The Power of Powerlifting with John Sheridan

You're listening to the PT Profit Podcast. Today I'm sitting down with coach John Sheridan and we are discussing the power of powerlifting. And honestly, we're really discussing the power of movement in general. So let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance in movement, package and position their products and services, and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

What's up, coach? Thank you so much for pushing play on another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson, and today I have a very special episode with coach John Sheridan. He is the strength and conditioning coach, gym owner, and what he calls himself, a lifetime mediocre athlete, burger enthusiast, and a raging coffee snob. As you can most likely hear, it's summertime here. And so my kids are home and they're hanging out with me today. And John was an incredible trooper because my husband was supposed to be home when we recorded this episode and he wasn't. And my children were just being crazy in the episode, but he just handled it like a champ and really didn't miss a beat and shared some really powerful things about his experience in building the gym, his experience and how he felt as an athlete, his experience from powerlifting and creating novice competitions to now doing a 24 hour bike ride, and how he's really just used his life experience and really created in a movement down under. And he is going to powerfully share that with us inside of this episode. So with without further ado, let's go ahead and roll that interview. What's up, John? Thank you so much for joining me on the show today. How are you? I'm doing so good. I'm really excited to dive. So for those of you who are new to your work, I'd love for you to share with us a little bit about who you serve, how you got there.

Yeah, cool. So my name's John Sheridan. I own a gym called Burley Strength in Canberra, Australia, where like, sort of focused on the powerlifting end of things. A bit of strongman, bit of general strength and conditioning stuff as well. That's sort of how I got into coaching. I started lifting weights like 14. I'm in my mid-30s now and got into powerlifting in like 2010. I did my first comp, competed for the better part of A decade. Had a really good time doing that and then during that period, opened a gym with another person who sort of paid me to run his gym for a couple of years. He got out and I took over the business and now it's my own. And, yeah, through that time, we've done a lot in the powerlifting world. I've been hosting comps since 2014. I think I've hosted something like 50 powerlifting mates over the years. We were, to the best of my knowledge, the first sporting organization in Australia to offer a third gender division in amateur sporting contest. So we run novice powerlifting comps, which are like unsanctioned comps for new people to enter into the sport, which is like how I got into the sport and part of the reason we do what we do. And so, yeah, I was really stoked to be able to be in that position, to offer a third category for people who don't feel like they fit with the gender binary and want an opportunity to compete in the sport that I love. It doesn't get to happen at the same level for the sanction competitions because that's like a, you know, a national and a world body thing that I don't have a lot of power in, but in my little niche, I'm more than happy to open the platform up to more people and be in a position to do that. So we serve a bunch of people who like powerlifting and want to take that either semi seriously or it's just something they do for fun as part of their training. And beyond that, I'm generally more than willing to work with anyone who wants to improve their life through lifting weights and training hard and doing those kind of things. Because for me, that's been probably the biggest and most positive impact that my life has had is through sport and training and things like that. And I just like being able to pass that message on.

Oh, my gosh, that's amazing. And there's so many things to dive into and I have so many questions, so. So first, that's amazing, the gender binary, the third category, because I know that that is a very controversial topic, at least right now here in the States. Like, it's just a lot of people are. Are just very conflicted about it for no other reason than fairness and strength. So, yeah, it's very. It's. That's just really powerful. So I want. I am, and I, of course, will talk about that, but I am curious about, you know, you were talking about novice in, in the sport, and so I'm curious How you. And how someone really transitions from like I could be interested in this because if you're looking at it from, as a novice, from a 30,000 view watching these competitions, it's a very EAS to like that's not for me. I'm never going to be able to do that. So how do you show people essentially that this could be for them?

Yeah, absolutely. And that's part of the reason we do the things that we do in our novice comp. So I'm very fortunate to be in a facility that's like 450 square meters. I have no idea what that is in feet but someone else can do the maths for me. So we have a pretty big facility and therefore have the ability to run relatively big competitions that are run very smoothly. Like so we run three or four novice mates a year which like I said, you don't have to be a member of a federation. You don't have to wear a soft suit. You. We don't do weigh ins, we don't do like first, second and third sort of overall winners in the same way because all of that stuff is things that I think don't act or take away from the ability to step into the sport. Right. I really like powerlifting because I think it's probably the most accessible sport in the world or very close to it because anyone who's walked into a gym before at some point in their life, or in some cases hasn't walked in, has been wheeled in or whatever the case may be, if you've picked up a barbell then you can do some form of the sport. And that's the thing that I really like about it. And so the more we can do in my books to sort of open that sport up to people, the better. So removing weigh ins. I made the very silly mistake in my first powerlifting computer of attempting to cut weight in a way that like I had no concept of how to do it properly. And my youngest brother still likes to tell a story about how I used most of the cling wrap in my parents house and all of the hot water and then still managed not to make weight most mostly because I'd been, I'd read some advice. I. I learned a lot from the Elite FTS website back in the day and Dave Tate and that crew. And I read some advice on that that was like, oh, if you're really struggling with the thirst then you should like suck on ice chips. And I misrepresented that in I should like essentially eat like icy poles, like flavored icy poles. So I had probably like several hundred calories in sugar in the form of icy poles. Just justify it to myself that I was quenching my thirst and missed weight by like, you know, a couple of kilos. So like five or six pounds. It was well off and it nearly ruined the experience. But I'm an idiot and I like obsessing about dumb things. So I continued into the sport. But for a lot of people, that sort of thing puts them off. So not having to step onto a scale, the only minimums we've got in terms of strength levels is you've got to be able to lift the barbell. We run the same rules as a standard competition. We're not afraid to give you red lights and be like, no, that wasn't technically good enough. We didn't squat to depth or whatever the case may be. But because the atmosphere is not, hey, let's all compete against each other. It's, let's turn up and try this stuff out, then it doesn't matter as much. So people are much more willing to have fun with it and bring that sort of approach to it. One of the comps we run every year is an annual female comp that we had like two weeks ago. We had 45, 46 women turn up and compete. A bunch of them were doing their first competitions. We've had, I think people as old as I think our oldest first time competitor was like in her mid early to mid-70s, did her first powerlifting comp. We've had like, you know, 14, 15 year olds and everyone in between from all walks of life. We've had a lot of very strong people then transition into, hey, I'm going to take this more seriously and compete in sanctioned and do that kind of stuff. And then most of the people don't do that, which is okay for me because it's not about like, everyone has to take it as seriously as I once did. But for a lot of people, it becomes a really beautiful motivating factor for training in a way that doesn't center around what they look like or what they weigh or things like that.

So when you did, when you missed weigh in, did that mean you couldn't compete?

No, because it was just a novice comp that no, I fucking cared about.

So, no, that's fine.

So, yeah, it was a comp that it didn't mean anything. So I just ended up in like the weight class above. But yeah, basically I like people learning from the dumb mistakes I've made. And so that's an easy way to make sure no one makes that dumb mistake.

Okay, so I'm curious. Did you start with strongman or how did you move? How did you transition from strongman to powerlifting? What are the biggest differences between the. The two sports? Aside from that it's, you know, in strongman you're throwing woods and trees around.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I started lifting weights while rugby union. So I played rugby union for like a decade through high school. So for me, lifting weights was always about just being better at rugby. And I loved playing rugby and still very much love watching rugby. I got seriously into training sort of late 202008 maybe, was sort of as I was transitioning from like an under 20s squad up to like open age group. Got really into training. At some point in the first couple of years, I made the mistake of punching someone in the face and broke my hand. No, in my defense, he threw the first punch, and I'd like to say I punched him really well, but I didn't. I just threw a very dirty punch. One of. One of many dumb mistakes I've made in my life. It's all right. But it was that that sort of meant I had to take six months off playing footy while I had my hand surgically repaired. And I just kind of discovered powerlifting in, like, in the Internet space and started kind of reading about it and things like that. And so I was like, I'll just, you know, take six months off playing rugby and go into powerlifting and train for a powerlifting comp. And then I'll come back next year and play footy again. It'll be great. And I discovered powerlifting was hooked. It had all the cool bits about training that I liked, which was lifting heavy weights and having a good time doing it, and then none of the running, which I at the time despised.

And rugby and powerlifting are very different.

Yeah, they worked quite well together in some ways. But, yeah, that was sort of the motivating factor to do that first powerlifting comp. And after that, I was just hooked. I've never been a particularly good athlete, like to consider myself a lifetime mediocre athlete, but I enjoy the training side and have for a very long time. And so it was kind of a pretty natural transition for me. I joke a little bit, but I mean it deeply when I say I'm one of the most competitive people you'll ever meet. Very much to my detriment in many ways. And I think if I hadn't had powerlifting when I broke my hand, I would have come back to playing rugby, and my life would be very different because it was that decision to get into powerlifting that led me into obsessing about training in a way that I have now turned it into my job. I'm now sitting in the office that. In the gym that I own. You know, I've coached people for over a decade now. And so for me, it seemed like a really natural progression at the time, and then that kind of transitioned into coaching people. At the time I made the mistake lots of young trainers do, which is I was into powerlifting. And so everyone I coached was therefore being coached as a powerlifter, which obviously doesn't work very well. Well, it does if you want to be good at powerlifting and pretty much nothing else. So that transition then, to having a more broad understanding of, like, what training is and how I can serve other people and that kind of thing. Now I still coach lots of powerlifters. I've got, like I said, a few strong man. And the big difference there is just powerlifting is all barbell stuff. Strongman. You're doing a lot more odd events and different things like that. So it's just a different base. But actually, most of the people I coach these days are what I would consider recreational athletes. They, you know, they're not obsessing about. They're doing it for fun. They like training because they enjoy the process and they like what it does for them and that kind of thing. So I got a nice mix of.

All of them, and then they're. And they're participating in the. In the novice meet, so they get the experience of being in a beat, which is the. Which is fun.

Absolutely. And that's the thing that I. I like about it, is recognizing that it was the reason I kept training hard, and it gave me something to train for. And I loved it because I'd. I've been an athlete my whole life, but I'd play team sports. And so I got to a point in my rugby career where I was annoyed that the effort I was putting in wasn't being sort of, you know, reciprocated by other people in the team and my results therefore determined by someone else. Powerlifting is a beautifully solo sport, and the only person responsible for my results were met was me. And so that became a really fun expert exploration of, like, how far into this can I go and how much better can I get? For me, it was never about, like, winning competitions or anything like that. My winning was, did I do better than I did last time? And you know, along the way I did some cool stuff. I won a couple of national titles and things like that, but it was never really about that. And that's why I've got lots of people who just do it once or twice a year because it's a cool sort of milestone in their training year. And then there's others who do want to take it more seriously. Like I'm. I fly out to Queensland in a couple of days for a national title. So we've got a team of five women competing to three day national title. So that'd be really cool. But then we've got people who just, you know, do it for fun and it's something they do as part of just the rest of their life.

That's cool. So you also handle then as well?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Where I can, I, I travel to the big mates that my lift is a competing at and have for a long time. I like it. I, I'm, you know, pretty involved in the sport in Australia and it's a pretty small community, so I know lots of people. So for me it's about, you know, like I'm flying up to stay with one of my good friends who's also my podcast co host and watch powerlifting for three days, coach a handful of my guys, see some other friends who are up there, you know, catch up with the sort of extended powerlifting family. And having been part of the sport for as long as I have in Australia, it's really seen a big hockey stick up in terms of how popular it is. So I've got to sort of ride that wave. And that's been a really amazing part because it's helped me build a business that now allows me to do lots of really cool stuff. But it also means I know lots of people. And so being able to go and catch up with people, we said, you know, twice a year at these big comps is always fun.

Yeah. So now you had mentioned that you were competing at some point. Pretty, pretty intensely. So when did you transition out and what caused you to transition out? Or at least not, not transition out, but transition from. Yeah, competing. Competing at an intense level.

Yeah. So I, I actually very vividly remember the moment I realized I was a coach, not an athlete. And it was. So the gym that became Burley Strength and became my gym started at the beginning of 2014 and in 2015 our national titles at the time was like six days long. Like it ran from Tuesday to Sunday. We had like 350 lifters. I think I took a team of 14 and including myself, so 15. I competed twice. I competed Tuesday equipped because that was sort of my forte. I competed equipped, set a PB total like an all time best squat bench. And I think deadlift coached all week. And then on the Sunday I competed again raw just because I could and hit a PB total again. So I hit two big PB totals, had a great time with my own lifting. But I remember this. That same day, the Sunday I was competing, but also handling a couple of my lifters in the same flight. And I stood on the side of the platform watching one of my lifters walk on for his third squat. And this, this guy's now been around for a long time like he's been a member the gym for nearly 10 years and become a good friend of mine. And I watched him walk onto the platform and I was more nervous for his squat than I was for my own. And it was that recognition of like, I get more out of watching him do this than I do out of doing myself. So for me it was, I. It's only in retrospect that I recognize that that's a, that was a significant moment, but I vividly remember it. And for a couple of years after that I struggled with the shift. Like a lot of people, I'd sort of made powerlifting part of my identity and so struggling in a way that allowed me to both get what I wanted out of the sport personally, but also turn it into my job in a way that became more serious. And I think for a long time I battled against that. So I competed sort of 2016, 17, I think I did my last real comp of 2018, but it was never the same after that year in 2015. And I think like a lot of people struggled in lockdowns, training at home because they didn't have separation from work and home and training. I struggled for a long time with the separation of training in my gym because it's my workplace first and foremost. And so I struggled with that relationship for a long time and kind of fell out of the love of training that I had for such a long time. Rediscovered it first through bouldering, like indoor rock climbing, and then did that for a couple of years. Lockdown happened, got into riding mountain bikes. Now I'm an endurance athlete and I'm training for a 24 hour mountain bike race. But yeah, I, I have a ability to switch things on a dime and go in a completely different direction. Cause I'm a bit of a masochist, but it allowed me to fall back in love with training. And so, again, it's only in retrospect. I've done a lot of thinking about this over the years, but I recognize that was sort of the moment where I get more out of coaching than I do out of my own competitive outlets. And I think a lot of that is built on a lifetime of being told I could be a bit better if I tried harder or those sort of things. Focus more. I recognized late last year I got diagnosed with ADHD as a 34 year old. And that put a lot of that stuff into perspective as well. Like a recognition that a lot of my desire to perform really well is probably built off being told I could be better for a long time. And now my athletic stuff is about me proving things to myself more than it is about some external authority. And I think that has helped that transition, but I really struggle with it for a long time now.

That's powerful, and I'd love to dig into that, if you don't mind. There's two things here that I hear a lot, and I'm curious your opinion on it, because I think there are so many different perspectives, and I'm curious, you know, how you navigated this and reconciled it with yourself. Because it's the law of polarity, right? It's both. They both coexist. But it's this idea that people come from this. This, you know, way of thinking that in order to be a good coach, you have to be good at the sport or you have to be a good athlete or, you know, those who can't do, teach. Right. And I always laugh when I hear that because I think to myself, oh, well, then you clearly have never been a teacher because that is a skill. And you don't see Steven Spielberg, you being the actor that he's directing. And I think it's a nuanced conversation of being an expert and an authority. And I think that I know in myself and. And. And p. And in others, like people will make decisions based on someone else's results, which in my opinion is one of the worst things you can do, because it's not a reflection on whether or not this person can coach, but I think it takes a long time for people to. To get there. And I'm curious what that process was like for you.

Yeah, it's. That's definitely something I've struggled with for a long time. There's an element of the imposter syndrome that comes into that whole process the whole way through. And I. I recognize now, like, I've always been okay at sport, and it shaped a huge part of my life, you know, and my identity in a way that I will be forever grateful for. But the thing that shaped my identity is not being good at it. It's being really obsessed with it and learning how to get better at it. And I actually think in a lot of ways, the very good athletes are often. Not always, but often terrible coaches because in many cases, they tend to get very good at things despite their best efforts, not because of. And I've always liked the idea that you probably don't want Usain Bolt to coach you in sprinting because at a certain point, he's going to turn to you and be like, what do you mean you just can't run fast stuff.

Exactly. They just are innately skilled in a lot of things. Sometimes it's the 1% getting better at their craft they're unconsciously competent at.

Yeah, exactly. And I, like, I vividly remember the first time I asked someone to do a squat as a personal trainer in a commercial gym, and this person turned to me, was like, I don't know how to do that. And I was like, what? And so I, like, I just had this whole moment of like, oh, shit. There's, like, this thing that I just assumed was common knowledge just isn't. And I recognize that I've spent my whole life in a very privileged position to have played sport and had a body that is capable of playing sport and a family and a school system that was supportive of me playing sport. And, you know, I went to a private school. I played with a bunch of guys who are now still my best friends in my mid-30s. And all of these really pivotal moments have come through that exposure. But recognizing that not everyone has that and having the empathy for the fact that you're in your mid-30s and you haven't done anything athletic other than get out of your computer chair and walk to your couch in 20 years. And if my only answer is, hey, let's go and train really hard, you don't actually know what training hard feels like. Right. I had someone not that long ago do a first session. We got halfway through the session. It had all gone reasonably well in my books and was going, okay, this person did a rep, and then was like, oh, I think I've hurt my knee. And as far as I was concerned, I hadn't. I didn't try and invalidate that experience. I was like, okay, tell me about what it feels like. What did you experience? Like, tried to sort of get some information out of it. And in the end, we're just like, all right, cool, let's not do any more of that. Let's go do something else. And it wasn't an injury. It was this person who hadn't had any real experience of trying hard physically, and so couldn't differentiate the difference between holy shit, that was hard and how I've hurt myself. And it's moments like that that if your only experience is, I've just gotten progressively better at this, the more I've done it, then you're not going to be able to have the empathy that works with someone like that. And that might mean you serve a very distinct group of people very well. And I'm okay with that. I'm more interested in serving the other end of the population because that's where I see the real beautiful value in this. I like working with high performance people and athletes and stuff like that. It's fun. I enjoy the intellectual sort of process of it. But like you asked me, my best coaching memories, one of them's a woman who I don't coach anymore. I see around the traps because Canberra is a very small place and I'm still great friends with her and her partner. And I remember the day she came in having had like several knee surgeries and we'd built her up from being basically incapable of walking up or downstairs. She came in for a session one day and was like, I walked down a set of steps without pain today for the first time in months. And, like, it still nearly brings me to tears thinking about that stuff, because that's the shit that actually matters in this pro, in this process. Lifting weights is cool. I obsessed about it for a long time. I like that. There's a quote from Matt Vincent who runs, used to be called Hate Brand Goods. It's now called Not Dead Yet. I think American Guy. Anyway, ex Highland Games world champion. He had a quote that's if your total's going on your tombstone. We probably don't have much in common. And for me, that's like. That really sums it right up. Powerlifting is a huge part of my life and still is to this day, despite not being actively competitive in it anymore. But it's just a part of my life. It's not who I am. And I think the people who are only ever good at it because they're good at it and they're genetically blessed to be good at it never have to go through the struggle of losing that. Or if they do, they never come back to it. I could sit here. And name 100 Australian powerlifters who are going to be the best in the world who disappeared after two years because they were good at the sport until they hit that, that first road bump. And if you can't get through that first road bump yourself, then you're never going to be able to help anyone actually get through it in a coaching setting either.

Well, success, I always say, is the worst teacher. Like I've had clients where they come in and they just knock it out of the park the first try. And I always go, oh. Because if you have that easy of a time, it's a much farther way to go than navigating the. Okay, it didn't work the way I expected to because that, that you just build, you can build resilience, you build skill acquisition as opposed to not being able to reverse engineer. Well, how did I get here rather than I'm born with it.

Yeah, exactly. I think that's the real beauty in the lesson. And if you've never had to go through that, then being a good coach for anyone other than someone just like you is really hard. And I think that's the cool thing about coaching. I'm pretty confident I can coach just about anyone, except for someone who won't actually listen to the things that I'm saying. And they're the people I don't work with, which is great because I've built a business that means I can say no to people and talk people out of joining my gym because, hey, we're not the right fit for you for a very, like, for a handful of good reasons. But you're not the sort of person who's going to get results out of the things that I do because you're not willing to buy into this thought process beyond numbers on a page and technique cues.

That's amazing. So now I, I'm curious if you want to mind expanding a little bit more on the mess, what I like to call the messy middle. Because I think what happens is at least for me, right. It's very easy to hear like, okay, I was here, it was new. I was, I was, you know, struggling and you know, homeless in a car. And now I'm a multiple seven figure business and I can say no to people. And I think that there's a lot of stepping stones and transitions that happen in the messy middle, which are hard to navigate. It's where you have to, to un. You have to trust yourself and go all in and be okay with knowing that you're going to get there. But you're just not there yet. So I'm curious for you how you navigated that. What were some of the most, you know, monumental moments for you where you learned the lesson the hard way?

Yeah, look, I would say a significant portion of it's just luck and timing. I happen to be obsessed with powerlifting at the right time to know the right people, to kind of fall into where I did. Did. Having said that, there's also a willingness to say, fuck yeah, let's do this and dive in and hope for the best. I very just distinctly remember the phone call I had with the person who owned the gym that I managed for a couple of years. And he didn't live in Canberra, he lived in Sydney and was going to pay me to run a gym in Canberra. And I said yes to him before I'd spoken to my girlfriend, who I've now been with for 14 or 15 years. We have a child together and things like that. But that was a very tough conversation with her being like, yeah, I've committed to do this thing. I might not get paid for it for a while. And she very rightly was like, that's fucking bullshit. You have to be paid for it. And I got paid for it and it was fine. But the ability to just say yes to that and dive into that, I think played a very significant role. I'm now in a position where I like to joke that I've been self employed for long enough that I'm essentially unemployable, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's a good thing because it means I'm committed to this and making work for me. I think a lot of it's been leaning into both and I guess personally and professionally, growth as a person has been a huge part of it. I've said to a handful of people over the last several years that every year I get older, I'm happier because I feel like I'm more who I'm meant to be. Like I'm more me than I was the year before. And I think that's then been reflected in my business. I've been very deliberate about running a business that's based on my values and is an extension of my values because I'd be fucking miserable if I didn't. And I've had conversations with people who ran businesses similar to mine, some who still do and some who don't, who aren't as willing to put their heart on their sleeve and make at the forefront of their business in the way that I do. Which is fine, and that's someone else's decision. But for me, it was recognizing that that's okay. And that that's actually. Actually a very core part of what I want to do and how I want to do it. One of the sort of origin stories I like telling about Burley Is coming home from work early in the days where I didn't own the business but was running it. And I essentially always treated it like I owned it. Because I'd told the guy I was going to buy him out at some point. Point, I just wasn't sure when. And it happened a lot sooner than I intended. But we got there in the end. And I came home one night, and my partner was, like, in the kitchen, facing away from me doing the dishes. And we were just chatting about how my day was. And I was like, you know, I had this meeting with a potential new client. Seemed cool enough, a bit weird, but, you know, like, we'll see how it goes. And I remember, remember distinctly her stopping dead, turning around, like, staring me in the eyes, being like, you're all fucking weird.

Weird.

And I stopped for a moment, was like, actually, no, you're right. You do have to be a little bit weird to get as obsessed with lifting weights as I did and turn it into this huge thing and then turn it into your career. And again, this is something I've then spent a lot of time working on and reflecting on, is that life is actually just like one big collection of weird people. Some of us are just more willing to lean into the fact that we're weird and admit to it and recognize that we're all weird and it's all beautiful for our own purposes and that kind of thing. And so now having the ability to create a facility that is, like, full of fucking weirdos. And all of my members will happily lean into that idea. Like, we're all fucking weird for a whole bunch of different reasons. And somehow we've all ended up in the same place pursuing similar goals. And so having a place where people feel comfortable doing what they want to do and being up able to feel safe and connected to something and, like, they can work hard and not be judged for it has become a really important part of what I do. And that, I think, has been, you know, the biggest lesson I've learned over the last five or six years especially, has just been leaning into that. And the more I lean into it, the easier business becomes. Because there are still aspects of business that I am fucking terrible at. I am not a good business person at All. And we'll happily tell you that I've managed to get through it just barely at different points, and I'm still not there. And I don't think I will ever be, but I'm having a great time doing it. I feel like I've done a lot of good things in helping people be who they want to be. And for some, that's people who stay around for a long time and keep doing this thing, pursuing something. For others, it's. They come and they transition out of it and that's okay too. But yeah, it's just been recognizing that my business is an extension of who I am and will always be, but it's not my entire identity and I exist outside of it.

It.

And that if it all crashes and burns, then I'm still who I am and I've still done some cool stuff and then I'll go and do the next thing and that'll be okay too.

That's amazing. Okay. Two things I want to share and ask. And I should have told you before we hit record, but I can't help it. I'm a New Yorker and I asked direct questions. So you just told me, like, I'm not going to answer that. But the first is my husband always. He always laughs. He's like, y' all are freaks. You act as if everyone loves to be in the gym. And that's just not plain and simple. Not true. True. So I'm always laughing. The second thing, I'm curious for you and, and it's very clear based on what you're saying, the amount of personal work and introspect and introspective work you've done. And my question is, how has ego ever played a role in your. In, in your life and how you managed it? And the reason I asked this question in this way is because what I have found in myself and a lot of. Of other high perform, high achievers and high performers, they're especially from the people who feel like they've been told their whole life that you're not. You need to work harder than you are. At least for me, my ego always comes into play because it's like, fuck you. I did it. Watch me do it. And I also know that I have had a lot of ego work that I've had to work through because of that. That. So that's why I'm asking it, because I'm curious if you have and what you've done to work through it.

Yeah, absolutely. I think anyone who gets to their mid-30s and feels like they've made some progress as a human and says they don't have an ego and hasn't been influenced by that at some point would be lying to you or to them. Yeah, but probably more importantly to themselves. As I said earlier, I'm staunchly like one of the most competitive people you'll ever meet. And it's like a huge character flaw in many ways, but it's also a defining feature of who I am. For me, I think that the ego was always there in the powerlifting context. And again, only on significant reflection do I recognize that I probably got into lifting weights to prove something to someone else. I haven't quite got to the bottom of what I'm proving or to whom, but I was 14, I was overweight, I've been fat my whole life and was sort of over 100 kilos, like 220 pounds by the time I hit ice cold or very close to it. So I've been big for a long time. And again I recognized in my mid-30s, being diagnosed with ADHD, that I've got impulse control problems related to food and I've been self medicating with food for my whole life. But that's a whole separate issue, not separate related. And so I got into lifting weights at 14. I went to an all boys private school. I played rugby and like played sport and was just good enough not to be a complete loser, but not good. And so for me, getting into lifting weights was both. At the time I thought it was mostly about being better at sport and it definitely was. That was then about wanting to be part of something and be accepted and those kind of things. But I also recognize that I've been mercilessly bullied for being fat my whole life. And so that has created a very thick skin around that kind of thing that then was built up by having confidence in my abilities that I'd earned through doing work in a gym. It took me a long time to realize that I, and it's only, you know, at the tail end of my strength career did I recognize that, that, that I was probably trying to prove something to someone else. I'm now, as I said, into the endurance world. I got into running last year and ran a half marathon and then 30k trail race and then this year's a, a bike riding year again. I did a big bike riding year the year before and so I'm running, riding a 24 hour solo mountain bike race later, later this year year. And for me the really fascinating thing about endurance sports is that it Failure doesn't look like failure does in strength sports. Failure in strength sports, no matter how good you are at the mental psych up side of it. And I think I am very good at that sort of mental game of being able to get up for one big rep. There's still a binary failure point. At a certain point, you're just not strong enough. You are physically incapable of doing it. And so you have to be very good, good at accepting failure and learning from failure. And I think that's again, one of the really beautiful things about something like powerlifting, but in endurance stuff. And sort of the real first fascinating experience was riding. There's this mountain bike trail that runs around Canberra. It's like just shy of 150km and took me 13 hours to ride. And I had a great time doing it, but I rolled back down my street being like, oh, if I really wanted to, I could keep going. Like, my legs still function, I am physically capable of continuing. My brain was done and so I quit. And that was okay. But that was an interesting spark of like, oh, there's something here to explore. And so the delving into endurance stuff for me has been about proving something to myself and that this performance desire or a desire to be good at something is all just because I want to be better at it and it's got nothing to do with anyone else anymore. And I think that's then been able to extend into being more comfortable with who I am and therefore more comfortable with what my business does and how we do it and those kind of things. So I think that plays a very significant role. And again, like, it's part of the reason I do what I do. Lots of the most important lessons I've learned both about life and who I am as a person and how I respond to stress and all that kind of stuff have come through training for or competing in or doing something physically hard. And so that's just been that undertone of continual learning, I guess, for most of my life. Like, I'm 34, I've been lifting weights, training hard for two decades. So a lot of that has been that ego work that has helped me recognize both what I'm good at and really highlight what I'm not good at. And I think business does a very good job of that as well. So, yeah, that definitely plays a role.

So one of the things that you said that I'm curious about, what I heard and what I would love for you to expand on is you were talking about that failure is very different in strength Sport versus in endurance. And in the story that you told, I heard you, you know, almost say that it's sometimes it's like the mental. The mental work that you have to do in endurance is very different. Which honestly kind of surprises me because I feel like there is a huge mental component to strength work as well and overcoming that. So I'm curious, is there more to, you know, what you would say is different in failing?

Absolutely, yeah. So the. I used to like to joke about being an entirely anaerobic athlete. If I could do it in one breath, I was good. If I had to breathe, I was going to have real trouble. Right. And for a long time after my rugby career sort of ended, I got into powerlifting. I epitomized the fat power lifter aesthetic. I was like, more than three reps is cardio. Walking upstairs is hard, but I'm really strong. And that was fun for a long time. But it's a very different kind of work. I thought for a long time I wasn't born with the suffering gene. There are some people, and I know a lot of them in the endurance world who have this insane ability to suffer that. Like, it's just. I think it's the monotony of it. I think it's also the length of time. Like, I've done some very hard lifting, some done some cool shit. I've lifted lots of heavyweights, but it's always over like under 10 seconds. You know, like even a hard training session, it might be three hours of training, but it's probably only like 12 minutes of actual work.

Lots of scrolling, lots of scrolling, lots.

Of standing around talking shit with people and, and that kind of thing. So it's a very different kind of hard. And I think I've been able to work hard for a long time. I played rugby, I did that kind of thing. But the endurance stuff, like, I've done a lot of running prior to getting into powerlifting, but it was always a part of something else. The running for the sake of running or endurance stuff for the sake of endurance stuff has been very interesting. And it all started in lockdown. Cause I needed a way to get out of my house. Like, I needed space to do stuff physically. I recognize that training hard is a huge part of my mental and physical wellbeing. I am a more capable father, partner, coach, business person when I'm training hard for something. I spent 90 minutes on a bike going nowhere in my shed in the cold this morning because I'm training for this thing. And I know that If I don't ticket first thing in the, in the morning then I very rarely get it done. And so it's been leaning into being very uncomfortable for a long period of time. You know, like the trail race I did last year took me four and a half hours and the last sort of five or six kilometers I couldn't run cause my knees were and painful and like I was fine physically but it's just the mental hurdle of having to just put one foot in front of the other and keep going. And that's been the really fascinating experience is how deep into this hit of like I'm not actually in any physical danger, I'm not going to hurt myself, it's just uncomfortable. And how deep into that can I push? Which is why I'm doing this 24 hour race. It's like I'm doing it solo. The goal is not to sleep, it's to ride 200 plus kilometers and just keep riding and see what happens happens.

Are you scared? Are you scared to.

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely terrified. Yeah, yeah. It's a, it's both. I, I know I'm onto something good in, in my life when talking about it makes me feel a bit like I need to which is a great anxiety inducing response to like I'm a bit terrified about what's going to happen. And like the lifting weights thing, I've lifted some very heavy weights. Like I've squatted over £900 and and that's a terrifying experience. And I think anyone that tells you they can get underweight like that and not be a little bit scared is probably lying to you and all themselves. But the terrifying all I think all the cool lessons I've learned in life have happened just on the other side of I'm terrified. But I'm going to do this anyway. I'm a father. Like that's the most fucking terrifying experience in the world is being a parent, owning a business like all of this other stuff that is constantly terrifying. But if you're never scared then you're never getting any better. So I think you got to kind of lean into that.

Okay, so what is this training protocol for this 24 hour.

So at the moment it's just a ton of time on a indoor bike trainer. I've got like a smart trainer that I hook up to my computer and I'm doing like 7ish hours a week on the bike at the moment and a week and yeah, so like they split over five sessions. It's like five, four 90 minute sessions and a one hour session and then I've got like two or three lifting sessions in and amongst that as well. So yeah, I, as we, as it gets closer. So it's in November, as it gets closer, I'll do a couple of like simulation events where I'll sort of set up because it's a, it's a lap based race. So you set up like camp and then you do a lap and you can stop and like refuel and do stuff like that. So I'll probably set up like a little camp in my front yard and ride up onto the trails, do a lap, come back, feed changed it, you know, and ride that for like 12 hours and just kind of see how it goes, get comfortable riding under lights because obviously it's going to be dark, dark at some point and that kind of stuff. So a couple of bigger days like that. But for now it's just lots of time staring out the window in my shed, watching the sun rise as I pedal a bike that goes nowhere.

I mean the discipline to do that must be insane.

1.

And number two, how long do you have to do this race? Like, will you get to sleep? Like I'm assuming you're gonna sleep.

No. So it's, it's 24 hours. It starts at midday on a Saturday and it finishes at midday on a Sunday. And it's ride as many laps as you can in 24 hours. Hours. So my intention is not to sleep. My intention is to ride as. And like I'm doing this not because I want to be good at it. I'm doing this as a vehicle for self exploration. I want to see how deep into this pit can I dig myself and keep going. Because I'm continually fascinated with my own ability to work harder than I thought I could and to continue pushing into hard things in a way that if you told John 10 years ago that this is what you'd be doing by choice for fun, he would have laughed, laughed at you and walked away. And so that's the fascinating experience. Like how deep can I go? Nothing highlights my own anxieties and not dealing with my shit more than sitting on a bike that goes nowhere in the first five minutes as my heart rate starts getting up and my brain is screaming at me to go back to bed. Being able to just push through that and know that, yeah, I'm going to come out the other side of this feeling better and like I've done something productive, but also recognizing that in two decades of training, I've never regretted a session I turned to up for. I'VE regretted lots of sessions that I've skipped because the rest of my day's been worse because of it. But I've never regretted turning up. Even if what turning up was, was turning up and like rolling around on the floor, stretching a bit and then going home. So yeah, that's part of it. But also, like I said, it's the recognition that everything in my life is easier when I'm choosing to do hard things. And at the moment the thing that has grasped, grasped my obsession for long enough for me to be committed to it is this bike race and the excite slash terrifying anxiety around. I wonder how hard I can make this for myself. And we'll see what happens.

Okay, so now will you, before the race will you attempt to do 24 hours up or is it.

No, I won't go that hard. I'll probably do a 12, maybe a 16 hour simulation at some point, maybe like a month or so out. But I won't go for the full 24. Mostly that simulation will be about just getting comfortable riding in the dark while talking tired. But because the course is, it's not in Canberra, it's a couple hours north. So there'll probably be. There's one of the other guys from the gym who's a friend of mine's gonna do it with me and we're gonna probably go up and like stay up there for the weekend and ride a few laps of the course both during the day and at night just to get comfortable on the course. But beyond that it's no, just lots of time on the bike.

I mean, when is this? I can't wait. I wanna follow you because I think.

It'S the last weekend in November 25th or something like that.

And so just forgive my question and forgive my on this.

I like talking about it.

That's why I'm obsessed with it in November. It's dark here, so I'm assuming that that's light there over there.

Yeah. The concern will be if it's fucking hot, like if it's so weird.

That is such a weird concept for me.

Well, yeah, so it's like I'm sitting here in a long sleeve T shirt and tracksuit pants in. It was a below zero centigrade this morning when I walked out of my house into my shed to ride my bike. That goes nowhere. So it's fucking cold here at the moment. By then it'll. The concerning thing will be if it's really hot, that'll be. It'll make it really hard. If it was cold and dark, that'd be fine. I can deal with that. If it's really hot, it'll be very unpleasant.

So, you know, it's funny because we started this podcast talking about powerlifting, and I was. I'm wearing my peloton shirt for those of you who don't watch, who. Who aren't watching this. And I was like, oh, my gosh, you are probably judging me so hard that I have this Bella top T shirt, full circle. Talking about the bike that goes Nowhere, which for the. Just for anyone listening, we got the bike for my husband, and I don't really use it because I personally hate stationary bikes. They hurt me. But the T shirts are really nice, so I wear it all the time.

Yeah, look, riding an indoor bike's much, much harder than riding an outdoor bike. And that's what I fell in love. That's how I fell with endurance stuff, was because I just started riding bikes and had fun riding bikes, and it made me feel like a kid again. And I still very much get that experience. But I haven't ridden my actual bike in like, seven weeks or something like that because I'm a little bit interested to see how much improvement I can get out of just spending time riding a bike that literally goes nowhere. And then, yeah, get back outside and see how it feels on the trails again.

Now, you would say that the skill of riding a bike that goes nowhere will transcend. Right. It will go. Because I have this really handy, dandy, awesome treadmill underneath my desk, which, by the way, is amazing thing. I'm so glad I got it. It really changed my life. But back in the day, you know, one of those, you know, you were talking about all those mistakes that we used to make when we were beginning trainers or beginning coaches. I used to think that if you trained on a treadmill, you weren't going to be able to perform on outside, which is not true. So I'm curious.

Definitely some value. I. So having got into running last year, I ran a cumulative total of like nearly 800km last year and had a great time doing it, but ran almost exclusively outside because that's where I was. I enjoyed it. I like running when no one's around. I run by myself with headphones on. It's my time to shut the rest of the world out and just work hard. There's definitely some value in the mountain biking space. It's a bit harder. Cause you've got to have some bike skill and some. And sort of spatial awareness and stuff like that. So that'll definitely be a bigger part of my training in the sort of next couple of months. Mostly as it warms up a bit. Cause it's still just fucking cold and I don't mind riding in the cold. Like it's better than riding in the heat. But it's also just more time efficient. Like being able to do a 90 minute session that takes me 93 minutes because it takes me, you know, two minutes to walk out to my shed, fill my water bottles up and put my shoes on and then go. That's much easier than having to like put my helmet on, set the lights up, like do all that kind of stuff to ride in the dark at the moment. So yeah, that'll definitely come back and play more of a role and there's some value in it. But I also just enjoy riding outside more. Like that's part of the reason I get into it is cause I love being outside and I'm very fortunate to live in a city that's surrounded by lots of cool bushland and there's lots of beautiful mountain biking trails around here. So that's still very much the fun part, but at the mom. But this is more an experiment than anything else. I'm just interested to see how much better I can get with a dedicated training program on a bike because I've never really done that before and so far it's worked.

So when will you begin to transition building in the the rides while you're supposed to be sleeping? Like I know you're not going to do like a whole 24 hour, but there's gotta be some part portion of your training where you'll be running or writing at three. Yeah, yeah.

I mean I, I do most of my riding before like 7am Anyway, so I'm pretty comfortable with getting up early and going and doing stuff like that. I think it'll be more the couple of sort of longer simulation ones where I will start in the mid to late afternoon and run through the night. That'll be the harder bit is doing a couple of those. I'm still probably not going to do a lot of them just because I don't think I need a ton of them to be comfortable with that experience. Like it's mostly just going to be about adjusting on how I feel and I think I'm pretty good at that side of things in that context. I don't think I'm completely stupid when it comes to it and I have the ability to sort of, you know, be a little bit objective about it. So it'll be a little bit of that, but I don't think I'll do a ton of it. It'll more just be spending lots of time on the bike building a big aerobic engine and then making sure that I'm ready for just whatever is going to come.

Okay, last question and then I swear I'm going to let you go because I'm going to have to put those dang kids to bed. But adrenaline, a lot of people have, have different experiences with adrenaline. Sometimes it helps them and then sometimes it absolutely makes them go sideways. So for me, and it depends on the test, like sometimes adrenaline really helps me, but then when I get into like adrenaline and then my, and then I need my breath to be, be on my side and it's not on my side, I'm screwed. So it really depends on the context, at least for me. So what about for you? And then how do you train to help you manage adrenaline?

Yeah, look, I still and have for a very long time identify as an athlete. Like that is a huge portion of my personality and who I am as a person. But when I say that it's not necessarily about being, being good at physical stuff. I think being an athlete involves more than just physical capabilities. It involves an ability and a willingness to turn up and do the work when it counts. And when it counts is in a sporting context on game day. In powerlifting, it's as you walk onto the platform, ideally for your third attempt, it's the ability to turn all turn it up and turn it on when it, when it really counts. And that's something I'm very confident in my ability to do in a lifting context. I know how to find a place that is filled suitably with adrenaline and caffeine that allows me to get a big performance boost out of it. I think I'm also good at coming down the other side of that, which in a powerlifting context is really important because you can't redline it for six hours while the comp runs. You've got to be able to peak and trough your way through that. And I think that's what the, the sort of longer endurance stuff is about is, is about not going too hard too early and, and also recognizing and like I'm very prepared, not very prepared. I'm a little bit prepared and a little bit terrified of knowing that there will be a point in this 24 hour race where every ounce of my being is leaning on me to quit because it gets really fucking unpleasant. And they're like, they're the Cool bits. Like, they're the bits where you learn stuff and they're the bits where you find out what you're capable of. And that's the bit I'm most excited about. About. And being able to manage my nerves through that is obviously an important part of it. But I think, like I said, having been a competitive athlete in some form for the better part of like a bit over two decades, I've had a lot of exposure to that. So being able to do that physically has been really important. And I think that then transitions into how I manage it both in a business context and otherwise as well. I think for a long time I've been pretty good at ignoring things that I can't control. Control. And one of the things you can always control is your response to things and how you do that. So I think having practiced that a lot is definitely the skill I'm leaning on in that respect.

This has been amazing and I can't wait. Are you sharing your journey on socials? Can we follow along on your journey?

Yeah, I mean, the training footage I'm posting at the moment isn't the most enjoyable training footage in the world. It's mostly just other videos of me talking out of camera while I sit on a bike in my shed with my camping supplies on the shelf behind me, or photos of the sun rising out the window of my very disheveled backyard. That definitely needs some work. But yeah, you can follow me on Instagram. Stuff like that is. That's where I'm posting mostly on. On my page rather than on the gym page, because it's. The gym's not about me, that's about everyone else. So, yeah, that. That's definitely something I'm posting more and more of as we go because there's a few people that are interested to follow along. So there'll be a bunch of that. Certainly. I think last, when I did the trail race, so I got the Garmin Live tracking stuff working. So I'll probably do that again and run that so people will be able to watch me just go in circles and slowly go insane over the course of 24 hours. Amazing.

Okay, great. So for. Thank you so much for. Well, first of all, thank you so much for pouring into me, into the community. And also for really those of you who are listening to this and you did not watch the video footage of my children and being absolutely just. It looked like a children tornado that was going on while you were speaking was just absolutely so insane. And John just. You handled it with such grace and didn't miss a beat.

So thank God I made the deliberate decision to look at the camera lens because every time I looked down at you, I could see you talking to the kids. I was like, no, no, I just got to ignore that and talk to the camera. It's fine.

So thank you so much for your grace in that and that just delivered such an amazing show. So for those of you who want to follow along, who want to go deeper with you, want to learn more from you, where are some of the best places I can send them?

Yeah, so you can follow me on. Instagram's the best option. Just chery S H E double R O the gyms at Burley Strength. You can follow that as well. I sort of post most of the kind of educational side of the things on the gym page, but obviously tag my stuff as well. And then my page is more like my training and the rest of my life and you know, photos from the rugby game I went to on the weekend and things like that. And photos of my dog mostly. And yeah, you can follow Jim. Like I said, check us out on Facebook or Instagram. I also co host a powerlifting focused podcast called Peak Speak with a friend, Thomas Lilly, who's an Australian powerlifting coach. So you can check that out. There's like a hundred and something episodes of us blabbering on about powerlifting over there over the last handful of years and yeah, I think that's about it.

I love it. Amazing. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And we'll be sure to all those links in the show notes.

Awesome. Thank you.

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