AJ Smith is a former Rugby Player, Exercise Physiologist and Strength & Conditioning Coach. He has a Masters in Strength and Conditioning and somehow became the owner of a gym, Smith's Fitness in Port Kennedy.
AJ competes is many different sports and fitness including Powerlifting, CrossFit, Obstacle Course Racing and finished his first Ultramarathon earlier this year.
He is a massive fan of the shaka, going "deep-end" and leads by the front.
AJ Smith is a former Rugby Player, Exercise Physiologist and Strength & Conditioning Coach. He has a Masters in Strength and Conditioning and somehow became the owner of a gym, Smith's Fitness in Port Kennedy.
AJ competes is many different sports and fitness including Powerlifting, CrossFit, Obstacle Course Racing and finished his first Ultramarathon earlier this year.
He is a massive fan of the shaka, going "deep-end" and leads by the front.
I'm Brendan McCormack and welcome back to the Perth fit fam podcast where you get to hear from the best thought leaders and change makers from across the Perth fitness scene. In episode number 51 we catch up with IJ Smith from Smiths fitness in the port Kennedy otherwise known as my spirit animal. He's a Pulma rugby player, XPS strength and conditioning coach. He has his masters in SNC and somehow ended up the owner of a gym which is ms fitness like me. He competes in a lot of different events and sports and Vishy has competed in power lifting CrossFit OCR, so obstacle course racing. Finished his first ultra marathon and he's a bit of a lad. He's also a massive fan of the Chicago and going deep end, deep end. I'm going to have to start to vet these buyers. Thank you a J but he does like to lead from the front end. In this episode we go through all of these things, not to mention our mate pie and chocky milk at a challenge. The perfect fan podcast is brought to you by true protein. True is unafraid to cut through the noise of an oversaturated market and bright them out to deliver authentic old natural products with genuine health benefits and none of the fake stuff true have buck the trend for expensive over-hype bad tasting protein powders and supplements PAC we false promises to re-invent the marketplace and create a 100% natural delicious quality protein with no gimmicks, nothing artificial, and a completely transparent ingredient list. You can order true protein online@trueprotein.com dot AAU and get a 10% discount using the code Perth via fam 10 or you can also go pick off true protein from over a 120 retailers across Western Australia. And if you'd like to find the one closest to you, just make sure to shoot us a message and we'll be able to help you out. That's true. protein.com dot AAU and now time for episode number 51 with my spirit animal and companion for the meat pie and chocky milk challenge a J Smith.
Speaker 2:That's so good. I love it. Um, alright. Before we kick this, this off, we should let people know, first of all, wearing Smith's fitness. Um, thanks for coming down the Jimmy's open. So you might hear some barbells crashing in the background. You might hear a little bit of music, but you're definitely gonna hear us chewing on some meat pies and chocky milk. So wait, so this is, this is part of the reason that I wanted to podcast with you for a while. It's lined up, bought part of the reason one is you put out a chocky milk and meat pie and chocolate milk challenge that you wanted to do. And I said, that sounds like my kind of challenge. So tell the people about this. Well I saw Jordan SIADH do it. Who's a, you know, one of the fitness influences. PTs he's, you know, is quite big on the internet, all that sort of stuff. And he did it with big max. He ate. He had a big Mac every day for 30 days just to show people that they don't need to have like a worry about sort of eating the foods that they enjoy. As long as you know their calories are in check, everything else is in check. They can enjoy foods. So whether it be pizza, whether it be a big Mac, whether it be the Ozzie version. Mm pie patch on mill mill. I feel like this is a fair few more calories than one big Mac though. Yeah, it definitely would be fine. It just means that we're going to be in some big ass salads, which is what he said. He said, fill yourself up with salad now. Um, I dunno if we can go a full month though. Like I said, I'm going to Lombok what's the date? I can't find chalky Milken. It's a 14th today. Right? So if we do this for two weeks, then we're still within the time limit for our necessary needed time limit. Okay, cool. We're gonna do this for two weeks. Two weeks, two weeks from today. It's about 850 calories. Okay. Every day for the next two weeks starting right now, I'm going to have a chalky milk and meat pie or I'm going to check in with you every day and what I'm going to track calories. So the reason why I like this, we should track calories with this. Well I think obviously we have to. So I did 12 months of extreme dieting and I've spoken about a heaps of time. So I go into it. Yeah, I did. And the reason why I did it is because I wanted to, um, you know, I've been in the industry for over 16 years now and even though I got sucked into like the keto when all these different things and you know, the supplement claims and whatnot, and um, I wanted to trial it for myself cause no one that I knew how to actually go on through every diet and I wanted to see what they actually did. So blood tests, DEXA scan tracked everything. And it was a really anti-climatic 12 months where I got to the end of it and I was like, Oh, I've got to write out, write a book and tell everyone all this information. And as far as body composition, wham in hormones and, and um, uh, inflammation, it essentially just came down to calories. It was very little to no changes in anything whatsoever. You hate to dumb it down so much because there is so much more. But for the vast majority, like that fundamental principle, if that gets missed, everything else doesn't really matter. Yeah. That much. Yup. 95% of it. It's like move and eat within your means. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like if I have to go speak with like every week, true protein and I'm doing like a workshop or a seminar and people kind of want to know the silver bullet and I'm like, yeah, listen, it essentially comes down to this and this. And they're like, no, I want you to sell me some super-duper hormone boosting, supplement pre-workout that not just consistent hard work over time. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, and that's, that's what it came down to. Even light VO two max. So I did my tests and it all essentially came down to you would train and when you'd go through a cycle, you'd begin to peak your take probably five to seven weeks for me to reach like, um, uh, almost the peak and I could only maintain that for a few weeks and then just physically and mentally I'd have to back it off. Yeah. Yeah. Do you find that as well? Um, I don't know. My training's pretty, I would say sporadic for the last. Um, no, not so much sporadic in that it doesn't like, I don't take many breaks yet, but it is, it's not very structured. So it's kind of like, have you heard of the Brando method? Hey, we're actually going to go into all of this stuff, but can we crack these pies now? Because I'm hungry, man. Yeah. Um, all right. I'm going to, you've got the a pepper steak. I've got pepper steak. Yeah. I was going to get two famous beef pies. Now.[inaudible] talk to me. This is mrs Mac's. But where did you find them? Was it Bay Murray? Was it BP? It was the BPAY up the road. Hmm. Yeah. Wow. So these could be from Friday, AVO. Oh really? We'll see some a bitch. And you're a bit of a source of the whole top kind of guy. Oh, how do you[inaudible] sort of like a source by source by. Oh, okay. I don't eat meat pies often, although I loved him as like a kid. And so that's why I wanted to utilize this time to make up for or this, utilize these charts. Or you can go meet pie. You're going to stay with pepper steak or you're going to have a whole assortment. Cheese, bacon, baby. No cheese and bacon. Hello. All of her mama man. Yeah, she is awesome. Oh bro, that pod man dumped definitely from Friday, but still tastes delicious to me though. Yeah. I can't wait to get some good ones. Oh, I was going to ask you a couple of questions. He's IGI your real name. Um, I'm going to go with no, what's real now. It's a Andrew Jarrad are Andrew job. Just never gone by that except for when I'm in trouble. My mom will call me Andrew when I'm in trouble. And Kelly who call me Andy. Okay. Kelly's wife shall ask me.[inaudible] what's your[inaudible] that can not be his real name. Andrew. Andrew. Jared. Yeah. Andrew. Jared. Sorry. Whenever I email you, I'm going to just say, Hey Andrew, Jared, we're from Dallas. Can everyone on Instagram go to Smith's fitness and address AGI as Andrew Jared from now on Smith's on the school fitness is right. Let's you miss underscore fitness over here. The show to make sure. So the reason I had to ask is cause we added, um, Kim Monte, otherwise known as Monte. Yup. I thought Monty was his name until, um, I can't, I can't, I have to double check. And I was like, who is this that you're doing the podcast with? Cause I was listening the other day and I was like, Oh, okay. I suppose that's the internet though. Yeah, I guess that that's, that's Instagram. That was true cash in a row. I was like, let's find out their names. Um, okay. What's the thing that you love most about the fitness industry? Oh, Christian, I'm going to follow her up with C. I, I like to think I'm quite far away from the whole fitness industry. You know what I mean? Like some of the, like, I dunno, I, I, I don't feel like I fit in very well with the whole fitness with you say like fitness industry. To me that sort of makes me think of like a fitness expo and I could not feel like I feel out of place. I had a fitness expo. What do you think your position is? Cause cause you're still within the fitness industry, how do you, how do you vision yourself then? Um, I don't know. I'm, I'm sorta like that. Uh, it's hard to put a, uh, put words to it because you're not, you're a bit of a mixed bag. Skype still, you listen to punk rock a lot of the time. That's what I mean. I like a aloud, I don't, yeah, Luxor, I don't feel, I feel, you know, that that side of the, uh, the industry that's like, um, fitness sort of model fitness, fashion supplements, all that sort of stuff. I feel so disconnected from that. Yeah. And that's not, and it's, it's just me sort of being myself when it comes to like my training. Like this gym is a reflection of me. Like I want to train in a gym like this. So that's why I made it like this. And I'm just very lucky that other people say, Oh shit, I want to train in a gym like that as well. And that's why I have a business. Like that's basically in a nutshell, I've got no business knowledge, nothing like it's growing. And I try and do my best to grow it, but a lot of times like I could be reading that business book, but I'd rather go and skateboard or go trail running except to point something out though. Um, because you haven't mentioned a valid point. Your, your, um, uh, done sports science, right? What was the, what was the degree that you did? I did, um, the bachelor's of exercise and health science. Uh, that was like the three years one. Yup. Uh, and then, so I did that at UWA. Um, and then I went back and did at UWA again did, uh, ended up being another bachelor's, which was only an extra year of exercise rehabilitation. So that was to get accredited as a physiologist. So exercise physiologists, sorry. Even though you saw that, you know, skydive[inaudible] not part of the industry, you're very educated in what you do. And what made you do that? What made you do[inaudible] a rugby player, right? Oh yeah. Wow. Yeah. Rugby. Okay. Um, why, why did I do it? I don't know. I think it was just back then, I originally wanted to do physio. Okay. And I didn't quite get the grades to do physio, like the T score, which actually skateboarding, bro. Well, no, it wasn't back then, too busy playing rugby. Um, so I didn't get quite quite getting the grades for physio. Um, and like at the time, like in year 12, it gets drummed into your lock. If you don't get that T school, you know you're going to be shit kicking the rest of your life. And it's just completely not like that. No. Um, so I could go and do physio now if I wanted to, but I don't. Um, so I went and did sports science instead as a way to get into physio. And then I just sort of started to think, Oh, this is a bit more for me. And went down there the more, well, firstly, exercise, rehab. And then, um, I actually did go back and do my masters in strength and conditioning, which was exactly what I wanted in my undergraduate, the ma, the master's at. So that was at ECU? Yes. Um, yeah. With, um, with doc half ma. That's just like everything you want. Awesome. Yeah. So awesome course that, so like I couldn't put it, maybe it was a little bit of expectation from finishing year 12, like you go to uni, that sort of thing. Yeah. Um, nothing better to do at that point. It's almost still trying to play rugby. Yeah. Do you, I'm part of Western force, part of the training squad. Uh, the very first Academy I was in was an in that, no, we, so we played a couple of gay a couple of years together for WEA in the juniors. Okay. And then he went to Queensland I think, or new South Wales. Okay. And made some rep teams over there. So yeah, I was in the very first Western force Academy. Was Lloyd in that boy Johnson? Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Yeah, that's just small. I went to uni, I went to uni with Lloyd as well. Sorry if someone can hear me wiping the microphone. I've just got me point on it, so apologies. I knew that this has gotta get messy. Um, and then to finish off, um, what I want to know, what's the thing that you dislike most about the fitness industry? How long have you got? Um, ah, ah, there's, so there's, I would say just the, um, people getting put on a pedestal, more so about the way they look rather than the knowledge and expertise that they have from a person that doesn't like'em. So playing devil's advocate because what I find is people who are educated, who have degrees, um, you know, done masters, um, you have such a greater knowledge, um, and then other people who don't have that knowledge but they can present an ebook or a course or build a following because they know social media. So then how would you bridge the gap between the two? So people who are educated there, it works in both ways because even saying, you know, someone's really educated doesn't mean they have the practical application to help athletes or help general populations or those people that I went through uni with and come out with the same degree as me and I'd be sort of scratching my head saying like, would I let them be my coach? Or yeah, that sort of thing. So I don't know. It's um, I feel, I feel like you definitely need that. Um, the, the, I think that's where the passion sort of shines through. Like, and I saw that going through uni, that people that weren't as passionate about exercise as me, they might get better grades than me, but because they're not passionate, it doesn't quite come across, if that makes sense. What about if somebody doesn't have the education level? Um, hasn't gone to uni? They've gone through like a basic thing is it doesn't matter these days. Yeah. Except they're really passionate about what they do. Oh, I would always argue like if you're that passionate, then invest in yourself and go and do the courses go up. The thing is these days that you can probably get the knowledge elsewhere for a lot cheaper and you do have to be smart. You are smashing that pie dude. You don't have to be smart about where you get. Like, cause there's courses, income and stuff coming out of everywhere. Yep. Um, and you also got to look at where do you want to be down the line. Like you're not gonna work for the Eagles if you just have a cert four. Yeah. Correct. So, so for me, my goal originally I went to do the master's because I wanted to get into pro sport. Yep. Um, and that's still not ruled out for me. Okay. So these days that, you know, it would have to be a good gig. Yeah. Yeah. To sort of walk away from this or let someone take this over. Yeah. Um, but that was why, part of the reason why I went and invested in doing a master's and that sort of thing. So I saw the exercise rehab, that was good. Started working as a physiologist, realized that it was a lot of Lark, you know, five, five workers doing health checks and all that sort of stuff. And I was like, this isn't really why I got into exercise science. Yeah. So I went and did the master's in hopes of, you know, a gig in the NRL gig in the AFL. Yup. Something like that where I could apply what I've learned. And then eventually it was like, those jobs are few and far between and it's, you've got to go hire yourself. AAJ will. Um, uh, from my experience, um, you know, coming from a supplement companies that work with a lot of the professional teams and knowing the strength and conditioning coaches and dieticians, that seems to be a group where there might be five or less key people and they all tend to get all the jobs and I'll either rotate between or is very, very hard to get your foot in the door there. Um, now you are my spirit animal. I believe as far as I feel like you're my spirit animal. I know y'all should still offer. I don't think I am that I met someone that does so many different things. Um, locker it. So you, um, you've done trail running obstacle course racing. Um, you've got a massive crew from power lifting, um, uh, that you do yard, um, and CrossFit as well. You jumped into the last open I believe to, yeah, I've done probably four or five opens. Have ya? Hey, you're doing this one, doing this one. Ah, I'm not sure when I'm going to do it. I was going to do it today. Yeah, you pretty much got til tomorrow morning. So what inspires you? The real all the different stuff. Yeah. Yeah. You got to submit by, I think 9:00 AM shit. Yeah. Get onto it. Record that thing. What, what, why do you do so many different sports? Um, I dunno man. I think it's just a, I just want to have a go at everything and, and it's easy to say like, Oh yeah, but if you do everything, you never going to be good at one thing. I get told that all the time, but I don't, I don't know. I'm not sure. Like I don't have the desire to put all my eggs in one basket when it comes to that. Like maybe I will in the future. Um, and maybe I will for certain periods of the year, like the start of the year was all running that, so it's like are barely lifted. I did a bit of bench press every now and then, but I dunno, I just like having those strings to my bow, I think. Yeah. And I dunno, I think, I feel like maybe as a coach it sort of helps you out. So if you, I don't want to be just a powerlifting coach, I don't want to be, you know, just a PT that helps overweight people. I want to be someone that, you know, can help everyone. Yeah. Um, and I feel was sort of my, you know, my, um, studies and, and um, you know, experience that I probably can. Yeah. So rather than sort of pigeon hole yourself. Um, and the other thing is I'm not that genetically gifted at any one thing, Sarah. My life. Hey. So like if I was like super fit or something, then yeah. I might be like, all right, let's do this running thing. Yes. Or fall was naturally really strong. All right, let's try and be a, a decent level power lifter. Yup. You know, it would take me a very, very long time to be half decent at power lifting. Yeah. You know what I mean? And some people might say, Oh, you know, you've got to put the time in. I'm like, yeah, but I want to be half decent at this as well. Yeah. And half decent at that, over there. So what's been the highlight of all these different things that you've tried? Ah, there's gotta be the ultra, what was it that was 50 K 53. Okay. Was that in the Hills? Yeah. Okay.[inaudible] um, yeah, so that was, that was the hardest thing. Like power lifting's tough. Um, your from like day in, day out and I'll probably focused on power lifting for maybe two years. Yup. Um, when you look up Jujimufu yeah, I had it so I was, I think I was up to about 106 kilos. Yup. How much? About 92. Okay. Um, so that's tough because you're like, I'm achy, I'm a little bit sore. I've got to get myself up and about and like squat your face off or you know, dead lift as much as you can and you've got to do that for flaw, at least a, a prep eight plus weeks and it's pretty monotonous. The training. Yeah. Yeah. And it doesn't leave much room. It takes it out here. It doesn't leave much room for much else. I was playing rugby still at the time when I started, um, like to get right into powerlifting and I'd go to warm up for rugby after like a, a heavy deadlift session, like the day or two before and I'd be so sore. I'd come off with like the elbow tendonitis from lifting after a rugby game from like making tackles and stuff like that and not just come off of my elbows or just be cooked. It was all just from lifting. So it makes it tough. Um, but then the ultra was more satisfying 100% just because I feel like it's easy to do power lifting, but it's different. Everyone can just be like, this is what I lift. I'm going to try and make it as best I can in 10 weeks time and I'll put a package together and go on the platform. One thing which I found with that, cause I obviously did the 24 hour in Jiro. Yeah. Um, I did a Brando method prep for that. I'd, I ran it probably once a week and um, everything was just CrossFit outside of that. And I've got there on knew what would be a mental game and yet 24 hours, just complete annihilation. And the personal satisfaction you've got at the end was just like saying I was crying man. It was like I was nearly in tears. I was Neal, I was close. As soon as I spoke to someone, I just started to cry and I was like, why are you doing this and your times? And I told the Richie boys for I think about four years that I'll jump into a power lifting comp and I promised him when I get back, um, I'll start lifting again, I'll jump into it. But something inside of me was like, man, I'm going to go, I'm going to be doing line nine lifts. Like I think, you know, it's not going to be exciting, but it was so different being there and actually competing in it. Like it's one lift. It's once you got to execute, you got to execute, you gotta be focused. You got to block out everything in this like this, this insane like intensity all in one moment. And then when you hit it and the lights are on and you're like, man, like, and you hit a PB in front of everyone. It was the same feeling that I got, but then we got to the end of the day and um, I felt like I could have trained the next day. I was fine. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was very different. That's that CrossFit work capacity. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. You do so much volume in the smash itself. That'd be common. But that also is what helps a, you have this hashtag Brando method. Yeah. That work capacity means that you can jump into things. And that's what I like as well. So I'm sort of, you know, I can go for a run, like last, last week I did four power lifting sessions, two group sessions and did 23 Ks on the Wednesday in Jericho. Yup. And I want to be able to do that. I answer best way and the word work capacity built through like whatever you want to call it, CrossFit style workouts. Um, like it helps you be able to do anything. Yeah. So now it's like, alright, go paddle this kayak. Sweet. I've got that young you, she can stay in the boat or go for a swim suite. I got that. Yep. Because you're used to working at that sort of, that sort of level. Do you think there's a new age of fitness people like these multi-sport people or it hasn't got a name yet? No, it doesn't, but I know me and you the, I'm talking about spirit animal. That's what rod pointed out. Ross Ross actually. Yeah. So the author of the world's fittest book, which was sitting here, so he was one of mine, supposed to do all of this stuff. Um, and yet it hasn't been coined anything yet, but it should. And it's[inaudible] sport multi-sport athlete, isn't it? Yeah, that, that's, that's what's more up my alley as well. Like I do like CrossFit, but I don't, I'm not going to be a CrossFitter NIDA. That's par. That's already past me now. Like yet you had to have been in it for a little while or be just starting out now. People are incredible. They not nutcases yeah. Talking about like they're just incredible athletes and that's what they invest their whole life to that sport. Yeah. Um, so for me it's, yeah, it's more just experiencing everything that exercise, fitness, putting yourself out of your comfort zone. Um, just sort of jumping in the deep end. Hi guys. Just a short break in the episode to let you know about something we've been cooking up at perfect fam HQ. So over the past three
Speaker 1:years of meeting with hundreds of gym owners and personal trainers, the main problem we've found when asking the owners what's the biggest issue you have in your business that over 85% of people always say social media or marketing. So they great trainers or coaches, they love what they do. They have an amazing product or service, but they just don't know how to properly use social media to market their business. So what we've done is we've created a range of short courses to share the skills and knowledge that we learned over the past few years of growing Perth via fan, through social media. And we help teach the PE tase and gym owners how to use social media to effectively grow their business too. So if you're a personal trainer or a gym owner or someone who simply wants to improve their social media game, then you can find the links to our courses on perfect famm.com today. You ought to be getting contacted with us to find out more information and we will be happy to help you out with that. But that's enough for the break and time to get back into the episode. Now. Um, one thing, which is actually in this book it talks about, um, programming for insurance for strength and I in summit, there's something else in there as well. I forget. Do you think that, so at the moment, um, I did this power lifting comp. I liked it. There's a chance to qualify for national or that would be, if I can pay to for it, there's a chance to qualify for the Australian team. It's all within reach, but I don't want to give up running. I still want to go to an ICR. Like, I still want to be able to do OCR. I still want to feel good to wanna sit at the same body weight. Do you think that you can train as a power lifter but also do run, aim and still have optimal strength, optimal strength? No. Um, could you improve your strength? Yes. So optimal too to me would be you're doing everything you can to be
Speaker 2:at the best strength levels. Yeah. Um, but I think with, you know, the rise of uh, what some of these CrossFit athletes are doing in terms of like how much they can snatch, how much they can clean, how many pull ups they can do and how fast they can go run a five K, I think it's, um, it's sort of flipped the script on the, I dunno, some of the specificity of programming. Um, and I think a lot of, a lot of what gets sort of bandied about in, you know, exercise talks or w or like fitness circles is being brought down from an old bodybuilding type of program. You know, like you have to rest a body part a certain day, that sort of stuff. And that might be, you know, there might be merit to that, but then I think CrossFits sort of said, Oh no, we trained warbles yesterday, we're doing thrusters today. My legs are still fucking huge. Yup. And I can still run on it. So I feel like there is something to it. Do you think that's just adaptation? Your body just adapts to whatever it throws us to put at it? Yeah. Cause going back like the Brando method and doing CrossFit. And so when I probed, when, when I went into this competition, um, I knew like the capacity that I had and I knew that I wasn't a power lifter and it was eight weeks to go. Yeah. And I knew if I got a power lifting coach, they would have trained me as a power lifter. Yeah. But I also knew I just needed to get good at the technique and good at doing one, one rep. So I think coming in. So you're trained very specifically as I would say. I did. Yeah. She's pretty smart, man. As much as I was like, what are you doing? Yeah, it was pretty, it's pretty smart because you're doing like what you're going to have to do on that. Like legit. That was it. And it was if I, if I felt good on here, one rep max or go as close to as possible, but I wanted to get good at one movement. I didn't need to work on capacity if any, too much capacity for what I needed to do. Um, and yeah, that, that, so there was a method, it wasn't just stupidity. There was a reason why, but I knew it would be hard to explain for someone who was not a CrossFitter. And um, and so that's kind of like where it all came from. Um, but talking about competition because you have a solid team here that, and um, up there we've I E house and pain like you guys would be bringing the most people to the power lifting comps outside of routines and muscle pit. Yeah, I think it would go sort of root cheese, muscle pit. Uh, and then, you know, us and us dungeon house, a pain, shout out to all those gyms. Um, they're all very good people. So, um, we see'em up, uh, at the boys competitions all the time. Um, and that's just, I never really wanted this gym to be a power lifting gym either. It just sort of half turned into one. How did it come about? Um, cause I went to a comp, uh, and then Sally who was training me with training with me, um, she did a comp with us, couple of other clients like, Oh yeah, sweet, I'll do it. Um, and they sorta did a comp. That was it. Did a comp cool. Not that into it. I'll just keep training the way, you know, I'll train. But then, you know, um, I met Steve up there and then he was like, yeah, I'll come down and try it. I was like, Oh, you live in Rockingham man. Yeah. Got the gym down, the rugby club. He comes down there, also starts training. And then, you know, just snowballed from that. So now I've got Troy, then we brought, um, yeah, we've, so I met Troy at one of the comps, um, and then he came up, came aboard, you know, he's really starting to sort of position himself as a power lifting coach. Yup. Um, which is great. So we, we both sort of have a handful of guys that we oversee and coach, um, and handle on the day and it's sort of grown from, you know, me and Sally and couple others to, you know, now there's, I think we've probably pushing towards 40 odd of our members over four years have gone through and done a competition. How important do you think it is? Um, how do you think, how important do you think competition, not just power lifting, running, whatever. I'm doing the open. Yeah. How important do you think that is, um, for your members as far as having to, having a goal and reaching it and stepping out their comfort zone? Um, I think it's, yeah, it's really important to keep people on track. I think it's, it's, otherwise you just got to float. Um, so whether it be like HBF you got 12K or half marathon, if you've got something like in the future that you're working towards, it's a lot easier to come here, turn up, put in the hard work. U m, whereas you know, the ones that don't have any n ow goals, there's nothing wrong with that, but they seem to be the one that can sort of have the week off here. Yeah. A nd e veryone's got their own sort of fitness journey. Yeah. For lack of a better term. But u m, yeah, the guys that have those clear l uck, I'm g oing t o do this. Um, you know, then we sorta sit down and I talked to them. We, we start to not out a program and then they're in here working to it. They get like this whole[inaudible] it just holds them accountable. And then you get the accomplishment of doing something that you might not have ever done before or you know, hitting PBS and then most people are sort of like jacked up to do the next one. Yeah. Oh, massive. It's like an, it's an addiction and definitely the personal gratification you get out of it. Have you ever been nervous going into an event? Say I, I sorta talk up, like I'd never get nervous about shit. Um, yeah, I'd say first competition, Palestinian power lifting. Um, the ultra I was sorta nervous. Um, but more just ho in like a hopeful way, just like a wonderful, uh, this is going to go down. Um, but yeah, I, I sort of play it cool. Like nothing bothers me. Yeah. Even if it did, I want to let people know I'm glad that killer instinct. Saul, what's, I'm nervous that any of the events, I'm sorry. I think I'll be nervous for the, um, controlled nerves. Yeah. I think I'll be nervous for the proper, the elite. True grit. Okay. Are you, do you like, do you have a goal of like any of podium top 10 or anything, right? Nah, not going to be nervous about, trust me, I did it last year.[inaudible] so I don't think now, like realistically if I got top 10, I'd be wondering why there's not better runners there. Yeah, that's a good point. Well, I got like I'm not running anywhere close to what a good runner should be for a 10 K. yes. Obviously the obstacles are there, but it's, it's a runner's game. Yeah. Yeah. It's 10 Ks of Hills. Unless you're a great runner, but you can't swim and there's one part you've got to swim. Yeah. And if you just can't guess off it. We did it last year as well, like as a group. Um, and I was a bit, and that's why I sort of wanted to jump into the elite cause I was a bit like I'm going to stand around to jump over this cargo net. Like I just want to, Hmm. I'll just go to the next one. Yeah. But then, and then we sort of didn't want to run off. Like we had a group of 10, we didn't want to just like leg catcher, thanks for coming. So we did it all as a group and we'll sorta, you know, helping the guys and girls over this stuff that they couldn't get over, that sort of thing. But then yeah, just like the, cause it's almost like a festival kind of feeling. It's a cool vibe. Yeah. You know what I mean? Cause there's a lot of people, you're all at the, you know, people are dressed up stupid, they have an alarm, they fallen off, they're all muddy, that sort of stuff. Yeah. But it was like there's like a backlog on certain um, obstacles and you just like, Oh I wish I could sort of like have a crack at this a bit more. So yeah, I'm going to just do the elite. Yeah. So that's Sunday morning, eight 30 Saturday, Saturday morning, eight 30 but Saturday it's that, trust me a Saturday, our groups leaving at 10 Oh five. So my biggest goal would be to get it done in an hour or 35 so I can get back to leave with the group at 10 Oh five I did one hour 13 last year. I'll say you'll do it, you'll do it in about an hour. Cause they shortened it as well, didn't they? Ah, they call it 10 Ks this year. Last year they were calling at 12. Now I think it was 10 point something last year. Okay, sweet. Yeah that, that yeah, you'll do it. You'll do it. Trust me. So then there'll be, have a 20 minute rest and then be back out again with the crew. Yeah, I think that, I think Michelle's going to do it as well. So we might, Oh you're not? Nah, I just nominated you are now I'm lucky she talked ugly. We're not going do, I was gonna say, I'll guess I'll go again. So it's gotta be a solo run. Um, so with your guys like go like talking about it, people going into true grit. You guys doing these power lifting coms, how do we encourage them to get over their fears? Cause one thing I find is people want to do stuff. Tell me what, just don't wanna do it. Cause people do want to do it except they're too fearful and they'll make up an excuse or they'll just play it down. Man, I, I'm terrible with like saying the right things to people when it come. And that's like the worst trait for a personal trainer or a coach to have. I very much more like that. This is how I'm going to do it. Yes. Hopefully you see that that might help. Yeah. And repin as well. That's obviously works though. Yeah. Um, yeah it does. But I, I almost want to say like a try and try and do my speaking through the three actions. Yeah. Little bit more than you know. Yeah. Like leading from the front of this, the, yeah. Leading from the front rather than like the um, the guy on your shoulder giving you the right words. Yep. I'd like to be both, but I'm much better at like just ripping in. Yeah. Hoping people come along for the ride. I don't know if I could imagine you given a hell deep and meaningful, like pep talk. What am I trying to say? That that's what Troy's for. I'm really good at it. I'll pull people aside and like probably better than what I give myself credit for. But like I, it's almost like a running joke that like, I don't like don't feel feelings around me. Just like, just do it. Yeah, just do it. Just do it. Just like that. Um, I just want to point out I smashed that mate pie and like, yeah, you're going to go through that thing stylist. Fuck yeah. Maybe I gave you the bad one. I'm just happy that I've got two way to make pie. Um, okay. Hey, look proper me. I'm out here. It back up. So moving forward with you. Are you going to do the Enduro year, the 24 hour in zero? Are you a no. No, because you're forgetting about something that I'll put out the other day and you're like, Oh, that sounds good. That was the Cape to take to Cape Cape to Cape. Um, potentially. Cause that's, that's NWA, isn't it? Yeah. How long is that? 120 Ks. How three days? I reckon three days. 40 Ks a day.[inaudible] August. I'm not sure, man. I think I was just throwing it out there and saying my, my brother hit me up and was like, Aw man, it'd be good to do Kokoda. And then I was like, Oh, bit pricey. Like it'd be great to do it. I would love that sort of thing. Um, but then I was like bit pricey. I'm having my second kid January next year, so it's hard to just be like catcher. Yup. Um, and then I was like, well, Cape to Cape's down there, it's not, obviously it's not as hard as Dakota, but it's longer. Yup. Um, my sister lives down in marks as well, so I was like, Oh Hey, bring in some suppliers at the end of every day. Um, so I dunno, it was just another, um, another idea that I that why not work on that sort of thing. Yeah. Cause for me, I was looking at possibly something like the Margaret river ultra, which is a 80 K, but that's really close to him. We're having a kid as well. Yep. So I was thinking like in the winter or something to just do the Cape to Cape. And I was thinking more like, take your daily provisions with ya rather than a full pack of camping shit. Cause then then it's just the hike, isn't it? Yeah. It's kind of boring. You're not gonna be able to run it. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not saying that I'm gonna run 40 K three days in a row, but I'm going to run part of it. I reckon 120 are, man, you'd knock that out in two days. Two days. You gotta have a place to stay as well. Oh, okay. So it was going to be like canal rocks. Gracetown Gracetown to Contos where you have to actually camp. Okay. Compost to Augusta. Okay. I'll have, I'll have to test it out. So there's some logistics that needs to be like a sussed out. So my planes where I want to, I'm focused on power lifting on, try and get into the Australian team. Um, we talk in APU. Oh, okay. Yeah. I'm that Natty life. Yeah. So, uh, that would, that would be a goal that excites me. Yeah. Which is outside of the scope, but that have any fives. Ah, yeah. So 70 fours, is it 74 74? Yes. Cause of course it is power lifting a, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I don't know, like at the moment I've had such a big year doing so many different things. I think for shell and I, we were just like, um, let's just focus on not doing that stuff for a little bit. Nah man. And uh, yeah. So here I am like inviting you on like free days of running and you're like, yeah, Shell's just like, cause she knows that I probably will too. And I'll say yes. Um, now one thing that you guys don't have down here, you build an awesome culture. You said you have no business. No. You had no business experience. You would just wing it. I don't know. Business businessman. Yeah. So then you're the wrong person to ask about. We're going to do it. So boutique, gym owners, personal trainers wanted to grow in the industry. What's your advice? Uh, my advice. Oh shit. Try and everyone. Um, what do you mean? Just try and like your friends, everyone, friends, family, um, overweight people, athletes, anyone you can get your hands on trying to mold. Um, I feel like the find your niche is sometimes like the wrong advice for people when it comes to, you know, and especially I came out of a uni think, Oh, I just wanna train athletes and there's going to be athletes that just want to come and, you know, train with, no, they don't. Yup. You know, like there's, there's a market for, for all types of people. Yes. But I don't think you have to pigeonhole yourself very early on, especially early on. Like if you just want to train athletes and you've got no, now you're going to have a hard time. You're gonna have a hard time. Yeah. The other thing would be, I can only really speak on what I did. Um, and that was, you know, I started boot camps, like part time with my friends and, um, Kelly's friends. Okay. And then I'd started a boot camp where I was working, like after work I was like, all right, like they're all excise professionals and physios and that sort of start out I'm going to do a session. Um, and then I eventually they started paying me for it, which was good. Um, and then, you know, I did boot camps down at the park and then I just started painting out of my garage man five years ago. But that's what, that's like a common story these days I feel yes. Like it's not, you're not like brand new just cause you started in your garage like a lot of people have and built it and they've obviously done something right along the way. Like to put your finger on what you did. Right. I dunno. Bull body. I say everyday like I'm waiting for someone to come and be like, jigs up. Aja, you get a real job. That's so funny. Yeah. Well buddy magic was the same. Um, is it? Um, Jared? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he, he, I think he still trains people in his garage. I'm pretty sure he still does all now he's on the bachelor bachelorette it just it and he's been trying to now to show that you can like, yeah, it's cool if you had like a multimillion dollar gym and had all the bells and whistles, but the end of the day that's not what gets people results or gets people up and about. A lot of people don't care whether it's what brand of, you know, hip thrust and machine you got or anything. It's like do they enjoy the experience of training with you under you in your facility that matters more. Yeah. Um, and that's like, we've still got that real garage vibe in here and some people will come in and they will turn their nose up at it and I'm like, well, it's not for you. Then. I always tell people when they come in, I'm like, you got a free week trial. Make yourself at home. I'm not a salesman. I'm not going to push paperwork on you after a week. Let me know if you're in, if you like the way we go about it. And then we rock and roll. That's so far. That's like my sales pitch. It's like the pre people would probably like, well he's missing out on customers, but for me, if I would hate to sell someone off the all these promises and get them signed up and all that sort of stuff and then on invested. So I'm like, spend a week here, like it's your house now. Yup. Treat it like it's your garage. Like it's your gym. It's like the, that's that, that's my anti marketing marketing. Um, we had um, uh, Harry Williams on the handstand. Ah, yeah, I'll listen to a bit of that one. Yeah. So he's um, yeah, the Caucasian Snoop Dogg and um, so we're talking about his clients and I think he was running 60 clients at one time through WhatsApp. And I'm like, you don't use a Excel spreadsheet? And he's like, no, no, it's all just WhatsApp. Am I, how do people sign up? They contacted me through Instagram and I'm like, Oh, okay. And then like he'll just send them to their website, which is one page. And it's like, this is not for peacocks or show ponies, you know, this is what I expect. If this is you email here, otherwise, you know, I bid you farewell, that sort of thing. It's, I love that shit because I would rather have a hundred people that are that like dig the vibe and are into it than a thousand people that, you know, don't write what you do. Yeah. Um, and like the, even this building, like you might say, Oh, where's like the signs, it's hard to find them. It's like, ah, I just joke, Oh, that's part of our screening process. You got to find a, like you, it's not so much like that, but I'm like, man, if you want to train here, you'll, you'll figure out like where it is. You'll get in contact and you'll train with us. That's absolutely, really valuable. And then you get the people that want to be here already. They're screened out like, yeah. I don't know, like marketing and business people be like, what? This guy's got no idea that. So I would agree with them, but it's working. Yeah. Like I said, I'm just, I'm waiting for the day. Someone who says like, nah mate, clean this place out, I'll get a real job. I'm waiting for the day that you relate. Smith's method, Smiths method marketing. It could be the, it's in a brand new methods programming. Yeah. So I like, I like'em what Harry's on two, their classic that I saw at my website up I think is really good. One page website description that I hope people out here and that and thing and this dude doesn't even want anyone in this room. Of course not like I just want people that are invested in what we do and like, yeah, we don't want, you know those show ponies and that sort of thing. Like there's gyms for that and that's fine if that's you, if that's the joy. Yeah. If that's your jam. Yeah. Then it's different to my much, I love it. And laughs. Last payoffs of advice. So that was for people training. This is just for everyday people looking to get into fitness. You said train everyone. Oh yes I did. I didn't really answer your question too well. We went off a little bit there. That's fine. Okay. Um, anyway, for those people that want to get into like P and stuff, train everyone. Um, try and find somewhere where you could probably be, maybe follow someone who is training the people you want to train. That's one thing that if I could do uni again, I would do, I know I'm going back here a little bit, but I would go back and sort of try and get some sort of internship going. You said recommend a courses. Sorry, I wrote a note. Um, courses, you mentioned courses that people that don't go to uni that are weighed at that there's probably ways to purchase courses. Who are the people that, Oh, they said who's your favorite or programs or courses. So I haven't done any, well you paid an amount of money to do it properly. Yeah. So, and I know people like, Oh you to stay up on your continuing education. I read back through my uni notes. I'll go through my lectures again. Yup. Um, I'll pluck out, I've read up studies on Google scholar. Um, uh, sorry, I haven't in that, in that sense. I do stay up and my continue education, but I haven't done any external courses because for me, like I was looking at doing the weightlifting Australia one. Yes. Um, you know, and I'm thinking, I'm trying to get you to go spend two days to someone teach me how to snatch and I had to snatch up being snatching since I was 14. Yep. Like it's just to get like that letters after name sort of thing or certificate for it, which won't impact your business in the scheme of things unless you're gonna open a club, not at all. Um, so that sort of makes me think, Whoa, why, why would I go on? Do you know the weight lifting course when um, and yeah, you'd learn stuff from it. Yup. Um, you can learn something from everyone, but yeah. In terms of courses, those sorts of things, I feel I've already got covered. Yeah, sure. Now if you're fresh then yeah, it'd be great. I would go and do the, uh, is AWF the weight lifting? Uh, yeah. So I'd go and do that course. I'd go and do the asker level one. Yep. Just trying to think. Editioning. Um, and then I would do like you've got to do cert four and five, uh, three and four. I never did him. Don't listen to me miss it. Three and four is it 3.3 and four? I'm going to start a five. So people are so far below that's come here, come here, that's pull their master trainer and I believe that it's called a diploma. Oh, well there is a cert five a I think so an equivalent, I know that. Okay. I F yeah, package one called biomass. So many like you could, so it depends what you're into. But I would go the AWF and the ASCA on top of your, your PT courses and then you know, there is, um, the external ones that, you know, you can find off off your favorite Instagrammers and all that sort of stuff, so you can go and do that. So, I mean you definitely get it that you're gonna learn a heap in that you might learn more than what you've learned in your ask out, but the end of the day, a lot of employers aren't going to care that you went to an Australian strength coach seminar over accredited by ASCA. And people may agree or disagree with that, but that's just the way it goes. Especially if you're looking to get into a lot pro pro sport. Oh, absolutely. So, um, you just got to of think where do you want to position yourself and, and sort of cover your basis. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Now I actually answered that question then. You too. Yeah, that was good. We're done now for people who, for people who aren't working with the in the industry but want to get into their fitness, want to try something new. Um, we'll do home shore way port Kennedy. There you go. The address fit. That's the address. That was the perfect plug. I love that. Can you say that again? Two home shore way. Port Kennedy. It's on the corner of Blackburn and the sign and the building faces. Blackburn, God knows why. Yeah, that's why we parked out the back. Yeah. Like I said, if you can't, it's a screening process. Yeah. We're lucky that the door was open. Um, so that Smith's fitness in port Kennedy, you also do your own podcast. Yep. Yep. Yeah, we, um, we've been a bit slacking on it lately, but you've gotta be consistent. No, I know we gotta be consistent, but we're trying to take that Tuesday as more of a, uh, um, a content production. So whether it be podcast, whether it be our own little videos, that sort of stuff. So we will be podcasts. And again, I think we're up to like 25 episodes now. I'm only up to 51. Yeah. So we're, we're on your tail mate. So, yeah. W we enjoy that. It's just me and Troy. We do like sports news and shit. It's fun. It's fun. It's slowed down now cause we don't have really anywhere to record it. Like we could record it in the gym, but our equipment's not as fancy as per fit fam. Right when you get in the top 50. So once I'm moving through this, I'm killing it. My, it's consistency. So we, uh, in the top, top downloaded fitness podcasts, um, I think it must've been, I don't know where my VPN was at that point in time, but yeah, we're, we're just consistently liking the top downloaded fitness podcast now. I think we're like 30, well if you listen to this, Smith's fitness also has a podcast, so make sure you go over like and subscribe five star review. Yeah, we promise we'll put out some new episodes. Ah, I love it. Plugging all of this now. It's all about cross-pollination. All right. Hey Jack, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much. I want to say before you sign off. Yeah, I think you're doing an awesome job man. And it's, um, it's great to see someone sort of take initiative to do what you do. And I love, I really love the fact that you don't[inaudible] which you easily could do. You could easily panned out to, um, you know, the more popular social accounts. And so to get yourself around them, but you give time to, I'm going to say people like us, the little people, the little people, I didn't know where I'm coming from with that. I think you're doing a good job, man. So it's, um, yeah, I just wanted to let you know, you know what it's like I just chat with people that I want to chat to. Yeah, yeah. That's good. It's very, it's very selfishly unselfish. Yeah. But it's like, I just want to chat with people I want to chat to and you know what I mean? I've been doing this for 68 we're not perfect for, but I mean in the game for 16 years. And what I learned is so many people have such cool stories, information, um, and they might not have, you know, 100,000 followers, but everyone has insights. I wish that I podcasted every single one of my conversations with people and that's why this started. I just wanted to, um, I just wanted people to hear the conversations that I have. No, that's good. And I'll be a fly on the wall. You're doing an awesome job, man. Thanks dude. So we're going to do the meat pie and chocolate milk challenge. I'm going to have to go get a DEXA scan. 14 days, 14 days. I'm not going to get a DEXA scan. I'm going to use my chief scales. Okay. My toilet there. That dude, they said I was 15% body fat shredder. That's fine. I think I'm probably about that. Be lower. No, I think I'm a bit devastated. How old are you now? 32 young, 34 um, so I used to sit routinely at 9% now I said at about 15% Jesus, 9% pale and percent pure. I'm gonna use that. So I'm gonna do, I'm gonna eat this and then I'll go weigh myself. Yup. I'll take the socks off. So it does the old body fat percentages said yes dad, we're going to, let's see if we can lose body weight over the boat. Body fat over the net.
Speaker 1:Two weeks on the older making chocolate milk.[inaudible] Smith. Absolute pleasure. Cheers man. And that's a wrap for episode number 51 with ADA Smith from Smith fitness in port it Kennedy. And before we go, just a mention for those who have fit and single, we have something coming for you. You probably see me post about it many times on Instagram, but FitFam finder, a dating app for fitness singles is going to be launched first of all here in Perth. And we're going to be looking for some beta testers as we launched the prototype in November. So if you're fit your seagull and potentially look into Mingo, we want you to be a part of the beta program. So stay tuned and follow fit fam. Find out on Instagram that's bit fam. Find out without an E F I N D R to stay up to date with news and release updates. And if you did enjoy the episode the make sure to jump onto iTunes, give us a five star review and leave your comments. And don't forget post screenshots on Instagram stories. We'd love to hear your feedback and share your posts. And that's it. Episode number 51 and as always, stay tuned for more of the perfect fitness Intercom.