I think one of my biggest fears isn’t failing. It’s getting everything I ever said I wanted and still feeling empty. Still looking down on myself. Still looking for something else.
Being financially successful, a professional in whatever field, the approval and the recognition. But I wake up one morning and the same shadows are still there. Still feeling like something’s missing.
Everything I was chasing was never a cure. It was all bullshit that delayed the conversation I needed to have with myself.
This scares me more than failure. I could make it to the top of the mountain and realize the mountain was never really "it".
My journey isn’t about winning anything at all. All it's about is making sure I don’t abandon myself on the way and those that need me.
Anyone want a free dog?
I'm happy to announce that coaching spots are finally available for
- online
- 1:1 personal training
Training has been something that's been the anchor through every version of myself over the last 8 years. I would love to share and guide others with the same intensity and honesty that I give myself.
There's now a link in my bio or DM me.
The beginner phase is the most underrated period in any lifters journey.
Your nervous system is adapting, your body is responding to stimulus it's never encountered before. These gains usually take advanced lifters months of careful programming and intention. At the start you can do it in weeks.
Most people waste it looking for the perfect program and the perfect program is structured, simple and one that you'll actually follow.
Keep it simple, stay consistent and well fed.
If you're in this phase and want to make sure you use it properly, enquire with me.
When I first started training I was in high school, around 15 years ago.
At first, I simply enjoyed training. The new gains, the possibilities, the feeling that I could become something different to who I currently was. The structure grounded me during periods where I was resisting flying off the rails in other areas of life.
Like many people, I was on and off with the gym for years. But eventually all those sessions added up. Enough time under the bar accumulated to where training stopped being something I merely visited and became something I genuinely embodied.
I’m grateful I grew up without constant social media comparison. I wasn’t endlessly exposed to people ten or twenty years ahead of me, enhanced physiques, or curated versions of reality every hour of the day. I think many young people today are being psychologically robbed of the beginner phase because comparison convinces them they are already behind.
My advice is to stay in your lane. Enjoy training for what it is, acknowledge where you are honestly and voluntarily submit to that stage instead of resisting it. There is dignity in being a beginner.
You can attack the process with the same seriousness and intent as someone decades into their journey. The difference is merely time under tension with reality.
Don’t let what you see rob you of your right to enjoy the start.
You don't need to understand cortisol, recovery pathways, muscle protein synthesis, nervous system fatigue, insulin sensitivity or adaption curves. Fuck that shit.
I built muscle over the years without a nerdy ass exercise science degree and so can you.
All you need is the principle, the action and a reason.
Don't over complicate it. Basics over everything.
Before our son is even here, you’ve already become a mother. I don’t think it's just biology alone, I think it’s from the way you love, the way you give and the way you soften every room you walk into without even trying.
There is something about our love that feels familiar to me, like a ghost only angels can see. As if it existed long before we found each other. It was waiting somewhere in the dark, patient and eternal and life finally brought us face to face with it.
Somewhere along the way we stopped loving the idea of each other, simply began seeing one another clearly beyond projections, beyond expectation and beyond the conditionings of our own minds.
Perhaps that is why our love feels ancient. Like standing around a fire that men and women once stood around thousands of years ago, holding the people they loved beneath the stars with the same warmth, the same devotion and the same promise to protect each other against the cold of the world.
You free my mind like a hymn to the gods with something sacred. It reminds me that life is not only suffering and survival, but tenderness too.
You are the most loving and giving soul I’ve ever met, and I genuinely cannot imagine a woman more perfect to become the mother of our child and my wife one day.
Happy Mother’s Day, my love.
Our little boy is lucky already.
Sometimes we aren’t the man we want to be because we structurally aren’t able to support that version of ourselves at the time. You haven’t created the environment that can carry that identity. There is a difference between not wanting to be that man and not having the conditions to sustain him, somewhere there is a bottleneck.
Most people misinterpret this. They think they lack discipline or desire, when in reality they’ve built a life that cannot hold the weight of what they say they want. You don’t rise into a new identity through absolute willpower. You build a structure that makes that identity inevitable.
For example, if you have a girlfriend that you think is toxic, that holds you back from becoming who you need to be, then perhaps she does inhibit that. She does not facilitate that version of you. She dims something that needs to grow.
But this does not make her inherently toxic. It means who she is does not fit who you need to be.
And that is a bitter pill to swallow. The truth always is.
It removes blame and replaces it with responsibility. You are no longer the victim of her nature. You are the man who must decide whether his environment supports his evolution.
You should not punish someone for being who they are because they don’t fit who you are. You need to let them be. The idea you originally created of them no longer exists once this realization takes place. You were relating to them through a version of yourself that is no longer accurate.
And this extends beyond relationships.
Your environment is not just people. It is your finances, your habits, your schedule, your standards and your daily actions. Every part of your life is either reinforcing the man you are becoming or quietly pulling you back into who you were.
So if there is a gap between who you are and who you want to be, don’t just question your desire.
Question your structure as well as your shadows.
The man you respect is not built in bursts of motivation. He is built in an environment that can sustain him.
Trying out some new equipment at the new @peakperformancecoaching facility during my upper day. Was killer.
Everything is feeling great for me and I am keen to push some heavy ass weight.
Our very own @liam.etheve 🤩 how is THIS for a transformation. This is what it means to love bodybuilding, and love the lifestyle.
Liam completely changed his life from working in the mines in WA, and completely changed the way he lived his life, his mindset and continued his love for bodybuilding and harnessed that in a way that helped him thrive through all phases.
And that’s the thing… It really isn’t just about training hard and following a plan. It’s about becoming someone you’re proud of. Proving to yourself that you can do hard shit and come out the other side stronger. Showing up day in and day out.
It really is all in the way someone executes. and Liam trains hard as fuc*, keeps his nutrition simple and shows up every single day even when he doesn’t feel like it, and that shows.
No over complicating it, just finding the beauty in the simplicity of a process he loves.
We are so proud to have Liam on our team, and it’s mind blowing what he has achieved this year alone 🤯
on we trot, and we can’t wait to see what comes of the work he continues to do. 🤝🏽 #TEAMPEAK #PEAKPREPTEAM
It's so deranged that I thought I looked terrible during my prep. All the people I respect the most told me the opposite. My perception was twisted. This isn't a unique experience I'm pretty sure it happens to many.
At the simplest level my perception was shaped by my state. Many things started stacking on top of each other. Neurotransmitters tied to mood, reward and perception were altered. Everything trended negatively. My baseline became harsher, more critical and less forgiving. That alone shifted how I interpreted what I saw. My reference point changed.
I wasn't comparing myself to "normal" anymore. I was comparing myself to an imagined, perfected version that doesn’t actually exist in reality. I lost the ability to see the whole picture. My standard rose as my condition improved and the better I got the worse I felt because my expectations outpaced reality.
I was also judging myself from different angels as my missus is pregnant and I was struggling to be there. When my internal state was unstable, exhausted, anxious and disconnected, that feeling looked for something concrete to attach to and my body became the easiest target.
There was no objective assessment, it was all projection. I became stuck in a paradoxical loop. I got objectively better, that became my new baseline, my mind raised the standard and I felt behind again. From the outside I looked insane. From the inside I felt incomplete.
I don't regret my choice in any way, I did what had to be done. But it's so interesting to analyse what went on during this experience. What a strange sport/art this is.
