Why I created ACE FIT

In high school, I was the fat kid. I weighed around 110kg, was bullied because of my size, and became desperate to change how I looked. The problem was, I had no idea what I was doing.

I took things too far in the opposite direction and eventually dropped all the way down to 69kg. At the time, I thought being as skinny as possible was the answer. I learned the hard way that it wasn’t.

That experience pushed me to start properly learning about training, nutrition and how the body actually works. I started hitting the gym seriously, learning through experience, studying different training methods and constantly trying to improve.

Somewhere along the way, fitness stopped being something I did because I hated how I looked and became something I genuinely loved.

That passion eventually led me to the Australian Institute of Fitness, where I completed my personal training qualifications and achieved my Certificate V as a Master Trainer.

Fitness and performance have been part of almost every stage of my life. I’ve spent 18 years training in the gym, learning and experimenting with different techniques and approaches. I’ve played golf for around 30 years, including at a high level, spent 8 years playing AFL football, and have been involved in the esports and gaming industry for around 15 years.

Lived experience — not qualifications

Those completely different worlds taught me something important:

Fitness isn't just about having abs or lifting the heaviest weight.

It's about

• Performance
• Confidence
• Discipline
• Longevity
• Mental health

I’ve also had my own battles with depression and mental health. There were periods where I found myself close to self-destruction, and fitness became one of the key pillars that helped me keep moving forward.

The gym gave me structure when I needed structure, goals when I needed direction, and somewhere to put my energy when things weren’t going well.

That’s a huge part of why I created ACE FIT.

I wanted to take the lessons I’ve learned over nearly two decades of training — including the mistakes I made — and turn them into something that makes fitness easier to understand and more accessible for other people.

I don’t want someone to feel like they have to starve themselves down from 110kg to 69kg because they don’t know any better.

“ACE FIT is about learning how to train, eat and improve yourself properly — physically and mentally — without having to learn everything the hard way like I did.”