Coach Paul

Half English, half Irish, mad sports fan, football fan in particular (UUUUNNNIIITTTED!, don’t hate) and a big fan of…dogs, but not snakes…or loud eating, that bugs me, I once asked a man in an airport to stop chewing so loudly (ironically, the airport was in Hungary 😝)…and I can talk backwards (ksa em), weird.

I love exercising (obvs!), famalam time, seeing the world, self-improvement, cake, football, sports, sports and more sports.

I love my job, I love helping people, and I love everything that comes with those things.

My path through life helps me connect with my AMAZING clients in order to help them navigate their way through their health and wellness journeys… That feeds into the next drop-down box to be fair, because I haven’t always been fit, confident, and in control of my self-sabotage behaviors. I once was a sleep-dodging, procrastinating, sweet-tooth hound 😆

Things require cultivating, practice, feedback, and time, this has helped me master my health and wellness. That combined with my Neuro Linguistic Programming support which enables me to coach people through the process of health, fitness, and well-being development.

From such a young age, you’re asked what it is you want to do.

I didn’t know, footballer? Rocky Balboa? 😆.

What to do?

What route to take? 

I’ve always been a creative and physical, somewhat out of sync with sitting still in a classroom.

I went through school not really feeling good enough in the classroom, sports yes, academically no, but the sports never really mattered, although that’s how it felt. It was all about who was the ‘smartest‘… (enter inherited imprint of feeling dumb).

It felt like the one thing I was good at didn’t really matter.

(This isn’t a sob story, it’s purely a trackback that identifies why I adopted thoughts and beliefs that lead to unhelpful patterns as an adult from childhood experiences)

This prompted me to feel an ongoing sense of failure, and I grew up with that in the back of my mind the whole time (whilst sporting a mean bowl cut and a cracking pair of round glasses), perceptions are funny things.

Literally everything, I’d have an eye test and be surprised every time I passed, or I’d expect not to

This conditioned me to thinking that I couldn’t have or achieve anything worthwhile in life, it demotivated me to ‘try’…of course, as a youngster I was lacking the fundamental principles required in hindsight.

This is isn’t a violin seeking scenario, by the way, it’s all good, it’s actually the core to the growth.

We all have inbuilt insecurities conditioned from a young age, which un-worked on, have the power to miss-shape the experience of our adult lives.

Nah thanks, not for me, there’s more to life than that, the victim mentality has no space in my space.

These thoughts and experiences can spill into other areas of life, fortunately for me, wanting to be Rocky actually stood itself in good stead, what’s the main metaphor of the films? Win, no matter how bad you get busted up, keep going. it’s not over until it’s over.

That helped me shake off feeling dumb at an outcome of poor academic performances, that ‘wasn’t fight’.

I wasn’t sure how or what I would do, but I had it in me to start punching back, even if it was blindfolded.

life is 10% what happens to you, 90% how you react right?

I thought, right, the school system is saying,  right then little fishy wishy, ‘if you climb that tree you are doing well’…to the best of my knowledge, fish do not climb trees… so I thought sod this, I’ll find some water to swim in.

So, I decided to pull my finger out and go to college, to study something I enjoyed.

I surprised myself and I actually done well with tests and exams, bugger me I thought, I’m maybe not so stupid after all.

I then got an unconditional offer to the first University on my list (Oxford Brookes), off to university I went ready to retrieve my degree in order to become a P.E Teacher.

A degree I had achieved and some self-restoration achieved.…for a while, even though I had achieved a university degree at a 2:1 grade, I still felt unfulfilled and still wasn’t clear on my pathway as my hunger for being a P.E Teacher fast diminished halfway through my degree… It still felt for me a bit shackled.

I felt a bit stagnant and ended up working multiple different roles, gym cover, school holiday clubs, primary school P.E teachers, and a variable hours lecturer at Oxford & Cherwell Valley college ironically with all of my old college teachers.. that was a bit strange.

The whole time after uni I was in a search of finding my ‘why‘.

At the time I was dating a young lady I was head over heels for (that was quite distracting 👀😝).

Little did I know, the frustration of not knowing my direction or purpose was yielding some awesome lessons of life that would serve me well in the long run.

So yes, although not ‘thriving‘, the crossroads of life was giving me some awesome back burner industry experience as well as many challenges.

One of those challenges was the moment that we all experience at some time in our lives…heartbreak.

She was going somewhere, and I wasn’t, her words, not mine haha, that was a kick to the testis,  thanks for the fuel…but actually, she was right…

The result, find my why, start a career in something that I love and don’t stop until you make it!

That was the jump cable to take on my dream.

Build a life that you love, do a job that isn’t a job, face the fear and do it anyway, use the pain for gain…Health coaching was my vehicle.

Whilst I studied to pass my PT exams for the year so I could take on this new role, I did lots of self-reflection, took lots and ownership .

The use of the ‘heartbreak‘ was good for recycled energy, that, paralleled with my cover work in the gym, and rather nostalgically, those variable hours as a sports science and exercise/Public services lecturer helped give a good springboard into the next phase.

Fast forwards to 20223, more lessons, more challenges, more growth, more self-reflection, more failure, more ownership, the hiring of a business/mindset coach, more courses, more learnings, a tad more heartbreak, a global pandemic, 100% self employment.. I can happily write this with a 100% job satisfaction, confidence in my ability, and hugely appreciative of the amazing opportunity I have to work with the amazing people within the Fit Peeps Community.

During the time line of rediscovery (then and now to be fair), life unfolded and gave me opportunities for reflection and realisation.

There was some negative loops I definitely had to overcome, especially the ‘you are dumb and worthless’ loop.

After lots of directed self-development and conscious programming of my thoughts, I realised that my fulfilment and success was where my focus and interest was.

My initial motivators were to help myself with my own personal challenges and now to help other people along the same journey of self-growth and fulfilment, using those very principles as the business backbone.

So, that was it, the combination of knowing the true meaning and importance of health, the underlying want to help people and the love for exercise all come together.

I decided to become a Personal Trainer, which then evolved into a Health Coach.

This decision was definitely made easier by all of the existing industry knowledge I had gained over the years of working on the gym floor.

Why the path of health and fitness?

I quickly become aware that the majority of people truly needed help with the their most valuable asset…their health.

Not just physically, but most importantly, mentally.

And actually as time has passed and passed, it was ever apparent with each passing day, that the fundamental most important notion for change and growth, is the mind.

That’s what steers the direction for the health and fitness habits.

Eating healthy, working out and sleeping well is only as good as the direction of the thoughts that control those factors right? 

As human beings, our most valuable asset we have isn’t a car, a house, a status or a big bank balance….it’s our health, the one thing that literally doesn’t have a monetary value, its irreplaceable, it’s bigger than money.

Without it?

What is there?

Nothing.

In a world full of convenience, fads and shortcuts, it’s become easy for modern human beings to be automatically programmed to become more lazy, overweight, and a higher risk factor for disease.

The alarming overwhelm of abundance, miss-guided marketing campaigns, emotional decision making and a general misunderstanding of nutrition, exercise, stress reduction techniques, rest/recovery and how the body really works, has plunged millions of people into the world of unsustainable ‘weight management‘ approaches creating a huge need for re-education in order to live a healthy fitter future.

It’s literally about natural realignment towards our original design.

We aren’t designed to be sedentary, sit all day, be indoors all day, eat chemically processed trans fatty foods.

Uneducated to this, people fall victim to the cognitive intelligence of man…and marketing…and greed.

As I found exercise easy (in context of course ☺), combined with my genuine care for helping people and the fact that EVERYBODY wants to get fitter, healthier and more confident I figured this was the best route for me.

Ultimately, my purpose and why was harnessed by ownership against unwanted patters in my life, and this is the key for everything in life.

It definitely wasn’t as simple as that, that ownership takes time and effort to hone in, kind of thermostat ownership, instead of the thermometer.

We control the heat instead of reacting to the room.

Reflection on performances, ownership for self-sabotage, identifying the areas for improvement, committing to the process of engagement and change, taking the hits, controlling how reactions are to situations with balance even in the face of injustice, continuing to move forwards and never accepting anything other than your best efforts are what we deserve for ourselves..

A lot of change can come from some mindfulness and reading.

My awareness, knowledge and know-how of health is something I want to share and help people with, as I know it will help contribute to making peoples lives more fulfilling as a result of achievement, confidence and self development.

Not just from physical changes through aesthetics, most of all through happiness, durability, confidence, the notion of control and support in a way that helps people grow outside the shell of limitations, after all, that’s what health and fitness is all about.

It’s all too easy to stand and bark at somebody to do more reps and to tell them to ‘eat clean‘… Not so fun or easy for the client though, and for me successful coaching is all about making it easy for the client.

I want to infect (in a good way) as many people as I can to help them know how to look after their health and their bodies without restriction, and crazy plans, rather, the easy way, the sustainable way…the HEALTHY way!…The realistic way.

Ultimately I work with my amazing clients to assist them in the process of personal growth through the process of self-care, which is a reflection of my core values that I hold for myself.

The reason?

Because this authentic genuine work, helps us as individuals level up for a better life.

Our best lives simply do not exist with the neglect to our physical and mental health.

The system is only as effective as it’s application, here, we focus on the system as well as the mental application.

Goal setting, motivation, perspective, adaptation and adversity are the game changers…

To this day, self-development and self-improvement is my backbone to moving forwards (especially after knockdowns), to help myself and my amazing clients grow beyond the social expectations from hierarchical health and fitness traps, to access true sustainable results from methods based from the universal principals and to live in alignment with my core values and to help my legendary clients live in alignment with theirs.

Sometimes we can feel as if we are in a sinking ship with nothing but a bucket for bailing the influx of water.

That bailing can feel like a hopeless pointless task relative to ‘progress’, but it’s the place for strength, endurance and character to develop..

The perception of bailing to survive instead of bailing to thrive will give you the energy to keep bailing, until opportunities arise, a piece of drift wood, a boat…the platform for development…

Fads, diets and quick fixes are the anchors that pull people down, along with self-sabotage, along with the avoidance of ownership.

The bailing is, being strong, working away from the things that threaten us, giving ourselves the opportunity not to conform to unrealistic social norms of health and fitness, it might be a representation of a personal crisis…true personal growth, true health and fitness, true sustainable development is accompanied with fear and failure, all of this is so crucial for health and fitness progress.

Why?

Because health and fitness isn’t a linear dynamic, life threatens its stability through emotional imbalance from our environments,…and the faster we learn how to face our fears, insecurities, self-doubts and how to validate ourselves from within, the faster we can grow with our health and fitness, in fact, this is when health and fitness become easy…

For true genuine health and fitness development, a long with learning the systems of correct nutrition, effective exercise, adequate hydration, rest, sleep and recovery, the biggest avatar for change is mindset, goal setting, chunking the goals, overcoming adversity, dealing with difficult scenarios, facing the storms and the self-doubt, breaking free from the social expectation of ‘losing weight for progress’.

It all comes from thoughts, thoughts to actions, actions to outcomes, outcomes to results, results to momentum.

Ultimately, the alignment of our thoughts to momentum, is the experience of the current reality we create.

How do you want to develop?

‘Flavour of month‘ type of development…or sustainable, realistic, healthy development?

Some people will be put off by this depth of mindset insight in order to achieve their body goals…

However for every single one of us on this planet, we WILL face challenges, we ALL have weak links, and we ALL want to feel great in ourselves.

Mindset success towards ourselves which then helps the process become is easy IS the ‘magic pill’ the diet companies all talk about.

You may ask, why so mindset orientated, your job is to help people exercise and eat healthy food right, so focus on that?

Everything is mindset orientated, relationships, career, interactions, dreams, goals, temperament, none more so than the choices and education surrounding our health and fitness.

It’s not as straight forwards as just ‘making people workout and eat healthy’, the truth is, that’s not my job anyway.

Coaches can only assist and prompt with ethical educated support, of course all coaches have their own unique style…but so do people, that’s why each individual person requires their unique support in order to execute the universal principles of health to their individual circumstances. 

Because there are still manipulative persuasive ‘plans‘ out there that hoodwink people into the ‘dream‘ centred on flawed processes, exploitation of limiting beliefs through human experience in a hook to the ‘dream’, the capitalisation of the human trait of ‘now now now‘, these fad plans have their way, take people’s money without any regard for the genuine welfare of their ‘client’… It’s a we;; run money making scheme however.

Unfortunately for the consumer, all of that can lead to funks, viscous cycles, confusion and a false sense of direction… worse of all, a false illusion that they can’t get fit and healthy.

How do we break that resistance? Ownership, new strategies. perceptual positioning to overcome limiting beliefs that lead to self-sabotage and procrastination….and a heck of a lot of persistence with context to your journey.

Correct health & fitness principles + incongruent thinking (quick fix mentality, impatience, not goal orientated, avoidance of ownership in relation to thinking the knowledge they have is the gospel….”my friend susie lost all of that weight in 2 months”… etc) = inconsistency and undesired progress

Incorrect health and fitness principles + congruent thinking (towards the ‘rules’ of the fad philosophy) = consistency for the fad/inconsistency for sustainability and/or further health implications down the road as well as a weakened understanding with ones self-improvement.

Correct principles + Congruent thinking = Lifestyle transformation, problem solving, durability, consistency, energy, confidence, independence…

Actions and knowledge are only as good as the consistent, contextual application…and the consistent, contextual application is only as good as the source of  the action and knowing. With ownership to assess and develop, progress will be made with the ever growing notion of aligning actions.

We still like burpees though. obvs.

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Bachelor of Arts – Sport & Coaching Studies

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Neuro Linguistic Programming Mater Practitioner

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Life Coaching & Coaching Practitioner

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Precision Nutrition Level 1 Certified Coach

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Reps  L3 Personal Trainer

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Sports Conditioning Trainer

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BTEC National Diploma – Sports Science & Exercise

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Many people say, “it’s easy for you, you are a trainer”…

My response is always, “It wasn’t always”…

We all have a staring point, we all have things to learn, limitations to overcome, and failures/setbacks that test how much we want it.

When I was 21, I hadn’t a CLUE, cracking tan though 😝… (this was me on holiday in 2009)

My headspace at the time was:

• I am small, weak, and feel invisible.
• I want to put lots of muscle on.
• It will help me get girls.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger is my idol.
• By the time I’m 23 I’ll be huge (biceps and chest, I’ll leave the legs for football)
• I need to get a mass gainer shake for ‘bulking‘ and other commercial supplements.
• I’m going to eat EVERYTHING.
• If I can lift more than my training parter I’m doing well.

That 👆🏻 was where I was with what I had.

My headspace thought that this was what had to happen for me to match my actions to create the vision.

The only thing that carries to  today from then, is the enthusiasm to better, the motivation to always learn and grow, accompanied with the thought that quitting is NEVER an option #️⃣RockyMentality.

So, doing what I knew with what I had I started lifting weights, eating everything in sight and attaching to external validations for credibility and feedback.

I was ‘all or nothing’, in competition with others, training irresponsibly, eating irresponsibly, and not truly placing health and personal development as number 1.

I know that may sound harsh to somebody that was trying, BUT this is what it’s all about, the version of me writing this now can identify that from myself which actually makes me feel proud for making the progress that I have.

At the time, it felt like it was my best, my body started to change, my confidence was growing, and I was feeling good for where I was at the time, mainly because people would notice me more.

There was still so many inaccuracies, flawed application, and misunderstanding with the universal laws and principles for sustainable, healthy, health and wellness management.

This is a big part for where people stagnate, time has passed some change has happened, not the one they envisaged, so the momentum starts to fade, old ways creep back in, and before you know it. BAM, back to square one with stinking thinking, bad habits, and physical reversibility.

This is where the importance of desire, goals, the will to continue, hunger for making things better, learning, and more practice comes into it.

Basically, learning the process of making things a sustainable lifestyle.

As much as there is reflection of what wasn’t being well done, there was progress that was being made, and learnings were happening with failures, feedback, all to improve.

(This was me at the ripe old age of 24, with around 2-3 years of lifting weights, right before the shoulder injury)

My training methods was literally lift as much as I can with half an eye on form, my nutrition was just smashing as much protein as possible with some smart carb choices and then ANYTHING I fancied, because I was a ‘hard gainer’ (slow muscle gain), hydration was kind of present, sleep, rest, recovery was non existent, self-development was a burning ember in the background…That was the durability, because it was mental development.

During this time, BAM! Injury, shoulder operation, a shed load of reflection, a venture into a new career, and a change of focus.

Although I was getting many things wrong, I also had some real important components for success with the subject of self-development.

This kept growing and growing, and slowly but surely was reshaping my mindset towards health, fitness, and wellbeing.

My relationship with myself was shifting.

I was finding validation for myself from myself.

I was starting to care less about what others thought.

I was setting more goals, realistic ones, daily, medium-term, and long-term goals.

I linked my self-care to the core of me being my best version.

This benefited human connection, understanding of others, for myself, and a much better platform in order to run a more holistic helpful business for my awesome clients.

When I focused on improving from within:

• My physical results got better and better, they just happened with connecting the dots going forwards.
• I become more productive.
• I was feeling more energetic.
• I had so much more motivation in life.
• Crappy limiting thoughts have less influence.
• I had confidence from within and a higher level of self-esteem.

Ironically, the results that I wanted when I was younger…

There you go, that’s the process right there, it’s a complete journey of constant evolution.

It will always be that way.

My current headspace, personal relationship, physicality will be different again, in 1, 3, 5, 10 years… because of the agenda of growth.

This is me at 33, not the biggest, not the leanest, fastest, or strongest…BUT, the best I’ve felt in my head and my skin. That’s the goal, that’s what I coach, personal growth, and progress from within.

(Back to the Arnie goal 🤣 It wasn’t his physique that inspired me, it was actually the principles that it took for him to run his race, the mindset, this is anther place where people short-circuit, they don’t look like they think they should look like, then they quit)

These results had come through many challenges:

• The shoulder injury (still needs management today).
• A new knee injury
• A lower back injury.
• COVID.
• The transition into 100% self-employment.
• A break up.
• Oh, and post 30 (doesn’t the body become harder to change as you age? 😉)

I say that because, these things are external threats to inner balance that we all experience.

For me, my best physical results have come after all of that when life was harder and more challenging.

You do not have to ‘wait for the right time’...

External threats to our emotional balance are always going to be parts of our lives.

to achieve the results that we desire, external threats are going to HAVE to be identified as part of the process in learning how to psychologically handle them so that we can still work the strategy without self-sabotage.

In hindsight, my body transformation could’ve come a lot sooner, If I knew then what I know now.

Guess what?

That’s the beauty of life, using it to grow and develop.

That is the best result.

The journey of growth and never-ending progression, all to the tune of a daily agenda that supports our best versions through sustainable, holistic, health and wellness management.

The change in these pictures are not the destination, they are bi-products of what I knew at the time, and the will to always learn and be better.

In that process, the acquisition of new skills, learnings, experiences, trial and error, overcoming personal challenges…all of that being practiced, that is the goal, being better and managing those concepts in the arena of life.

That is the destination.

My journey has helped me become my best version, mentally first, and then the physical followed.

And excitingly, this is a relatively small portion in comparison to the rest of my life.

Have you heard of the saying, ‘money makes money’? 

It’s basically a different way of saying momentum matters…

Health, fitness, and wellbeing is the same.

The more we authentically grow, the more humble we become, the more we learn, paradoxically that highlights even more that there is to learn further more to what we have learned, it makes us better, but equally, it means that the definition of being ‘complete‘, changes from a destination to a never ending life journey.

This journey is what has helped me build a coaching service to help people compress decades into years, and years into months.

YOU. ARE. NO. DIFFERENT.

If the insecure, skinny, ‘dumb‘, kid with no knowledge, fixed thinking, and limited know-how can do it (once upon a time 😉).

You can do it, you must though, maintain the core principles of:

• The agenda to always grow.
• Strong enough why’s.
• Quitting isn’t an option.
• The only person to compete with is yourself.
• Doing it for you and not others
• Consistency.
• Not searching for quick fixes.
• Learning the universal laws and principles.

That lot will iron out the strategy, it will give you legs to improve your output, those things together will give you your best ever version (mentally, emotionally, habitually, spiritually, physically)...and counting

Keep going, don’t quit on yourself, don’t settle, and always focus on bettering yourself for yourself.

If I can, you can…

Not because I’m a coach, because I’m a human..as are you, that means you can also.