do.

You know, the fittest in the world doing around 40 minutes. If you fit, if you get under an hour, really the slower times are getting up towards two hours. So it’s nothing like running a marathon or anything. You’re not going for four or five six hours Here even if you’re not very fit you you’re getting it under two hours But to get under that hour mark you’ve got to be a bit of the machine. Yeah, so that was a sort of whole and The creation of the race I launched it and at the start of this year really really. I wrote a whole training manual on it, published it.

The first race started to sell out and then all of a sudden it just sold out. I thought, right, I’ll release another race, 400 tickets, put it online, sold out in less than a day. And then now we’re deciding that we’re going to go to a big stadium in London next year. We’re going to go to a stadium in Scotland and then we’re just going to build them around the UK and then hopefully be able to take the race international. Yeah, awesome. How good is that? I love it. And the biggest thing that I love about that all in all is just the accessibility factor.

We talk about the barriers to entry for fitness and you nailed it on the head straight away. The problem with CrossFit, there’s a lot of things that CrossFit do really and and snatch and all of these things that are just so restrictive. And you hear the stories about people that go to CrossFit because they like that competitive factor of it. They want to be able to go and compete and have a time that they can measure themselves against. But God, if you can’t, if you can’t do the Olympic lift right now, you have to spend the time and the money to go and learn it.

It becomes a bit of a barrier versus this is just, hey, everybody can do a kettlebell carry, everybody can do a kettlebell swing as well. It doesn’t take too much to learn. Do a couple of PT sessions, a couple of classes if you have to, but then yeah, you’re in, you can do it, can set your time and go and do everything you need to to break it upon the next one. So yeah, that’s awesome, isn’t it? It’s a really cool concept that’s starting to come to life and even arguably more accessible than HiRox and at least it sounds like you can get a ticket or at least for a couple more minutes.

Yeah, so it’s like more accessible because I would say, you know, in terms of if you were a gym to do a HiRox, you have to have a skier, you have to have a row machine, it’s one of them cost over a thousand pounds in the UK. You’ve got to have sleds, you know, so you’ve got to have a sled pool, you’ve got to have a sled push, it’s got to have a row machine. It’s one of them cost over a thousand pounds in the UK. You’ve got to have sleds. So you’ve got to have a sled pool. You’ve got to have a sled push. It’s got to have a artificial grass to push that on.

And then the rest is quite sort of obviously a war ball and a target is another thing. And sandbagging and kettlebells, which are very accessible. So straight away in deck or even less. So decker, you’ve got to have a tank, which is like a sled on wheels. They cost about three grand in the UK. And for the deadly dozen, you could have a set of kettlebells and do everything with it because you could gobble it, it’s got the kettlebell, you can carry it. You could even do the push press with kettlebells. You could do the overhead carry with the kettlebells.

And you could do the majority of the workout and with a set of dumbbells, you know, obviously it’s better if you have a weight plate dumbbells and kettlebells. But yeah, it is by far out of races that use external loading like as in resistance. It’s the most accessible race in the world and the most accessible training system. And also all of the equipment that’s needed to host four or 500 people, which is what our events are, can fit in one van. So one single van. So if you imagine what like higher ups or decor of any of the other big events or an OCR event, usually it’s trucks of equipment.

And for OCR, it’s usually spend a week or two, send up. I can set up in two hours. And all of it fits in one van. Obviously Obviously we have like a trailer and another van because we’ve got t-shirts, we’ve got gazebos and stuff like that. And we’ve got loads of flags. You know, it’s more about event branding. Just basically all the equipment, if it was a free ton of van, like a big van, you fit all in one. So in terms of accessibility, you could have vans going around all around the UK, all around Europe, Australia, America, go into different tracks.

Every single track is the same because it’s 400-meter track. So it’s already south, or you’ve got to do place down cones, place down the flags, set the equipment up as in just moving kettlebells and dumbbells. For almost 500 people, we’re talking less than 3000 kilos of equipment, which isn’t a huge amount of equipment when you think about it. So in terms of accessibility and the ability for it to scale, it’s huge. – That is awesome. I think it’s gonna be a big concept. Jay, I think it’s gonna be quite a good month.

– Oh, okay. – The only thing that you’re at it here and score is the or the mercy of is the weather. And that’s about it. But I reckon it’ll be a bit of fun. Yes. Big wet conditions anyway. Yeah. Well, come rain or shine. It’s on on the first one. It rained in the morning. It was red hot, red hot for UK standards in the in the afternoon. And yeah, just get slippier because the bronze deadly doesn’t, you know, so if it’s raining it’s raining. It’s not right you’re gonna shrink you know, you’re not water you know skins waterproof it’s It’s you’re absolutely fine.

So yeah the equipment’s gonna be a little bit more slippy, but first event as well we had zero injuries, you know, and we were expecting more ankle sprains were expecting more sort of finger sprains, like people sort of dropping stuff on the top, whatever it was. And there was zero, not even one. The only thing we had was someone cramping. And obviously injuries can happen, but like for us, it’s like we’ve got a very low risk event. You’re running around in athletics track. You’re then doing basic moderate weight, you know, for most people standard kettlebell, dumbbell and weight plate exercises, you know, walking munges on grass.

So the risk of the event is incredibly low, the technicality is low. And yet obviously you do 12 times 400 as fast as you can with 60 rep goblet squats, 120 meters of bare crawl. You’re going to be absolutely, you know, hanging out is difficult. Yeah. Yeah. That’s that general physical preparation element, isn’t it? The GP pay, you know, you can be incredibly specifically fit for something like Australian rules football over here, which are very fit people. But then you go and do one of these and I reckon even that be blowing in fatigue for a couple of days afterwards, that general physical preparation factor is probably the biggest K across this sort of thing.

Yeah. Well, it’s something we want to push actually, which, because we think the deadly doesn’t lends itself to like, say, rugby preseason, stuff like that, where obviously with athletes, so when we work with combat athletes, one of the things is you wouldn’t want to hammer them on circuits because they’re weight cutting. You want to be very precise with if they’re doing lots of sparring. Athletes, as an S&C coach, as you’ll know, it’s always like, don’t do harm essentially. What can you do to put the chair on top?

What can you do to enhance their sports performance, not like have a massive strength bias and looks get as strong and as fit as we can. It’s like, right, what can I do to provide value? And so for a lot of sports, you wouldn’t necessarily want to have someone for a load of circuit training. You want to be very precise, like quantifiable in speed development, strength development, stuff like that. You don’t want, you know, necessarily just going for maximum dosage of exercise. It’s like, sometimes it’s almost like minimum effective doses, isn’t it?

But one of the beauties of deadly dozen is, especially in the off season, all the pre-season of sports are quite hard, like Australian rules football, like, you know, rugby, even some combat sports athletes in the off season. What we’re planning on doing is basically going, who, what sport, what even profession, you know, even like army, navy, airfalls, firefighters, police officers, what sport produces or profession produces the deadliest athletes. So it’s taken like football or soccer players, rugby players, you know, league, union, and going, right, try the deadly dozen.

Obviously this is often more so going to be like amateur athletes that are just wanting to be fit as well. But because of the low technicality of it and the low injury risk, you can take a load of rugby players and go, well, are you fitting on footballers on this fitness race? And that’s some of that’s quite a cool idea we’re developing and that because we get all the time and we get all the data so we can see where athletes are falling short and where they’re doing better. And the aim is to try and sort of have the deadly dozen sort of ultimate test of fitness.

Very simple mix of, because to me, I think where people go wrong when they want to test fitness is what you do is an S and C coach, which is the right way is you you’d have like, for example, a strength test where you’re establishing maximum strength, you might have a speed test to establish speed, you’ll have like maybe a maximum aerobic speed test to establish that sort of aerobic power, and then you can profile the athlete. So what a lot of people think is, if you want a fitness race, you almost need a strength zone.

If you want to establish the fittest athlete in the world, you need a strength zone, you need an endurance zone, you need this. But actually I find that for enjoyment’s sake and to turn it into a real race is you need a race like the deadly dozen, which is pretty much focused on my aerobic power and muscular endurance. But the end of the day to be the bedrock of aerobic power is aerobic aerobic capacity like an aerobic base. So zone two training developing that aerobic base. The bedrock of or the foundation of muscle endurance is muscular strength.

So that athlete that is stronger and spends more time doing strength in the gym is going to be, it’s going to lend itself to better muscle endurance. So in terms of, although we’re not testing the maximum capacities of different performance qualities, ultimately the most well-rounded individual is going to be good at a deadly dozen. I think a deadly dozen is, if you were to say to me, create an Olympic race in the sport of fitness racing that provides the fittest athlete without having a really high strength bias, because that’s where I think the whole gym industry is lending to strength big time and become specialists in that.

And then you have the other side, which is like the endurance guys. And then you had this new wave of people call themselves hybrid that do like marathons, but also do power lifting, even though fitness is hybrid’s almost like a redundant term because fitness should be everything. And now fitness racing is coming in and going, we’re now a sport and you’ve got different styles of fitness racing the CrossFit spin on it. You’ve got the specialist sort of fitness races that are more technical, but the conventional ones like mine, I see it like decker.

You’ve got ones that create zones where they go right. You’re going to work up to a free rep max deadlift and then a neck zone, you’re gonna do a 10k run. But for me, what really sells is the higher ox model, which is you start here, you do a load of runs and exercises in between and you finish it. There’s no zones, there’s no rest periods, there’s nothing like that. And it’s also quite interesting as a sport fitness racing, because when you actually look at what the fitness races as athletes are doing, they’re very much doing a strength and conditioning program where they build a massive base of zone two.

They do lots of type focused strength training. They actually paradise very well. And then they incorporate the circuit training. And I actually think sometimes they take too much of a general approach and forget that circuit training is almost their sport specific training and maybe they could do more of it than they think. But that’s sort of debatable. Yeah, exactly. That’s right. I think there’s a lot of wins out of this new fitness training concept that’s come on in terms of especially for strength and conditioning.

I think people are starting and more commonly are starting to recognize the C in S&C, that conditioning phase. Even, you know, over, it’s across the world, but in Melbourne and Australia, especially things just like running have absolutely blown up. And I’m sure there’ll be studies on it in the years to come, which explain the reasoning why, whether it is just the fact that COVID was a bit of an eye opener to even having the time to go out and train something like running, because nine to five jobs are very taxing.

And then people come home to their family and maybe they forget about it. And the fact that strength can be a little bit less fatiguing is perhaps more enjoyable. I’m not so sure of it. I’m sure we’ll find the reasons out with years to come, but it is good to see that we are getting more of that sea back out in there again with the conditioning piece. So I guess the one question that I’d love to know about fitness racing and maybe it’s just my naivety in the setting so far, but people might have the same question is how is it necessarily judged?

Do you have just a score that you come out with with time or is it, you know, relative to sort of classes based on body weight or sex or what exactly, what exactly is the outcome of the race? Is it that you just take your time and then you try and beat that next time and there’s no real distinguishing between someone who’s 100 kilos and maybe 60 kilos or male or female? Yes, so there’s ultimate time, but then most races will have categories, obviously you’ll have sex categories, so male and female, and then they’ll usually have age categories, either 10 year increments or five years.

So usually it’s 18 to 29, and then it’s five, every five years, or every 10 years that. And male and female usually races will have like, they might have a solo categories and individual pairs. And then you could have same sex pairs and mixed pairs. And then you might have relay, which is like four, man teams or a mixed relay or three, three person teams. And yeah, so there’s age categories and sex categories. But there’s the main thing for like races like mine is timing. And then obviously throughout the race, and every station that you do, every run, every station.

And the way I see it, it’s like any sport that things slip through the net. So if a judge doesn’t see that someone’s not quite parallel or someone know what on bad judging and someone doesn’t do as many reps as they should, that sport in my eyes, it’s the variable. So I believe that fitness racing is going to be like the biggest participation sport in the world. But I don’t think it’ll be the most watched because there’s not enough variables. It’s not exciting. If it’s never going to be like rugby or football, it’s just not.

But in terms of participation, because actually when you look at the studies, most kids, a lot of kids, this was a horrible study that a lot of kids stop enjoying sport at 12, which is when it becomes more serious and competitive. Most adults don’t continue with sport, right? But what they do continue with what you’re seeing is going through the roof is gym and the generations coming through are taking that to a whole new level. Going back to what you were saying earlier, the reason it’s just in the zeitgeist now that it’s we’re so culturally and socially aware that you need to be fit and healthy and strong when also social media creates an image that you want to be, which can also have negative points to it.

But it’s completely within the zeitgeist fitness. And I don’t know what it’s like in Australia, like smoking in the UK now. I almost look at when the smoke, I smoke and I’m like oh you don’t see that much anymore I actually think it’ll be similar with drinking in years to come I think actually a lot of the bins drinking culture in the UK and stuff will fade a little bit and I think what you’re going to see is people do more remote working and hopefully have more leisure time I think you’re going to get a lot more lifestyle design I think people are going to lean heart I think COVID is a massive part of it but I think as we go more and more online I think people’re going to get a lot more lifestyle design.

I think people are going to lean hard. I think COVID is a massive part of it. But I think as we go more and more online, I think people are going to lean harder and harder into like leisure time in the gym, walking, running, doing marathons, like physically active past times. And fitness racing just turns the gym into a sport. And the way I see it is just treat it like a sport where you have judges and you have a final time. And then usually what they do is they have the other wards, my race, we don’t even do podiums.

So every athlete gets a medal and then they get a race certificate with a breakdown of all the metrics. We’re designing an app that can then do enhanced data. We don’t even do paradigms. What we do is the top 12 top six men, top six women are the deadly dozen. They get sent a specialist patch in the post. So it just means you could just rock up at the track an hour before your wave time. Do the race and do one if you want to or you can have a beer off some food afterwards. So we want to have it like really accessible in every single way.

Yeah, I like the cultural piece of it. You might have nailed that, Jay. Very cool. Okay, fantastic. So that’s the deadly dozen for anyone who’s interested. com is the website. Yeah, so that’s the Academy website. uk, which I will be chasing. I will be adding it to deadly does not com, but at the moment, it’s just fly-down. I guess coming into more of your setting, Jason, do you, and this is probably after all the talking that we’ve had is a bit of a silly question, but is there a bit of a niche that you work on when it comes into your gym setting?

Do you have a particular kind of clientele who you do draw to you, or is it more of very much that general population, general goal, just looking to access a bit of strength and conditioning and some general fitness. So yeah, so I always say to like my students that although you adapt what you do to your clients goals, obviously, that you’re going to have a style and an aura around you that will attract certain clients and you actually in all the coaches in my gym, you can see the type of clients that they attract because of just the mannerisms, the personality, the way they train.

Even though they’re all like might be focusing on barbell training, you attract a certain person. So because when I left the athlete, when I left the army, my tagline was bringing strength conditions to the masses. It was like train like an athlete. These were the terms I was using. I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like one famous.

And so everyone was like, you call yourself personal trainer, don’t call yourself an SC coach. And I was sort of like just adamant that it was. So I think that what that did was it attracted people that were definitely a little bit more serious about training, but like, or were at a general commercial gym, nothing normal commercial gyms, but basically felt like they weren’t trained hard enough needed someone to coach them. So it was sort of like what we get, my gym’s called five-ness fitness because it was a strength speed, stamina, superman skill.

We sort of attracted people that have sort of trained a bit and then were like, you know what, I want to go to the next level. And what I did with my gym is I wanted to create a gym that was almost a model that was franchisable, even though I’ve got no intention of franchising. And I did when I first set up a form, I was going to take over the world, but I was just naivety and naive optimism. So I have two types of classes, which are strength training classes, which are like barbell training, free weight training, where you can do Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, bodybuilding, whatever is specific to your needs and goals.

We’ll adapt the session to you. So there’s a big whiteboard with loads of different programming. We just adapt it as the people that come to the classes. And then the other class is called conditioning. And that’s just any form of, you know, circuit based work, sled, skiddy, ergsy, unhecked training, who want to do for a conditioning class. So because a conditioning class is the easiest way to train large groups of people often is like the guitar and in high intensity interval training. the definitely attract like a slightly more motivated, but you’d be surprised how people that you’d see on the street and go, that’s just a normal middle age woman, and not necessarily looks very fit.

How many of them people are absolute machines? Normal people, the ones that have the aptitude for it, are absolute machines. If you were to walk in a conditioning class at my places, 40, 50, 60 year old men and women of all different shapes and sizes, but we’re important to the paces. And so yeah, that’s when we attract and then obviously I get a lot of people that are like skiers, fighters, and others, like sometimes football players, sometimes, you know, rugby players, we get a lot of people like that from amateur to sort of low level professional levels.

Yeah. Um, yeah, mostly general pop. Yep. That’s right. There is an absolute machines out there. Um, and it’s incredible. You wouldn’t guess it, you know, especially early days of university when you’re sort of learning a little bit about the scene and whatnot. ” And it’s sort of that social media perception, I guess. But then when you’re actually out there and you’re working in it, the best people are sort of those 30, 40, 50-year-olds who just come in every single day. They do it as hard as they can. They’ll do anything you tell them so.

And sometimes I go, all right, let’s really say how much we can test them. Yeah, no, there’s some, some mental people out there and they often have the best stories. I think the best thing about being a coach is often, I say, is what you learn off your clients rather than sort of what you’re teaching them. There are some very, very cool people who can really shape your own life and perception if you are happy to listen to them. That’s for sure. So going back, Jason, to early on when you’re talking about the work that you’ve done over in the British Army.

So I guess from my perspective, in some of the work that I’ve done out at sporting clubs and even schools as well, where you’re writing these programs and delivering these programs and settings where it is that the people who are participating in it are forced to be there. They’re not just doing it out of their own leisure, which obviously would have been something that you’ve dealt with over in the army as well. People are obviously not just there because they want to be there. They are doing it because it’s part of the regime that they have to tick it off on their daily and weekly schedule.

But I found in my experience that especially from even just a sporting setting, although people necessarily want to be there, they didn’t sign up to go into the gym. They signed up so they could play their sport. There’s not often, but sometimes there’s a bit of a culture and perception out there where the buy-in perhaps gets a little bit limited. It’s not quite that same culture that you have in the gym setting where people rock up on that daily weekly basis and they go, “Yup, this is my 45, this is my 60 minutes that I’m here for.

” Did you notice that maybe in some of your own work where you were working in those settings like the British Army with perhaps that buy-in wasn’t as much as it is when you get into the gym? Oh, yeah, absolutely. So there’s a Top third, middle third and bottom third and often you know an interesting thing that I saw anecdotally was the bottom third, the people that weren’t performing as well, you know, with getting rank and stuff like that, were the less fit people in general, if I’m honest, like they were the ones that we saw as like sometimes useless, like to be completely honest, you were just like this guy.

And also I found them, they were the people that you know, the people that give you the most stick when it comes to PT and they don’t want to do it. We’re also the people that give you the hardest time when you’re a young red arse, as you called, and when you’re new and when you’ve got ginger hair and you’re skinny little ginger kid that’s just rocking up to battalion. All the people that give me the hardest time to start before they realized, you know, I was all up at Oxing, I was very fit and I was an alright soldier, you know, they were the ones that were also the ones that were unfit.

They were the ones that weren’t excelling, you know, that weren’t promoting really fast, you know, potentially going off to do, you know, courses and special forces, whatever it may be, you know, the guys that were really good were the ones that were excelling and they were the usually the ones that were more supportive and stuff like that. But literally you’d find you’d get a large contingency of folk, especially in line infantry less so if you join you know you know sir units but you’d get a lot of people that just hated physical training you know and they and they didn’t want to do any of it.

And they absolutely would avoid it all cost fake injuries, stuff like that. And it wasn’t particularly hard work because you’re just, it was, it became part of the banter really. You’d have sort of these, you’d call them, you know, in the military in all honesty, it would, you’d never do it in Sivi Street, because it’d just be, you know, unspeakable to speak to people in the way they did you know you’d call up people like fat knackers or this and that you’d call up a bit of an infantry call them everything under the sun you know but it was banter and so it was never that way the hardest thing I’ve experienced is when going to like youth football clubs and sometimes like the coach really wanted them to have like an S&C session, you know, or a pitch based S&C session, you’d go down and they would just be like, no real buying, like they just didn’t really care.

And that’s the hardest thing when it’s sometimes youth athletes that don’t have the buying. And sometimes, especially if it was like an academy squad that were a little bit cocky because they thought they were better than they are and sometimes it’s certain sports like when I’ve worked in cricket a couple of times where because the cricket players like some of the fast bowlers like a lot of in because I do a lot of work with you know puts stuff out into India and there’s a lot of fast bowlers that ask them for programming so there they get a lot of injuries and they’re really keen on like very specialized S&C.

But a lot of the other cricket players are just like, I don’t need this. You know and a lot of golfers for example are migrant to S&C because of like tagwoods but then others are just not. So some sports that aren’t as although there’s massive physicality to them they’re’re also not, you know, it’s not like football or rugby, it’s not like a combat sport. And what I have experienced in the earlier days of combat sports, there was very much a aversion to stream training and stuff like that. But that was very much the old school.

And nowadays, most combat sports athletes, like when I look at what Paul’s doing with the athlete factory with all the you know UFC fighters and stuff they’re all massive massive buying to S&C. But as I remember when I was working in you know going and visiting some boxing gyms like they were just it was just that very much old school that I’m going to develop muscle that’s going to make me slow. But that’s sort of faded away these days. Most good athletes are fairly aware that that’s not an issue. Yeah, correct. Definitely.

I think that’s a very true point. I think we’re starting to say maybe it is the good part of social media that’s starting to come through. And those perceptions are far more accessible and start to break down some of those really outdated opinions. And I guess the difference between some of those settings to coming to just these you know general population strength and conditioning gyms that we’re both a part of is a very different sort of culture, isn’t it? You know the people who are coming here, although they may not always act like it, they’re doing this because they want to be here, they’re doing this because they see the benefit in it.

And it’s crazy how someone like, you mentioned before some of these higher level football soccer teams, they can be having this perception of, oh, we just got strengthening conditioning. I’ll half-ass this a little bit. I won’t squeeze the juice out of it. But then we go back to before we’re talking about some of these 30, 40, 50 year old weapons who were in these gym settings who were absolutely nailing it. Maybe they’re a little bit past their ability to go and put a ball in the back of the net. But it’s interesting how these sort of cultures exist between those two very big planes of strength and conditioning, isn’t it?

Yeah. And I think what’s difficult is that ultimately, genetics play a huge role in athletics and stuff like you’re never going to be at the top unless you’ve won the genetic lottery. And a lot of these guys like at the end of the day, there is that element that fundamentally first and foremost playing your sport is what’s going to make you good. And there’s going to be guys that don’t have to do anything else and they’ll still be the best. And it’s just the way it is. And that’s not helpful sometimes at the highest levels.

But what I always say to the the the mid ground guys is is that, you know, same bolts, you know, happens are different to you. Or you know, he’s born, he’s a he’s a whole different level, but especially at mid-level or even sort of lower levels. Your main emphasis is the technical development and that’s what you’re going to really improve. But then you’ve got your performance and you’ve got tactical as well and that’s an area you’ve got to put on the performance side. You’ve got to squeeze everything you can because there’s only so far your talent’s going to take you.

So the best thing you can do is get in gym and work these areas that are just massive. So if you get really, really fit, that’s going to take you a lot further because your talent, your skills only going so far and your genetics are only going so far. So it’s like if you can spend, I think it’s more important that a lot further because you’re talent, your skills only going so far and your genetics are only going so far. So it’s like, if you can spend, I think it’s more important at the lower to mid levels than it is at the elite levels because the elite levels, like that we’re talking like very, very elite.

They are freaks most of the time. To be honest, like people, when people say, Oh, no, like hard work beats. When people have all the genetics and all the talent, like you say in Bolt, if he never did any S and C and probably never sprinted, he’d still beat 99% of the world at sprinting. And it’s so these these top level guys, some of them can get away with not doing it. There was that one with the NFL guy that he’s built like a brick shittles and all he does is eat sweets. And it’s like, some of these guys, they’re free.

Now at the lower levels, unfortunately, you don’t have the Achilles tendons that are like steel rods. And you do have to do more plyometrics. You do have to do the physical performance. And if you want to get to that, if you want to squeeze the most out of your sporting performance, you can’t just rely on your technical ability and playing the sport all the time. You have to get yourself really fit because you’ve not been born with a VO2 max of like 85. And you’re not naturally that strong. Your muscles and your tendons aren’t that springy.

So you have to get in the gym and you have to do more work. Yes, I’m elite athletes might do it this way but it’s all although you want to look at the highest levels to see what you know I think it’s a it’s a bad thing to look outliers you know you never base any reasoning on an outlier oh well that person smoked 50 a day and they live to 120 like, yeah, it doesn’t mean smoking is good for you. It’s the same with the elite level of sport. And that’s why I think that at lower to mid levels, even at high levels, they need to squeeze everything they can out of every variable.

And if you’re when it comes to this is a very easy thing to improve. It is, it’s not difficult, is it to get stronger, faster and fitter? And it can be very hard to get much, much better at a specific sport, one short, a certain level of skill. – It’s exactly right, you know, instead of, obviously you work on your strengths as much as you can and you make sure that your strengths are your strong point, bring up your weaknesses too and become a more well-rounded person for sure. You’ve got to have those attributes. So like if you’re working an office job, you can be incredibly good at one thing, but if you want to make yourself more of an asset and grab that promotion, you’ve got to be better at some of the things that maybe you’re not so good at.

It’s the same thing that applies in this sort of setting as well. So we’ll move on from that one, Jay, but I’ve got a bit of a business focus question for you. So you own a gym that’s open, I believe it’s six days a week or so, it offers five classes a day roughly. You’ve got courses for coaches, workshops, mentorships, online programs, books, and of course, you do your work in the gym as well, and it does it as well, like we talked about. And you do it because you love it, you know, because that’s what we all say.

But also too, it does seem like there’s an element of looking to diversify some of those revenue streams, and especially something that a lot of Jim owners have talked to after COVID is how do we look to actually have a lot of different revenue streams that aren’t necessarily reliant on the gym being open. Is that something that you reckon you’ve necessarily gone for? And that’s why you’ve sort of followed that path or do you have a couple of different reasons as well? Yeah, it’s fundamentally it’s I consider myself to be creative and a little bit head in the clouds and new ideas and the seritor in the juice flow when I’m doing new things.

And that’s why I’ve done lots of different projects that don’t work or books or programs and this is going to be great. And this is going to be great. What people would almost say is ADHD these days, but it’s just I like doing lots of different things. And so that’s a big driver of it. You know, I like creating new brands. It’s all within the fitness industry because I know it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s no where I’ve got talent and I’ve got knowledge and I’ve put my life into it. So it makes sense to, to lean into that.

But I think people don’t like to say that they are driven by money, but I think if you change that to financial stability or financial robustness, then people will soon start staying it. Like anyone that says that money doesn’t buy happiness has never been broke. So I agree with that term, like money doesn’t buy happiness if you’re unhappy, if you’re fundamentally unhappy, like money will literally tackle every problem in some way. And I was broke back when I left the army, I didn’t have any savings. So I was very qualified.

And I left the military with a van with some kitten and I started running bootcams at the park. And when I did my first boot camp, no one turned up and and I’ve really struggled and my vans gearbox went and I couldn’t afford to get it fixed so I sold it to the garage that was that stored my kit in a boxing gym that I knew and it was just a white collar gym. I eventually rented a room and that’s how I built up and for a good few years like I started to do well as a PT then I took over my gym that I’ve got now working 85 hours a week in the gym for 1200 pounds a month.

Wasn’t enough to even pay my bills and stuff like that. So being broke for the first few years of the gym, really struggling financially, that teaches you a lesson. That is so hard. Other than poor health, which I think health is first and foremost, financial stress is such a horrific grade card overview that I can see why it breaks people to the point of suicide. It’s not to go too dark there. I’ve never felt that way, but it is horrendous, beyond belief. it’s horrendous. And it actually sometimes grips my shit when people go, Oh, money’s not important.

I go, yeah, you’ve not been broke. Like that’s pure privilege talking. Like this is like when you’re broke is, and I mean, not all I’ve got savings, but I’ve just spent all my spends this month when you’ve literally got nothing. You’re like, Holy shit, like I’m getting overdraft. I’m creating debt constantly. I created over 10 rounds worth of debt on credit cards, because I couldn’t afford to live. I mean, it went up to over 20,000 pounds of debt, if I’m honest. And so yeah, I am incredibly driven to be financially stable for my family, especially when you have kids who realize everything’s really expensive.

And if you want to go on holidays, like even going to UK holiday here, something like Senate Parks, it’s like four or five grand. And it’s like everything’s really expensive. And I am not driven by having a Ferrari or having a mansion, but I’m absolutely driven by having financial security where I’m not relying on it. So if my tire blows up and my engine goes or my boiler goes or my roof goes, it’s not a big stress to me. And I’ve realized since I’ve started to earn more money, that things that would have stressed me no longer stress me because money sold it.

So in the early days, if I got a punch of a tire, that would have been catastrophic to me. So I’m like, I can’t force fix for what we’re going to do. Whereas now it’s like, I’ve got a punch. I can even pay over people to do stuff for me now. You know, not that I’m at any incredible level of wealth, but I do have PAs now. I have people that work for me. And I’ll be honest, like you hear on podcasts all the time where people go like, oh yeah, like it doesn’t, it has had a profoundly positive impact on my life, getting to a point where I’m not worrying about money on a daily basis.

It’s had a profoundly positive impact. And it’s incredibly important for me to have that financial stability. It’s also been profound on my business because I’ve been able to reinvest and because I’ve been able to pay over people to do stuff, it’s allowed me to be more of a visionary, which then allows me to be more creative. So yeah, absolutely that it’s, you know, I went quite around about way of explaining that, but it’s incredibly important to me and anyone that’s sort of shy to say that, I think rephrase it from saying, “Oh yeah, I’m driven by Thank you for sharing that, Jay.

That’s a really good insight. But for anyone who’s ever, you know, worried about, is it worth diversifying, you know, the business that they do have, I think look to that question and maybe you might be able to get a bit of the answer for yourself for sure. But when you’re talking about Jason having kids, obviously you’ve got three kids. Is that correct? Yeah. How old are your kids? Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Nine, three and two. Yeah. Okay, cool. So that definitely keep you busy across a couple of different things.

I don’t have kids myself, but you know, you work enough in this industry and you mean enough people who do get kids. You feel like you can probably a little bit part of their lives as well to an extent and you get exhausted by that. So I can imagine, you know, the fact, Jason, that you’re obviously having this conversation later into the evening over there, which as you mentioned beforehand is when you do get a bit of a break, but then obviously you’ve got the operational sense that you’re working with across the day as well.

You’ve got your family. How do you manage all of those different pieces of the pie? Again, the answer can’t be because you love it because that’s too simple. So what I do is basically at the start, I did just work, you know, incredible. I was in the gym and my wife had to sort of essentially put up with that. And I was in the gym all the time. And then what I had to do was I had to make, so it was 85 hours a week in the gym. And then I sort of had to set goals where I said, right, what what is going to happen? I’ve got to get down to essentially a 40 hour week in the gym.

And the way I got round that was doing the long days. So when I’m in the gym, I’m on a Monday, I’m there for 40 hours. And the Tuesday I’m not in the gym, the Wednesday I’m in for 40 hours. And it, it, what I realized is the mentality I took to business was you’ll always basically go, um, if you say I’ll do it in a year or next year, I’ll do it. It’ll just be the year after the year after the year. Sometimes once you get to a certain point in business, you have to have a hard it’s easier. It’s not just about saying no to the things being able to say no to the things you don’t want to do what’s really hard is saying no to the things that you do want to do or the money that’s coming in.

So clients and stuff. So I got to the point where I realized right how am I going to organize a week where I can be in the gym 40 hours. But I can also be at home with the kids and the wife and be there with my family. So I just went right, I can’t work Tuesday, Thursday, more. I’m going to finish at four o’clock on a Friday. I’ll do half a day on a Saturday. Jim’s got to be closed on the Sunday gym. Someday was because I was working 85 hours a week. Someday was always the day off. That was like no matter what, I’m not going to open that day and I’ll lose members as a result of it or potential members.

And so the problem is with businesses is the catch 22 is like, you’ve got to make enough money to have other people do stuff. And, but then it’s like that valley of like getting to that point where the cash flow. So, and not people always say, well, you employees should be making your money, but they don’t always make money. Cause in a lot businesses, you just need time back. And that employee isn’t that they’re an asset, but they’re an asset for what they’re giving you is time. They’re not giving you, they’re not driving more sales around and finish some businesses there.

And that’s what people will always tell you about employing people. But in a lot of industries, like you’re just hiring someone to take over the work that you would have been doing. And it’s not driving any more revenue into it. So it’s difficult. But you’ve got to be able to get to a point where you make that sacrifice and you’re just hiring someone to take over the work that you would have been doing. And it’s not driving any more revenue into it. So it’s difficult, but you’ve got to be able to get to a point where you make that sacrifice and you’re just getting your time back.

And that’s really important. You’ve got to be disciplined because you could always say, Oh, I can earn an extra few hundred quid. I can, I can do more. So that’s what I did. It just, I got to the point where I just had to and luckily in the fitness industry, if you’ve got a gym, you can sort of say to people, look, you give me this amount of time for free use of the gym, for example. And that’s fortunate. So that’s what I did. And basically, in all honesty, where I built the rest of the businesses and wrote the books was I just did it in the evening.

And what I did was, as you can see, this is my office now. In every place I’ve been, I’ve created a space that I enjoyed being and and then I did work that it is as simple as that that I enjoyed it and I was just it was just not on the go table I’ve just seen it as right I’ve got a I’ve got a work and I’ve got to choose things that I enjoy doing and and just work hard at them in the evenings and I’ve thought if I want you know I just stood by by like it takes 10 years to be an overnight success, put the work in now and just works and works and works.

And basically I built myself in the evenings. It was long hours in the gym and I’m working the evenings. And one thing I would say, this goes back to the money one as well is unfortunately, I think we live in a time where information is very cheap. So a lot of my early stuff books, I sell about 10 books a day online, you know, on Amazon and stuff, but information comes cheap now in the age of the internet. And I think what the problem with the fitness industry is people will sell you that you can do producing ebook, producer course and you’ll make millions.

And it’s like really difficult. And I produced a muscle manual in the first week it got 20,000 downloads it was free but realistically the conversions weren’t as high I’ve got over 100,000 followers on on Instagram and people have this perception that you’re making hundreds of thousands of pounds like people are buying these pro you know all these influencers will say and making you know thousands of pounds a month off this one program I I’m like, well, I’m gonna be like 20 or 30 books, dozens of programs. And I’m not making that much.

And you’ve not got that big of a following. And then when you do the math for it. So I think it’s key to understand one piece of advice is money is a metric of people valuing what we do. It’s all well and good someone downloading some of three and saying it’s brilliant. I will pay a tenor for it. That’s a real metric. But I do think we live in a time where we live in a time where actually doing something for someone like literally solving a problem, not just giving them information, like facilitating something like that’s why my race has been much more successful than the online core side and the academy side where I’m actually qualifying people is more successful than just selling like for example, well the books do all right now because I’ve done a lot of them.

And so I would say that one of the key things to do where I went wrong because I worked at the, I was working like 100 hours a week every week and where I went wrong is putting too much time into things that weren’t rolling the ball forwards that weren’t really working. Sometimes you’ve got to be a little bit more ruthless and be like, is this working? Yes, you can put time into everything. And my mentality was like throwing a shit at the wall so it’s going to stick. And maybe it was just trial and error and I was lucky with deadly dozen.

But really you’ve got to be quite ruthless with what you do, like concentrate on what’s really worthwhile and do it really well. And then just keep improving that thing. But I also think that there’s, I don’t know, a bit all over the place that won’t, but I also think there’s a lot of gurus that tell you that you can’t, you know, you can do this and they’ve already achieved that success. And I think in the early days, you’ve just got to, if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you’ve got to work your ass off for a few years.

You’ve got to work really hard. No matter what they tell you about this many hours a week and shit, like work really hard. So you start getting traction. And if you don’t get traction, you can’t work hard anymore than give up and do something else. And if you do start getting traction, then is when you go hyper focus, you start to specialize and you start to get people in that are talented, that are better than you, not the whole picture. Because if you’re the personal brand and you’re good at what you do, you’re the whole picture, you’re the visionary, if you’re an entrepreneur.

So it’s like then bringing specialists that like I’ve got people that are better at spreadsheets and really good at organizing people. I’ve got people that are really good at emailing people and stuff, find people that are hyper specialised and good at what they do and slowly bring them in contracting to take time off you so you can really focus on taking that thing that’s started to get traction because it’s got to have a proof of concept. In the fitness industry, we all want to be entrepreneurial with like clothing brand online courses online personal trainer, but it’s like you’ve got to work really really hard and try and get traction, but if it’s not getting traction the concepts not working.

And like I say, you can just pile in more marketing to it, but you’ve got to be a little bit ruthless and really think about where there’s a gap in the market because I think a lot of people in this trade, in the fitness industry see all the adverts where it’s like a guy’s still in front of a Ferrari and telling them that if they start doing online coaching, they’re going to be a millionaire. And it’s like, I think there’s a bit more to it than that. I think there might be a little bit more to it, Jason, but thank you.

That’s absolutely awesome insight on that sort of question. So thank you. It was a roundabout way that it was really good listening. So thank you to that. I’ll shoot to you to finish off with a couple of quick fire questions. So you’ve got one training quality that you can train for the rest of your life, Jason. What is it? If I was an athlete and if I was giving it to an athlete, so I’ll answer it two ways. If I was giving it to an athlete, it’d be sprinting. So it’d just be sprint because it’s going to make them faster.

It’s going to make them stronger. And pretty much if you sprint, you’re going to get athletic for myself, which is probably what most people wouldn’t answer. It’d be muscular endurance because like with just strength, I’m not developing enough cardio vascular fitness and with just cardio, I’m not developing enough strength. At least with muscular endurance, I will build strength because I’ll be exerting on muscles and I will build my energy systems. And in terms of like functionality, like what I’ve seen in the gym, it’s not like an S&C approach, you know, I think most S&C coaches would never say that.

But it’s like in terms of like functionality, like it’s just labor some work, high rep ranges of exercises like goblet squats and walking lunges. That’s what develops a powerhouse. That’s what develops like a fundamentally useful person. And I think ultimately it’s the most, for me, it’s the most enjoyable form of training, which is, you know, a variety of different exercises performed at moderate to high weight, moderate weights for higher rep ranges. And I just think it creates a very healthy, low injury risk, well-rounded individual.

If it was sports performance, it would be sprinting. But I wouldn’t pick it for myself because probably get too many hamstring injuries. And, you know, I think the injury risk is higher, whereas when I do musically endurance work, I’m never injured, you know, because it’s too varied. Like I get more injuries from stress, you know, strength is a backbone of mechanical strength reduces injury because how much force can a tissue tolerate before it snaps will make it stronger. And, but actually when I push strength harder, that’s when I get little niggles and never get niggles from muscular endurance body but physicathletes never getting niggles.

It’s the guys that are pushing it to an extreme. Right. You know, the thing that people probably miss a little bit with the high, like if we’re really talking about muscular strength, the really high end of it is its bloody fatigue, especially if you’re actually announcing that with some, you know, some big running kilometers throughout the week with some zone two, which is very much what I do a lot of myself. So when I come off the back of doing, you know, maybe my heavy safety bar squats where I’m looking for a big range of motion and testing that strength, then it might ever be a bit of an isometric hold in the bottom.

Oh man, if I’ve had, you know, a bit of stress internal stress throughout the week with other work that I’m doing too and all these other things that can happen with relationships or family or whatnot, you put it all together. You can be left absolutely fucking ragged for days after just my end muscular strength stuff, which at the end of the day, if that forces you to have to have three, four, five days off your training because you’re so nacking and you need to let that central nervous system fatigue actually clear.

It’s probably not the best quality to train for the rest of your life. So that muscular endurance factor, you can actually bounce back from it reasonably quickly. You might have some doms, but doms aren’t going to kill you. No. And once you get past that initial phase of doms, you sort of out the water, aren’t you? What I’ve found as well is like a lot of the island heavy into strength and most of the strength athletes would just be absolutely flaking if they’re doing military training or they’re doing like you know even deadly dozen style stuff and because like strength is the foundation physical strength is the foundation that you know you’re not going to be able to get out of the chair if you haven’t got the strength to get out of a chair.

So strength is like a foundational quality, but like maximal strength is more transferable for a lot of sport. But I actually think that when it comes to in general humans, it’s the muscular endurance that is actually the functional part of it, because most things you’re doing are repeated contractions. They’re not, it’s not a maximal exertion. So like if I was to take someone and say, have any labors and roll like dig a hole, do this, move these trees, we’re going to chop all this wood and we’re going to move it from A to B, we’re going to carry all this.

Like if you look at most human function, it’s not like maximum aerobic, it’s not sorry like aerobic power. It’s not speed, it’s not strength, it’s muscle endurance, like most activities. And actually, if I was to say, if you said to me, right, we’ve got a really hard day, we’re going to have to survive somewhere. I want someone that’s the strongest guy I know. I wouldn’t say I want the fastest guy. I’d say I want the guy that’s the workhorse. You know, that just keeps chugging on. And that’s the person that I think is actually the most useful.

That’s right. It’s the jack of all trades, isn’t it? Yeah. All right. I’ll hit you with one more, Jason, completely off the topic or maybe you will see what your answer is of strength and conditioning led to believe that you’re a bit of a movie man. It’s an apocalypse. So topical and you got three movies for the rest of your life. What are you watching? The Lord of Rheuschology. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, the, um, I’m a massive like talking, talking geek. So it’s like I’ve read all, you know, silver, really and probably about 15 times.

And Lordering’s a bit, wouldn’t be the Hobbit should be a bit of a Lordering’s trilogy just because I am this, I could take a I could think about a long time and pick three very different movies that relate in different ways, probably not comedy, maybe comedy because you pick you up in a pocket, but you might get a bit bored of that. And you could pick three very different movies that hit you in different ways. And I think that’d be a very, very smart thing to do. But out of all movies, I could watch the Lord, I could watch the Lord of rings trilogy, you know, twice a year and it’d make me happy.

You know, three times a year just walks up entire trilogy. I think it’s the greatest piece of cinema that’s ever been done. And also I’m biased because I’m, you know, the top shelf of my is, you know, that’s like first edition books and, you know, the whole lot. and I’m absolutely, you know, nerdy into the whole law of it, you know, people that don’t know is told if you imagine like Game of Thrones is this much sort of law like Tolkien’s just like another level of world building. So you’ve got what’s called like hard world building, the soft world building where you sort of describe sort of everything, you know, to do with the world.

And I enjoy that because although I read a lot of you can see all my S and C manuals and I read a lot of nonfiction. And, you know, like smart, you have water stones, you have like a smart thinking section, all pop science and stuff that makes you feel smart. And then, but I think when I’m reading sometimes when I’m in the normal world, it’s nice to read. I sort of sometimes think, I’ve had one or read a story, it may as well have dragons in, and it may as well have magic in, because it’s fantasy, isn’t it? And I think Tolkien did it better than anyone else.

And the movies, it’s not as easy a read for most people. There’s other books that will keep you. But in terms of like movies, I think they’re 17 Oscars. And I think they’re the best movies ever made unless you’re not into things about elves and dwarves. And then you’re going to hate it. But in terms of like, if you’re in sort of high fantasy, I do think they’re the best movies ever made. I think it pretty close, Jason. I’ve watched them. I’ve quite watched them as many times as perhaps you have. I reckon if I watched them when I was well younger, they would have been one of those ones that carried across my life forever and I would have been just as hard-nosed as you.

But I think the thing that you’ve said that’s most impressive there, mate, is the fact that you’ve been able to read those books as many times as you have whilst balancing the 100-hour weeks whilst having the kids and everything else that life has to throw at you. You must be a quick reader, mate. Yeah. The key is to realise that I think it’s like most people will tell you like it’s like you’d be surprised how much I’m bad for it is you know how much time you scroll in how much time you’re doing other things and you’d be surprised how much you can get it’s like the Parkinson’s Law isn’t it like work will fill the time that you’ve got and actually like sometimes you sit there and think I’ve got 50 minutes and you just will flip through your phone but actually if you just you know I always have a few books on the go and always have a loadable on the go but I just have like that’s the one reading at two, you just pull it out and read a few pages.

And before you know it, you’re through it. It’s like sometimes you see these motivational things where like a page of days this much a year. But it is true that, you know, if you just chip away, if you want to write a book, you know, and one of my first publishers was like, you know, don’t write a sympathy, write a song and, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, you away. The one of the easiest ways to write a book is just start a blog and just write an article like once a week and after a year or so you pretty much got a book if you follow a similar feed and and it’s it’s just chip away at things.

People I think people look at the the end result and and just just get started chip away and then it’s then it’s all about the determination because the motivation for doing a task will go. If you get in a or listening to water ball like at a certain point or Spotify, loads of things are free when you pay for Spotify, loads of books. When you just do things and get straight to it and don’t procrastinate and I’m a terrible procrastinate but when you just get straight to it you’ll be surprised on what you can get done.

So people say I don’t have time for that. It’s like yeah you do. It’s all about what your priorities are. It’s very much harder with kids though. I’d say the one thing that I say to my wife because my kids are young and especially like people say it doesn’t, the hardest stage is like zero to two because they need you all the time and the thing and if you say to me what what you just want more than anything it’s like sometimes I just want to sit and have a broom readable and then the kids come over and like knock you bro out yeah and you’re like ah that’s what I read.

So I think also I’m lucky I enjoy reading I enjoy writing not a particularly good writer, like not being modest. I’m not that good of a writer. But I enjoy it. And you’ll always lead into the things that you do enjoy. So you make time. It’s all about priorities and that people say, I don’t have time to train. It’s like, well, if you prioritize training over most things you would, I think the only excuse that I find it is when like a mother that’s got kids and you can’t just leave them at home. That’s like most other people, you know, I get to say, I’m so busy.

I might have you got kids. If you got that, I’m like, wait, so you have kids, bloody hell. I did ask one of the funny story. I did ask someone else, I just published another book and someone said to me, wait, you I said I got free but it is yeah you make time for things and I think some people as well just like you are lucky I know it’s like cliche like you said if you’re but you are very very lucky if you do some of the you are interested in like legitimately and although people like to push this entrepreneurial spirit I don’t think think everyone has that.

I think I’m very lucky to be a hobbyist. I really like certain things that get obsessive about them. And a lot of people don’t have that and it’s nothing wrong with that, but they just don’t. So I’m lucky to be quite an obsessive person. You know, if I read that’s why I’ve read that book, Silmarillion 15 times because I’m obsessive. It’s probably a personality defect in all honesty, but I’ve used it to make my advantage. I think it’s a thing that’s shared across the board with entrepreneurial people, Jason, something that I’ve seen from my very short time.

But I think it’s a great trade to have, especially if you can use it to your advantage. Not everything is a disadvantage. I don’t think we all need to be normal and well-rounded, do we? I think some of those things are massively important. Okay. Thank you, Jason. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for jumping onto our podcast and sharing such a range of different opinions and stories and experience and wisdom. I think this is going to be an absolutely fantastic episode. And I’m sure anyone who has taken the time to chip through it has enjoyed it.

You’ve obviously mentioned before where people can find you, either your website or your social media. Do you want to write all those handles off for people? Yeah. So it’s just, I would say just go to my Instagram, it’s Jason Curtis, other benefits of that Instagram is a giveaway free books on there. And all you got to do is comment on the post and it sends you the ebook. And some of them are as long as 300 pages. And because I just take snippets from my books and yeah, they get 10, I’ll get probably about 1000 downloads a day.

And yeah, but you can comment on any posts just get there, you’ll find everything else. Yeah, and easy as that. Fantastic. Thank you so much, Jason. Make sure that if anybody is listening that they do stop by Jason’s Instagram. I’m sure you’ll be able to see some things from across the board that could absolutely give you some interest, especially if there are any other coaches who are listening to this podcast. Definitely take that time for your development. But thank you so much, Jason. I hope we do see you again in the future.

We’ll be following your work. That’s for sure. It’s a very interesting concept. And like I said at the top, in two years time when we revisit this podcast, I’m sure there’s some things that we’ve talked about here that have absolutely exploded on the scene for yourself. So thank you very much, Matt. No one’s at all. Cheers. Thank you.