“MY PARENTS split up when I was young. I went to primary school in Nowra (on the NSW south coast) where I lived with my mum, then I had to say goodbye to all my friends and come up and live with dad in Sydney. I had to reestablish myself and find new friends, so I had to become more outgoing.
“After I finished school, I went to Canada for 17 months and I reckon that helped shape my life. I did two snowboarding seasons and hung around for summer to do some wakeboarding. I was basically there for board sports.
“Travelling helped me become a more independent person. I was young, I’d just left school, so it was good to go out there and learn how to survive on your own. Paying rent and bills, you get an understanding of life.
“I work for my old man doing acid-wash and high-pressure water blasting. It’s hard work. Some guys have come in and lasted a week. But the physical workload just becomes part of your life after a while. I like to fit in 4-5 exercise sessions a week. I try to make most of them up with weight training, but if I get in three weight sessions and then go dirt-bike riding, running, cycling or surfing on the other days, I’m happy.
“In the program I’m doing at the moment, every exercise works as many muscles as possible. We do a lot of stuff on the Swiss ball so that you’re not isolating any one muscle and you’re getting everything you can out of that one exercise.
My goal is to enter a triathlon. I’d have to work on my swimming, but I’ve got the running and cycling down pat.
“In the future, I’d like to focus on helping people. My younger brother has cystic fibrosis, so it’s brought home to me how important it is to help out those less fortunate than you are.
“I also think it’s important to stay active as you get older. A lot of people who work a hard day just come home and sit on the couch and eat bad food. You’ve just got to get outdoors, whether it’s kicking a ball with the kids or going for a walk. It all helps.”
A three-week rotation in which you do sets of six, five and then four reps the third week, increasing weight as you drop reps
1. Swiss-ball one-arm chest press2. Swiss-ball reverse dumbbell fly
3. Swiss-ball squat with medicine-ball throw.
A mate throws a medicine ball to you while you stand on a Swiss ball; you do the squat, then throw the medicine ball back to him. The better you get, the further away your mate stands.
4. Swiss-ball incline chest press
5. Swiss-ball chest press
Training tip: canned chicken on rice crackers. If you don’t like tuna, this has a similar amount of protein.
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