S1E11 · Josh Cakitiki and Cam Elliott

Hey guys welcome to the Virtus performance podcast this is episode actually I don't know what episode number this is so I'm sure you'll be able to have a look at your phone and read the title and it'll probably tell you what episode number it is. Today I sat down with two legendary humans coach Cam who you guys have all heard from before one of our coaches at Virtus and I also spoke to or we spoke to Josh Kakataki I think that's how you say his name if it isn't Josh I apologize but today we sat

down Josh is a coach who I guess he surrounds himself with a lot of similar people that we do he's also studying dietetics so he's very knowledgeable in terms of coaching and food nutrition he's also about to head over to the US to intern with Eric Cressy one of the figureheads in our industry so it was really cool to have a sit down and chat to Josh about everything he does his philosophies why he does what he does and yeah where he where he's headed so this was a lot of fun enjoy my personal and

business goal is to be just a little bit better every day I believe everyone especially normal people have a story to tell the Virtus podcast exists to help us all find small ways of consistent improvement by discussing the journey and experiences of each of our guests boys welcome to the podcast thank you so Josh tell us a little bit about yourself introduce yourself to the wider Virtus community okay so I'm a coach and trainer personal trainer from Melbourne grew up sort of in the country at the moment I'm working I guess mainly with like general

population clients a couple of powerlifting specific clients the odd like sort of physique bodybuilding client here and there and a handful of like strengthening conditioning so soccer athletes football athletes things like that currently sort of halfway through a nutrition degree but I'm just having to put that on hold at the moment because so about next week I'm going moving to America for a little while just to intern under correct era Chris here Chris's performance every awesome in Florida yeah so I'm life's about to change pretty large in a minute so just gearing up to head

off to there and that is me in a nutshell that'll be really really cool but we'll talk about all your coaching and stuff but why did you decide to to enter an under Kressey yeah so obviously Eric Kressey is a massive head figurehead in the industry I'm specifically with you know the baseball athletes and American athletes in general and one of our mutual friends Jamie Smith had also done the internship there shout out strength culture but I think like I guess basically I got to a sort of a stage where I'd been working pretty flat out for 12 months waking up at 5 a.m.

every day doing the morning shift doing the night shift coaching laughs yeah pretty much the coaching life racking up a lot and a lot of sessions a week and it just got to the point was just a little bit repetitive and quality was dropping and I got to a stage where I wasn't really learning anything or growing any further and I just had that hunger and need to want to go back to it and that's when I looked at Kressey's and just decided to roll the dice did not even think I'd get an interview or

anything and then yeah the process went through and luckily enough I was fortunate enough to get a position no he did help me a little bit which was good so it's good to know it's all as we know yeah it's all about who you know it was it was massive so I applied I don't know how long exactly but it was something like four months so I applied it online and then from there they have like three or four different cutting processes where you'll have like a Skype interview the Skype interviews the last one you'll

send an application yeah but to even get an application for it you need to email them and ask them and so basically what they have in their process yeah not even they have they set up so they called like sort of trip wires they set up a bunch of trip wires so that if you don't adhere to these things you won't even get an application yeah so just quick example like on the website they'll say you need to email Pete for an application form and a lot of people won't even read that they will just

say hey Eric I want to apply for your internship if you say something like that if you don't address Pete specifically they won't even apply to email yeah so I guess that's like the first trip wire. It's like what, you heard about the Navy Seals exam how it gives you like a written exam for 60 questions you have an hour to do it yeah and then it says at the top please read all the questions before you start and then in the very last page last question is do not put a mark on this page

with the pen so really yes we start yes I'm just like okay read it and then they go bang my name is Cameron and they start holding these questions and then question 6 he's like don't put a mark on this booklet with a pen and they go well you know yes it's a pretty easy way to weed out the people that aren't keen and ready to go yeah it's just yeah exactly like someone for someone that they really actually want in their internship will have that attention to detail to know that so it's a pretty

full-on process like a lot of little things like that that you go through so in some parts it was like luck to even get through that part but then today it's just sort of more so serendipity than anything you don't seem to be the kind of person and believe in luck yeah like six months apart yeah exactly who was it said it was like I'm a great believer in luck the harder I work the more luck I have yes lucky is where preparation meets opportunity yeah yeah I like to think of it more as I

just googled like quotes what are the main things you want to get out of the internship and how long is it so the internship goes for four months so are we getting there a week or well I'm getting there two weeks early one week just to deal with the jet lag and sort myself out there and then I'm gonna start a week early sort of a four and a little bit months and so I'll be hoping to get like I want to just see that whole different side of it and just really sort of delve

into learning like as I said I've been working flat out for 12 months now now I just want to do nothing but just learn learn learn and just be a sponge absorb as much as I can make some new connections as well like that's another big one as we all know it like it's all it's all networking yeah exactly right so if I can meet some people in America potentially set up some opportunities for in the future or like they'll know people that know people yeah and just yeah just try and get as much out

as possible like SNC in America is a different thing as we all know yeah yeah it's a completely different ballgame and especially you know working with major league baseball athletes like there's millions and millions of dollars in there in Chrissie's gym at any one point so it's completely different ballgame to what we used to hear and just the way that they're treating their athletes and you know the amount of care and the diligence that they have with their technique because you know like one small movement and you know you've ruined your cuff for the season

yeah exactly right yeah and it's uh it's really it's a pretty interesting sport like personally I've never like watched any or looked into it before I got into some some more of Chrissie's stuff but um yeah it's a pretty full-on interesting sport when you when you really look at it like Chrissie always say that it's the single fastest motion in all baseball like a in all the sport yeah throwing baseball yeah they like we just think it's throwing the ball yeah yeah they do so many games a season and so many innings per game yeah

they just get completely beat up it's probably a really good way of learning about load management Chuck you yeah yeah for sure which is shoulder anatomy gains yeah it's been brushing I don't doubt it's been brushing up for sure I love it thank you talk to me about your current current coaching and PT whereabouts you base yeah what's the environment like so at the moment I'm at JPS health and fitness in Airport West yeah as I said I've been there just over a year now yeah so mainly we're working with like body composition general pub

clients with a mix-in of athletes and the Palestine culture is getting pretty big there now but I guess like the way I approach my coaching is sort of adapted from old mate Woodford his style a little bit and then taking some of Kressie's stuff and then some of the American strength conditioning stuff there but really like everything I do will just be centered around the individual so I'm completely flexible and pliable with my approach that's something I pride myself on is like not being married to one approach you know like I do be able to

think that does not mean that I train people yeah yeah exactly right like it's your goals you know we're gonna train towards your goals how are you in training I think we've all learned under Woody and that whole this is another tool in the toolbox yeah we're saying is probably big one of the biggest things we've learned from you start to me yeah it's so true having having a massive toolbox gives you so many more options yes someone comes in the door something that completely throws you off yeah as opposed to the thing throws you

off you throw them something that you just think will work you know I'd rather I'd rather get throwing that curve ball and I could get it yeah for sure and that's that's why it's important the world still upscaling and pushing ourselves to learn and be better just so to expand that toolbox you know just to take little bits from here in there are you that guy that just dropped out of you talk to you about your dietetics is dietetics or nutrition nutrition potentially going to dietetics if I would want that why why did you jump

into that after expert exercise so I didn't do exercise science I dropped out I actually dropped out of a master's okay that's great that's three from three I swear we're educated people so I dropped out of high school in like year ten did a three-year diploma course in what was it sports something development of sports sports development I did a diploma there for three years and then from there got a decent upgrade to get myself into a uni degree in nutrition and that was basically just brought on by my own curiosity like I didn't necessarily

want the piece of paper I wanted the learning so that yeah yeah so that's cool but then I think the more and more I learned from there in nutrition and the more I spent time around the field I realize it's it's to have any real impact in nutrition it's more so a game of psychology yeah like and we always said you know you can know the best diet you can know the best training program but if you can't get the person that implement it and adhere to it it's completely useless and in nutrition it's different

to exercise like with nutrition people are motivated to eat healthy where people actually excited to get into the gym and train that's why I'm definitely like sort of gone more towards the training and exercise science studies and learning lately just because yeah I found that with nutrition it's just so much psychology and like you can learn all the science like we were learning about like glucose and diabetes and all these sort of more advanced topics but at the end of the day you just need to be able to get the person to adhere to something

yeah and it's all about building foreign relationships but going back to what you said about like no one has the motivation that you healthy that's so true but do you think that has more to do with dietary addition you know yeah I'll throw the word out there even I don't believe it but the sugar the demonizing of sugar yeah for sure how there are some really strong such studies that show that there is a big addition problem particularly a younger population that leads into the adult life which you know it's going to it was for

ladies down or two problems with obesity and symmetry lifestyles do you think that's more why people less motivated to eat healthy or is a lack of education on top of that or is it so I definitely don't think it's lack of education like we are 100% in the era of education if you look on social media now there's people posting you know ticks and crosses with foods and like eat this do this and same for exercise do this exercise don't do this exercise there's courses everywhere so the education is definitely there in my opinion just

comes down to the environment and like the society just pushing or society not making it easy to lead a healthy lifestyle whether that be like monetary problems or just you know seeing 7-eleven giving very very cheap crappy foods yeah yeah so true like you watched a margin in every second that was KFC talking about the tools yeah for sure I've really loved it was amazing but and then there was another actually you know it was a Mac is that we didn't in terms that little fish in product placement like Mac is they have this ad

that goes for 45 seconds and the whole you're like what the freakin hell is out about it's about this little girl what's the selling yeah I had exactly something about family works because it's everywhere yeah and then feed off they use those words on family and makes you feel we do too yeah we are calling but you know they use the words like family to suck you enough oh yeah you know have Friday nights Mac is not but yeah doesn't matter Friday you can have Friday night if you're not if you're not taking the boxes

Monday through Thursday and Saturday yeah yeah and then doing a little bit of moving on top of that it's gonna do some damage yeah for sure like anything is the accumulation of your week so if you have that one like you have your $2 sliders once a week then and then you and then and then you look after yourself for the rest of the week then like it all it all kind of goes out in the wash but if you have those $2 sliders and then go to Mac is the next day and then go

to Domino's for $5 piece of the day after yeah it's just getting people to that point where they actually want to change and want to because it like like I said everyone knows what to eat and when we know better we should do better but yeah it's really not as easy as like eat this okay I'll eat healthy yeah I think there are so many more like underlying driving forces that push people down healthy lifestyles and yeah like bad advertising is just probably the tip of the iceberg with that yeah great yeah you put something

in your head and it's what you want and it's the way we were like four weeks ago I still have that I would say it's mostly because you were talking in there origin accent please don't do it and I will like just come back to what you said before about the sugar just quickly on that so I'd probably always disagree so disagree on if you were just saying that like the addiction of sugar sorry sort of different hypothesis is that it's more so highly palatable foods and that doesn't necessarily mean sugar so think practically about

me it's like if you try to sit down and eat 5,000 calories worth of just sugar I guarantee you couldn't do it but if I gave you highly palatable food so palatable is just things that taste good yeah and generally and this is always going to include sugar salt and fat so things that taste good yeah that would be easy to eat so those are generally the foods that are called yeah they're getting you trouble in causing their obesity so people fly the kills and this is going down another sort of deeper deeper darker rabbit

hole demonizing single foods or single components so yeah I never ever ever like to say that one thing is bad thing just like you would never call an exercise bad you know it has its context it might be performed bad or bad in a program same goes for foods or ingredients I would never say that sugar is a bad ingredient or don't eat sugar obviously there's different cases for pathologies like donate gluten if you're celiac yeah but it's more a case of sugar is not the problem it's the sugar with the salt with the fat

and the calories that's the problem because I guarantee no one's are even eating on 5,000 calories of sugar yeah as I said the sugar the fat and there's no simple answer but how do we help improve the water health the health of the water population as fitness professionals and health professionals what do we do yeah well that is yeah that's a golden question and send like hi in my opinion I think like for us as individuals just to do the best we can yeah I try and reach out wider audiences like you guys they're putting

out good stuff all the time I'm trying to put out stuff you know people that I know and just fighting a good fight you know not letting your integrity go for money or just not trying to sell anything that's you know a bit BS over science but yeah I'm just trying to help one person at a time yeah for sure at the end of the day it's the powerful effect that we have yeah just change that one person's life and then they might change one person's life and that person might change two people's life for sure that's that's all we can do at the end of the day.

The strongest sharpest sword. At the end of the day it comes down to someone's I guess discipline and want to actually change if if that's what they're looking for yeah for sure and obviously environments gonna be big one as well which is where like you know places like this come in trying to create that environment for people who want to change because it's as we all know it's so much harder to do it on your own. Definitely. Question. So how do I rephrase the question so that we can get back to that discussion that we were having before.

I'll ask the question and then it's just going to be. Put it out there and we'll go from there. So for us three I guess you know we train our female population both athletic and general pretty pretty I guess broadly we've got a very broad mix of clientele. I'm personally more biased towards female population just because I enjoy cultivating strength in female gen pop and athletes but so we know that the benefits as coaches we know the science behind it because we've done some studying on it. We know the benefits to strength training or let's call resistance training.

This is training for our female population. How do we get that message across to the wider audience without standing on our soapboxes and kind of preaching to the choir. I guess what I mean by that what I say before was like you know social media is more of a more of a for coaches more of like a marketing business. Yeah for sure. But the only people that are paying attention to your social medias are the coaches. Everyone's kind of learning off each other which is great. That's the perfect way to use it but at the same time not many people that aren't invested in that are really paying attention.

Yeah. So I use the example of my mom. I know that resistance training would be great for my mom but she's less interested in the idea of it because she has a predisposed idea of what resistance training is. So how do we kind of change or shake up that status quo. So one thing that I did sort of think of was like social media influences. So you mentioned how you for example the only people that are reading and caring about your posts are people that are probably already in this industry and already care about that.

However for like social media influences like the big names and not necessarily even in the industry but you know big model big name models or fitness competitors or something like that. These people with hundreds of thousands of followers. I think they're I think they're a good medium just to relay that message of you know resistance training isn't bad or for example like a lot of you know good women on social media like one of them I like is Burke Chambers. She is you know someone who preaches that lifting weights is good for you it's gonna make you stronger it's not gonna make you bulky and manly.

I'm a big fan of what they do lovely people as well so I think social media influence is influences is probably a good place because like general population people follow them just for eye candy for fun and that's that's gonna be who they look up to they're not gonna they're not gonna say oh Cam does this I'm gonna do this they're gonna say Nick Cheadle does this I want to do this because he looks like he doesn't know what I think the the key point there is just making a mainstream like we're in a pretty

niche spot of the moment niche spot in the market getting these mainstream people to relay the message that we want and it is actually getting better in my opinion yeah I don't know what you reckon. And I think Stephanie Cohen, do you follow Stephanie Cohen, she's an American weightlifter, she's picked up 200 kilos for 5 reps the other day and she pushes female mental health and also female physical health she talks about resistance training effect on the menstrual cycle that they can have if you do it correctly, talking about fat-biting, the effect on the menstrual

cycle, hormones that get thrown out the window, so I love her content, I think also a big part of it was I'm gonna say the C word is CrossFit like I have a lot of I have a lot of love for CrossFit in that way that they've sort of they've made the barbell a bit more mainstream and they've taken that fear away from it like imagine if CrossFit was never a thing like so many women would have never set foot into a gym and even not necessarily like formal CrossFit boxes but like all these small

group fitness training gyms you see going around but in all seriousness you know like you see these young females that are getting into these group fitness classes doing squats doing deadlifts doing impressives they may not be the prettiest things but you know it's a gateway to better training and barbell training so like in that sense I think CrossFit we have a lot to thank for CrossFit to converting girls from the treadmill to the barbell yeah as I said even if it's not in the best way at the moment it's a gateway to the next thing.

Yeah and even their athletes have a lot of I guess positive, what's the word, their social media presence is for the most part pretty positive yeah for the majority of people that do CrossFit it's let's get moving let's start lifting some heavier weight let's yeah improve our strength improve the way we move hopefully and although there's a little bit to be desired in terms of programming and things like that it's it's overwhelmingly positive because people they're people that like you said would have been on the treadmill for six days a week and things like that

yeah yeah for sure yeah and like we have our I guess little subgroups within our industry where power lifters laugh at bodybuilders and bodybuilders laugh to CrossFitters and CrossFitters laugh at everyone because they're just the athletes that are rooting for them. But at the end of the day we are all on the same side we're on the side that let's get everyone moving and finding their their niche within the industry and then everyone's winning so yeah. I do like the aspect I love about CrossFit which is what we were talking about before is they take

tools from every modality and they kind of implement that and they say how how efficiently or even just quickly how quickly can you adapt to this stimulus and then they get some of the best people around the world to do it and you watch something like the CrossFit Games and you see exactly what it takes to to even just get into the CrossFit Games but you see what exactly what it takes to win something like the CrossFit Games. Yeah, athletes. Yeah, some of the most inhuman people. Yeah I think I think it'll adapt like anything

it'll adapt and grow and improve over the next 20-30 years when it becomes you know for lack of a better term mainstream sport where you look at say a footballer who played like a Gary Ablett type and you look at the work he's gone through to get to that point where now that CrossFit's been around for 10 years and in 20 years and 30 years it'll be around for a lot longer that you see those pathways and those progressions so that people aren't getting injured and and they aren't yeah having those issues that they have

now because it's a teething period it's a like we're adapting and we're evolving to learn that that sport is in fact a sport and not necessarily a training modality as it's probably seen as currently. Yeah, for sure. And the best thing about everything that's new is nine times out of ten most people are trying to drive a best practice. It doesn't have to be health and fitness, it can be anything. They're trying to drive a best practice so there's gonna be problems with it. I think we just culturally need to show a bit more patience, potentially.

Patience is probably the right word. We want things to change, we want things to change now and change happens over a long period of time in the 60s. And everyone resists change straight away. We didn't resist change in the 60s but there were still some female weightlifters, there were still some female powerlifters because it was a powerlifting thing in the 60s. Was it a thin thing or was it more just an underground thing? It's been extremely, extremely underground just till recently to be honest until probably like the last five or ten years. Well, Jodafracture, that's been powerlifting for 50 years actually, so it's probably been in the 60s.

As far as like Ed Cohen and stuff, probably back then in the 60s. I don't know, I'm just butchering that. All the big dogs around then were taking elements from powerlifting and committing that in their bodybuilding regime as well. Things to be learned all around for sure. Tools from tour boxes, kids. Who'd have thought? We got them off so I got a great question from them. Oh wait, no I don't. I've already asked it. And we already talked about the other one. I think I... Like you already answered my first question. I got a great one.

This is a problem. You came with two questions, good from you Cam. I was going to say, changing the pace a bit on the business side of things, I think another thing you can learn from CrossFit is just how they go about their business. Say what you will about the sport, but you've got to respect what that business has done and that brand name and how it's grown and the way they do it. I think it's so clearly cut that it's a community-based sport and people throw around the word 'cult' and it almost fits in place there.

I think that's just how they've grown so big and such a good culture and drive is through that community-based aspect of it. They've presented a really solid, fun product and it's generated a lot of interest. Everyone wants to be a part of something. Everyone wants to be a part of a group or a subculture or something like that. It's literally just a no-name event at a farm. At a farm. At a farm. It really was just out of the back of a ranch. I watched the 10-year... It's a great documentary, a really good documentary. I loved it.

Man, that's so cool. Every year I watch the games and I think, I could never do that. It's like my biggest pet hate when people say I could never do that but I watch athletes like Matty Frazier and Brent Smith and I'm like, no way. I'm now 28 and this kid's 20. How old is Matty Frazier? 24. He's a beast. He won a last year in the freedom of money this year as well and he's just an absolute savage. It shows what you can do with that culture and that family. We push Virtus Family in here and that's what makes places like this special.

There's a lot of those around and it helps people get off the couch and stop going to Maccas on a Friday night because that's what family time is. And these are the things, if we accumulated hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Virtuses or gyms that are similar like CrossFit has, then there's a lot more places and spaces where people can go in and be comfortable and actually enjoy exercise and be supported and make friends. At the end of the day that's what we're all here for. We're all here to create a widespread change and make the world a better place.

All being one person at a time. It makes me excited to think about JPS. Well how long has JPS been for? About five or six I think they've been going. Yeah so I imagine them in five to ten years. I imagine Virtus in five to ten years. It takes a lot of the scare factor out of the future knowing that if you drive a best practice and you really do work hard towards presenting a good product, looking after people's best interests which is ultimately their health and letting all the cards fall as they work from there, you're going to have a really solid foundation to be proud of in ten years.

So where is Virtus in ten years? It's a very, very good question. Talking to Erica we're going to have this really cool competitive kind of element to it where we find out who the healthiest people are on the planet. And it's going to be called the healthiest person on earth. It's going to be really cool. So who can eat the most amount of broccoli in a year? I might have to break my no editing rule for that last 30 seconds of rubbish. Where's Virtus in ten years? That's a very good question. We've only been here for 20 months, 21 months I think so we're not even… Say nearly two years, don't say 20 months.

No, like Jed's 24 months old in a couple of months so… How old are you? Yeah, we're almost here for two years so we've still got, you know, if we're here at the four year mark then we can start thinking about the five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten month. All we want to do is we want to create I guess widespread positive behavioural change. So, you know, I've got this crazy idea and crazy dream of having a one stop shop facility that's got from GPs to performance coaches and everyone in the middle. And it allows

that whole continuum of health and fitness to be serviced in one space where all of the, I guess the staff and the professionals talk to each other. And it's not a physios versus performance coaches versus doctors versus specialists, it's one beautiful environment where everyone helps improve everyone. So yeah, like if we can create a facility where we can, I guess, help as many people as possible with the system like that, that's where we want to get to. So it's, yeah, what it looks like, who knows? It'll adapt and grow and… It's exciting indeed. Yeah, it certainly is.

Where do you see yourself in five, ten years, I guess as a coach, as a practitioner? Yeah, much bigger beard and much smaller muscles. No, I honestly have no idea. And I always say the same thing, I never have a five year plan. Give it up. Yeah, so I never have a five year plan or let alone a ten year plan. I just do what I love, do what I'm passionate about to the best of my ability and just follow the road as it comes. And that is what I've done for a couple of years now and it seems to be working out okay.

I've got this opportunity in America, so I'll just pursue that. I have no idea what's going on after that, so I bought myself a one way ticket. I'll be there till my money runs out, get a one way ticket back and then see what happens after. But I guess one thing I'm always trying to do is just improve my craft in some manner. Just be a better coach, be a better person and just do what I love doing. I don't ever want to, I'm not someone who's too fussed about money. I don't ever want to be the richest person or the most famous person alive.

If that doesn't fuss me, I just want to do what I want to do every day, help people train, mess around, spend time with my girlfriend. Do that. Lucky you put that in. Sorry not sorry. That's my five year plan, I don't have a five year plan. I love that. That's really cool. I live the same because every time I sit down and try a five year, three year plan myself, I stress my head off. I don't know and then I always go to my mum and I'm like I don't know what I want to do in five years and she goes great, that's awesome.

I think goal setting and I definitely don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. I think that life is just so constantly adapting and changing and that it's almost silly to try and say that in five years I'm going to be here. I'm all for manifest, speaking what you want to manifest and speaking it into action and the law of attraction and that. But at the end of the day you need to be adaptable and you need to be ready for whatever's going to come. And personally if I were to be doing the same

thing in ten years time or if I were to be doing what I thought I was going to be doing in ten years time, I would personally see that as a little bit of failure on my part. I want life to be different and constantly changing and evolving and doing different things. The way I kind of see it, as soon as you start setting goals, like you want to have an idea of where you want to get to but as soon as you start setting goals, really specific goals, like longer than a year, two, three, four, five years, the goalposts move.

What you're aiming for ends up moving and you need to pivot and shift and then start working towards something else so that goal that you wanted you don't necessarily want anymore. I sat down a couple, maybe two months ago, a month ago now and did goals for Virtus and I was like well my goals past 12 months are really ambiguous because I know kind of like I just said where I want to get us to but where we want to get to but what it actually looks like. No idea. But for my next 12 months I've got targets I want to hit and I've got things I want to do and we aim for those and then we start looking.

I'll note that the broker lets you have the options available later. The way I see specific goal setting, I'm the same as you guys, I love that people do it and I love that it works for them but I sit down with my clients and I say let's make specific goals for why you're here. Let's get stronger for the reasons that you want to be here because if we get super specific with our super long term goals, the analogy that I like to think of is it's like jumping a very great distance. As soon as your feet hit the ground you're committed to the trajectory, you can't change anything.

So as soon as you put something down on paper and that's something that you want to chase, you're committed to the trajectory. That's great that that's what you want but like you say, you've got to have your feet on the ground because if an obstacle comes at you, you've got to go around it, you've got to go through it or over it. But if your feet are off the ground and you've already made that commitment to the trajectory, you can't change until your feet hit the ground again. Some people get caught up in the element of disappointment when they don't make their goals which is fine.

I could count the number of times I've made a mistake this year on all three of our pairs of hands but every time I've made a mistake it's with my feet on the ground. I haven't been jumping in the air because if I am and then I realize that I can't make my goal when I want to make it, that disappointment can set in and some people can get turned from chasing that dream. Just keep your feet on the ground but then that's what my mom's good for, she's just like you know what you want to do, great.

Even in school, it's that class where it's like careers class, year 10 or year 9, hey let's write down what we want to do for the rest of our lives. I failed that because I took the thing home and my mom had this note that your son did not participate and couldn't and I was like I just didn't know what to say and my mom goes okay that's fine. What do you feel like doing? Acting or maybe some carpentry? Just some really weird things. Dad's like put them in a blender, that'd be the worst taste of milkshake in the world and I was like I think it's perfect.

I was like yes, thanks mom. Sue's amazing though. Sue's a pickleball. Yeah well I think that's part of the issue with our, to go down another rabbit hole with our education system is we're expected to know what we want to do when we hit 18 or 19. And like I love sports so I'm going to go do exercise science which most exercise science students do and they get to the end and they're like oh shit, there's no job. Yeah I can't find a job or they want teachers, I'll go do a dip head or I'll

go do a master of teaching or you know like me I was like well shit, I want to coach, I want to help make people better but how do I do that? Oh exercise physiology looks good because we get government rebates. That was like, that was genuinely the thought process, one of the thought process back in whatever it was, 2012 or. Back in the day, which was like Wednesday probably. Thursday afternoon and like I jumped into that going hey I love sport, I want to train people to be better but yeah this is probably a safe option and I got like 10 months into that Masters I'm like fuck this, this isn't me, this isn't what I want to do.

Yeah good. So it took me like, we have a lot of interns in here and it took me failing and I didn't fail, I passed, get around me. I'm out of here. Yeah sorry about that. This is workplace chemistry and I do have to take it. But I did miss, yeah that's going to sound real good, everyone's speakers are going to blow up for about 15 seconds there. But yeah, realising what I didn't want to do like completely allowed me to again pivot and figure out that this is what I want to do, I wanted

to create somewhere like Virtus and the last couple of years it's been, it's been a blessing that I did something I didn't want to do because it shows you what you don't want to do. So like for all the young exercise science students or students or people that are upset that they don't know what they want to do with the rest of their lives, it's the best thing because you've got everything open to you. No doors closed and walls. Yeah you spend four years in accounting, doing an accounting degree and realise holy shit I don't want to be an accountant.

But all you know is accounting. Yeah exactly, exactly. This is the thing that I told my sister, she was stressing VCE and she's like I don't know what I want to do but I've got to get like a 90, I think it was like a guitar back then, I had to get a 90 to get into this thing and I was like is that what you want to do? Well I don't know. Sounds good. I'm like cool you know, drop the, she had like six units to do in her VCE and I was like just

drop two of them, do four and get a really strong ATAR and then if you want to go and do something, you have that at your disposal forever. And then she did it and the teachers all thought that she was a dickhead, she wasn't going to get anywhere blah blah blah and now she's killing it. I can't tell you what she's doing because she's got a new job and they made a role for her. But that's the power of having the freedom to explore life you know, she's got all these life experiences now because she's enriched herself in so many different things.

She went into a job interview and they said you're so good we don't want to lose you, let me make a job for you. And she's been chasing the things that she wants to do. Yeah you can't do that with a 90 ATAR and then go and be a doctor if you don't want to be a doctor. And that's a big commitment in itself too. I'll use what we were just talking about to ask you one of the questions I was going to ask at the end but what is success to you? Nice, good question. So this is something I do actually think about a little bit.

Success for me is sort of relating back to what I alluded to before. Success for me would mean doing whatever I want to do every single day and then feeding that into success would mean not changing what I want to do. Not changing what I want to do for any amount of money. So if someone came up to me and said I'll give you $3 million to do this job. I would have to be successful personally I would think that no I'm so happy doing what I want to do right now even though I'm earning $70,000 or $50,000 or $100,000 whatever it may be.

You know that I don't want that $3 million that I'm enjoying this way too much I wouldn't enjoy doing that so I decline that. It's cash! You take the cash and then you run! And then you do what you want to do! I buy so much pizza with that. Shout out to Jamie. Think of the donos man. But that is 100% success to me. Doing what I want to do every day and there is that sort of triad of how you figure out what you want to do. It's like something that you're passionate about, something you're actually good at and something that is profitable.

And I think within that little Venn diagram that's sort of probably where your best route will be. And that's what I'm doing you know like something like coaching. It's something that I naturally find myself good at like relating to people, teaching people and I'm passionate about it. I love helping people and people want to give me money for that so I'm okay to do that. So success would just mean doing that every day for the rest of my life or doing something similar to that for the rest of my life and just following that path.

I'm going to really quickly tap onto that because some of my things that I've been doing with the last 8 weeks I've been recording those videos. I had a question from a girl this week and she said like man how do you get out of bed in the morning because you know some days I'm just so exhausted and I feel like it's soft when I was that flat. But one of the things that really gets me out of bed is knowing that what I do helps me serve the world to make my little world a better place.

And doing that has helped me meet you guys and you know the Virtus family and people from Woodford's and people like Jamie and Charlie and even like I got to meet Jacob or JP Caukey. I got to meet some amazing people and that's what gets me out of bed in the morning. Yes winter sucks when you wake up at 4.45 and you've got someone at 6 but the fact that they're going to come and see me at 6 puts a smile on my face knowing that they're going to come and get better. Let me expose their weaknesses and train their strengths for them so they're putting that sort of faith in me.

That's what gets me out of bed in the morning and if you do that, even if you want to fucking paint, people always say to me there's no money in that. It's not about the money, it's about the merit. Do you feel value being provided to someone else that you're making their world better? If you are then who cares if you're making money off of it. If you want to make money then go get stuck in a 9 to 5 job that you hate doing and then not have the energy to do the hobby that you want to do at the end of that.

But if you want to paint and you can't afford in quotations to paint, do your 9 to 5, paint after work. Feel how much more that regenerates you so that you can go and do the thing that you don't enjoy as much to give you the energy back so that you can afford to do the things that you love. So that's for me, I'm the same here. Success for me is just what is it that I'm great at doing or that I'm passionate about doing which for me at the moment is coaching. That's how I serve the world, coaching and educating and helping people learn to be a bit better and I'm going to keep doing that forever.

There will always be an element of coaching or teaching even if I'm not PTing. That will adapt and grow and change. Exactly and that's something that weight training like the barbell, I love the barbell for what it's taught me and it's taught me to adapt. Like I have to adapt, if you don't adapt you die. So the barbell has taught me to adapt or I fail and if I fail it's not the worst thing but I don't like failing. I like, you know, that's what I like to do. If I liked picking it up or I want to do it again so I go adapt.

So I'll still be coaching, I'll still be teaching even if I'm not in the health and fitness industry, even if I go into a completely different industry, if I'm selling caravans again, I've got to coach and I've got to teach. Because the people that come and see me to buy the product off me have to know where I'm coming from if I can resonate with them. Success for me is just resonating with as many people as I can about the things that I'm passionate about, things I love and then if I can go home, lay in bed and feel like I haven't been an asshole too much during the day.

Oops, you have. Sorry to burst your bubble. I'm not sleeping in bed! But yeah, that's honestly how I sleep man. I try and go home and I go, well I wasn't a complete cock head today to everyone. I was a bit grumpy today so I'll just be better tomorrow. And if I fuck someone over I'll apologise to them and I'll just be better tomorrow and if I fuck myself over I'll apologise to myself and I'll be better tomorrow and just keep adapting, keep adapting, keep adapting. And when I'm 90 I'll stop adapting. I don't. Get on growth hormone.

And then somebody will come in and they'll go, do you want $2 million? And they'll be like, no! Cash! Alright, we've got a bunch of questions for yourself. We'll ask you, you can be as succinct or as long-winded as you want. Or vague. I'm not going to ask Cam purely because if you guys want to hear about Cam you can listen to my podcast with him. Yeah, so get excited. Which will be, this will muggle you, which will be before this, that this was recorded, before my muckers. Yeah, how's that for me to munch on my muckers?

Someone give me a whiteboard, you need to draw that out. It's podcast exception. If you could give teenage you one piece of advice, what would it be? Oh, I was actually thinking about this like today maybe or yesterday. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to get all these answers. I'm going to answer them the same way in our podcast. And everybody's going to be like, this sounds familiar, this sounds familiar. It would 100% just be to slow down and relax and calm down and just be patient. Like I was such a stress head when I was younger.

Someone can tell Katie Dean to chill out. I'll tell her, I'll tell her. No, she's doing good things. Good answer, really good answer. But yeah, like I just think, I just needed to calm down a bit and just stress less. Like I was 18, I had no troubles to worry about. And even now, like I've chilled out a lot more. You know, I don't regret anything. Like it's got me to the stage where I'm at right now, which I'm pleased with. But I just think that too many people just take themselves a little bit too seriously at such a young age.

And I was definitely like 100% one of those people. Yeah, me too. But then, you know, you only know what you know, I guess. How do you tell the heartbroken kid at 14 that he's not really heartbroken? He knows that he's freaking heartbroken. You're like, ah, three more girls out there. And he's like, that was the way I looked at her. That was me. We kissed. She is. What is the best piece of advice you've been given? Single piece of advice. So I'll probably relate this back to work and like coaching and stuff. The best

bit of coaching advice and coaching tip that I've been given is that people's time in the gym with you very well may be the highlight of the day. So they may be coming in with, you know, money problems, relationship problems, really serious health problems, depression. You know, uni stress, whatever. And that 30 to 45 minutes that they're spending with you, they're paying to spend with you to do whatever exercise. That could be the biggest highlight of the day or the thing getting them through the week. And I think that's something that I try and think back of, like, as you said, when it's that, you know, that 5 a.m.

session in the winter or that 830 p.m. session night when all you want to do is go home and eat. I think, like, okay, have a little bit of perspective. You know, this person is paying to spend their time with me and they're paying, you know, to get my knowledge or get my help. And this could really be the thing that's getting them through. And a lot of the times, you know, people have opened up to me and said that. You know, they've been going through some hard times and said, like, you know, this is really helping me get through this or it's good to have someone to talk to that isn't my wife or isn't my partner or whatever.

So that's probably the biggest piece of advice that I've gotten. Yeah, that's really cool. I think as coaches, we get lost in our own world sometimes and we've got to remember what we're doing and why we're doing it. Yeah. We're there to provide a service for the guys and girls that come in. Yeah, for sure. It's one of the most rewarding jobs that I've ever had. Yeah. Especially when I had that conversation with someone and they said the worst day about a man just picked up 100 kilos and I think I'm going to kick your dog for 10 years.

Go for it. You don't do it for the awesome hours and lots of cash? Well, you know, one of my uncles said, "Oh, I hear P.T.'s clean up." I was like, "The only cleaning I do is with the broom." I have not seen you clean for months. I don't even think we have a broom, do we? You definitely don't clean. They're in the broom cupboard, mate. They're in the broom cupboard. You clean and jerk. I said you definitely don't clean and jerk. Hey. Wow. What's the nicest thing you've ever done for someone? Oh, wow. Not put a dagger in my heart for a change.

What's the nicest thing you've ever done for someone? I don't know, to be honest. I've done some pretty nice things. Air bubbles, blows, nah. Yeah, I definitely couldn't put it down to one big grand gesture of giving my kidney to someone, but no, I tried to give blood once, so I'm absolutely petrified of needles. Petrified. This is the only reason I'll never do steroids. Petrified of needles. I tried to give blood when I was 18, and all I remember was the lady talking to me, and then next minute just waking up and there was a pool of blood near my arm.

I was like, "Fuck." I knew I shouldn't have tried to be a good person. This is what you get. This is what you get. That's the universe saying, "Josh, you're an asshole. Always. Take the cash." I try to be a pretty decent person in general most of the time. I truly do think that it comes back to you. You be a good person and you'll attract good things into your life. Definitely. I'm a big believer in that. As big as I am on science, I'm actually a pretty spiritual person and believe in attraction and stuff like that.

I think spiritual is. I'm big on that. Be a good person. Good. Really simple. I like it. You're probably going to repeat yourself a little bit, but what is your philosophy, a really succinct philosophy on how you live and what you do day to day? I think similarly to what Cameron said before, just try not to be a dick every day, and then coming back to my success is just do what I want to do every day. If doing what I love and doing what I want to do doesn't hurt anyone or conflict with anything, then I'm going to do that.

Just serve the world the best you can and try and help people, which is I guess why we're all in this. We love helping people and building connections and human relationships. I guess that's my philosophy is just do what I love every day. Be a good person. Don't be a dick. Good. I like it. Hashtag. Hashtag don't be a dick. No turkey. Hashtag be better. Hashtag go turkeys. Shout out to Jamie. He's going to have to buy shares. Send my voice to the bell. What's the last book you read start to finish and what did you learn from it?

The last book I read, I'm like halfway through like six books. Yeah, same. So I'll just touch on what I'm currently reading is Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday, which is a fantastic book thus far. In that, he's talking a lot about like stoic philosophy and just a lot of what we've spoken about, which is just like being a good person. He talks about like no matter what stage of your life you're in, whether you're in your aspiration phase or your success phase or your failure phase, is that no matter what phase you're in, ego will always be detrimental to your success or to your goals.

And it's never, ever, ever, ever going to help you in some way to carry an ego. And it's pretty interesting, like he'll talk about, you know, people like to say all these successful people and they've got these big egos like Kanye West and Donald Trump, where often they're more or less the outliers. Like it's the, I don't know if you've heard about like the survivorship bias where it's like some people walk on the backs of others just to make it and then others will bring them with them. And so you go to Donald Trump says, they've made it because they've walked on the backs of others.

And then you've got your other successor, like Derek Cressy who's very successful, who's brought a lot of people with him. Yeah, for sure. You know, he's brought him up as he's raised, Elliot Hulse is great on strength camp, he's brought a lot of people up with him. Some people look at them from the outside and they're like, well, you know, they'd have to have some ego. Yeah, it's generally, to be honest, the people who are the most humble and with the most humility that do make it to the top. Like those people like Kanye West and Donald Trump, they're very much just the outliers.

For every Kanye West, there's a million people like that with such a massive ego that didn't make it. It's going to be the people who are humble and ones with humility that generally will get their successes. And they get the longevity of their name too. Like Donald Trump's not going to have a lasting legacy. I think he'll have his albums, but he's not going to have anything that's going to make him memorable forever. For sure. I love Theresa. Yeah, exactly right. I love her first album, by the way. I still listen to it every morning. Is that what I lose your soul for?

You got it man, you got it. I listen to her podcast. I love the Theresa podcast. Look at Jesus, man. Who are your biggest influences? I'm going to two-part this question, as a coach and as a person. As a coach, so it's hard. Like right now as a coach, it's obviously Eric Cressy. We're moving there in a week, so I'm trying to be an absolute sponge to everything that he's put out and all the content that we get sent as interns. So we're getting weekly content from him. So I'm like heavily into the overhead management side of stuff and the shoulder anatomy side of stuff.

So he's influencing me massively now, but on the whole, and I'd hate to say it, but Woody has been a big influence on me. He's probably the person that brought me from just who I was to an actual performance coach and then I learned what I could with him and then piggybacked off that and learned from other guys. He's been awesome for all of us. Yeah, for sure. There's no doubting it. Say what you will about the man. At the end of the day, he's produced some other good people around him and enabled us to connect and meet other people.

So yeah, I'd probably say that, and guys like Jamie Smith, you boys yourselves, J.P. Caukey in more so the powerlifting side of things. He does a lot for the community there, so I'm a big fan of him as well. Good. Strong mother. Strong man. 5 strong mother. 5 strong, good. Excellent answer. If you could be remembered in one sentence, what would it be? Looks like drug. Fight a dollar for every time. Do you know, did anyone ever tell you you look like Drake? No, that's never told. I would be a million. You'd have 3 million dollars.

Cash, baby! I'd have to probably, yeah, just relate it to everything that was said so far. Just being a good person. At the end of the day, what more can you ask for? Have people show up at your funeral and to say that you're a good dude. You're a loving person, giving generosity. Swole. Swole. Strong. 5 strong. 5 strong. A little bit. For you, huge. A couple of favourites. Favourite quote? Favourite quote? I've had a really good quote recently, but I'm probably not going to remember it. Classic dude. Yeah, classic humility. So, I'll go back to the quote before about luck.

I'm a great believer in luck. I find the harder I work, the more of it I have. Cool. Good. Favourite movie? Favourite movie? Favourite movie? It used to be The Italian Job. Oh, Jason Statham. Yes, what a man. What a man. Stop it. Yeah. Good. I don't watch movies. Favourite recording artist apart from Mother Teresa? That's my one too, guys. You're coming here first. I mean, it's a great album. Come on! Favourite recording artist? I like Matchbox 20. They're definitely not my favourite, but I'm just on the spot, so I'm just going to say the same thing.

Last time I listened to you, I was like, selling Matchbox 20-ish. Favourite hobby? Non-lifting related? Yeah, sure. Drinking wine with my girlfriend and watching Orange is the New Black. That's really cute. I can imagine it too. It's real. Just like legs all over the place. That's probably what we're doing tonight. We will be doing that tonight. You guys are the best. Favourite resource? Like educational resource? Or just improvement resource? Well, I think like social media, just following people on social media gets so much out of it. But yeah, like honestly, my learning lately, my resource for learning lately has just been like the crazy stuff.

Like I've just been balls deep in that and haven't really looked into anything else. But I will say, so Greg Knuckles has probably got some of the best stuff that I've read. Just like pretty relatable and he's sort of easily digestible stuff. So his website, Stronger By Science, is go to. Cool, I read some of his stuff. Yeah, his guides. So his bench guide, deadlifts guides. I don't know if his bench guide is finished. His writing style is really, I like it a lot. He's a really good writer. I wish we could do that. Be good.

Be better. Have cool write-ups and stuff. We will, we will. If we don't do it and try, we probably won't have enough. His write-ups are really, really cool. Yeah, they're very dense, very dense, very good. Dense but cool, just like you. He's always going as a grain, which is good. Yeah, it's cheeky. I'm also grainy. You're cheeky. Anyway. Any more from you? No, I mean that's it. I just wanted to sit in and listen to him. He's one of my favourite people ever. Knuckles. You guys know podcasts aren't visual, right? Yeah, there's going to be so much that just the listener will have no idea what's going on.

So what can you do to keep us away from Knuckles? Nothing, nothing, nothing really. Just, I guess this will be where I thank you. Is this where I thank you? Sure, why not? Yeah, so I guess thanks for having me down and having a lift. Thanks for having such a pleasure. Keep doing what you guys are doing, doing good things down here. Pushing the envelope and spreading the good word, which is what we're all about. So yeah, thank you, thank you, keep up. You're welcome man, we appreciate it. I might release this tomorrow if you're resigning now.

Mate, thanks for coming, it was a lot of fun. I hope a lot of people get a lot out of it. Cheers to you. Thank you, thanks. Double snail, I'm going to piss.