
Hi I’m Scott Laidler
My online personal training service is the result of twelve years experience working at the highest level as a personal trainer, learning not just how to create amazing physical transformations, but also to help create sustainable health habits. These important habits allow those on my training programs not only to achieve their ideal body, but to also foster a healthy energy and vitality that makes any task in life easier to accomplish..
I have three core objectives for my clients that are present in everything I do:
1. Deliver your ideal physique
We start here not just because this has long been our primary expertise but also because we acknowledge that being in great shape and feeling fit helps to rid the mind of a lot of negative self-talk that can be unproductive over many areas of your life. Once we’ve quieted those voices we have a far greater opportunity to move forward with a still mind.
2. Establish a healthy lifestyle
My training programs have two primary objectives. The first is to achieve excellent physical results over a 12-week online fitness program. This means you will be exercising consistently and eating the kind of food that is going to help you achieve your goal. The other focus is on your health ten years from now, this ensures that we never include anything in your programs that would detract from your overall health and well-being. Every workout regime allows for full recovery, every meal plan is designed for nutritional diversity and we include meditations and other health practices that help offset any fatigue incurred on your body.
3. Fuel Your Ambition
Having a great physique and maintaining optimal health is an amazing achievement in life. It’s also a great springboard for sitting down and deciding exactly what you would like to achieve in your life, in terms of career, business, goals, creative projects, and building a fulfilling lifestyle in general. You’ll be feeling so good on the training program I create for you, that you may be surprised how creative you feel and just how much energy you have to spur those long-held goals and dreams into action.
Meet our Medical Director, Dr. Olivia Lesslar
MBBS, BIR, AdvCert Skin Ca Medicine
My online personal training programs run deeper than aesthetic change, as such I’ll never make decisions or advise a protocol that would jeopardise your health for short-term results. As the Medical Director of Healthy Ambition Coaching and Scott Laidler Fitness, Dr Olivia oversees medical information, research, biohacking, and nutrition ensuring that the content on this website and within my traning programs remains cutting-edge and evidence based. Dr Olivia and Scott Laidler provide health, lifestyle coaching, and educational programs predominantly in corporate settings. Dr Olivia is currently residing in Los Angeles and works as a Medical Consultant with celebrity concierge company Lifespan Medicine and is the Chief Medical Officer at Modern American Sleep Solutions based in Manhattan Beach, LA. She is the Resident Medical Consultant for Chronic Fatigue Health, an online ME/CFS program where she conducts monthly workshops and translates medical research. Previously, Dr Olivia was the functional medicine practitioner for the Neuroimmunology Associates of New York. Dr Olivia has degrees in International Relations majoring in French and Diplomacy, and Medicine and Surgery with an Advanced Certificate in Skin Cancer Medicine. In Australia, she has served on the Medical Rescue Foundation’s board of directors and is currently on the board of directors for Doctors for Refugees. Dr Olivia consults to the Australian melanoma charity movement Beard Season.Dr Olivia was nominated for Excellence in Practice at the 2019 Bioceuticals Integrative Medicine Awards, and in 2020 was nominated for a Natural Medicine Entrepreneur X-Factor Award for innovation in Functional Medicine.
My Story…
Lessons learned from a life in fitness…
I’d like to share a little about my journey in fitness, the experience gained, lessons learned, and ultimately how I can apply my experience to help guide you to attain a level of health and fitness that up until now may always have felt out of reach. My career has seen me coach everyone from Oscar-winning actors, athletes, military service personnel, even members of European royal families, indeed, over the course of the last 12 years I’ve worked with thousands of men and women from every background from all over the world. I’ve worked as a sought-after personal trainer in London, Los Angeles, and Monaco. I’ve also traveled and studied the fitness industry in the Far-East, Europe and South America. From operating gyms, running boot camps, Hollywood cast preparation, writing for media publications, and hosting a radio show, and coaching personal trainers across the globe, there isn’t much I haven’t seen or done in the industry.
But my journey to this point wasn’t straightforward nor without its challenges.
Looking back, my relationship with exercise started in my childhood years, growing up on a steady diet of physique-laden action films like the rocky saga, the karate kid and, well …any Schwarzenegger movie. I had some very early influences for getting into health & fitness.
Determined to emulate my idols on the silver screen, I would spend hours each day doing push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups over and over again in my bedroom, after a few months of unrelenting work my efforts were finally starting to pay off. Before long I was showing family and friends how strong I’d become, one day though, I must have rubbed someone close to me up the wrong way with my incessant displays of exercise technique as he sat me down and told me that despite how hard I trained “I just didn’t have the kind of body that could ever become muscular”. As you can imagine, this was soul-crushing news to me at such a young age, and as he knew a lot more about WWF wrestling than me at the time I reasoned that he knew what he was talking about.
Some years went by and despite the knockback I kept training, I saw some improvements and gained some considerable muscle size, I was never lean though, and this was never far from my mind. Over the course of my psychology degree at the University of Plymouth, I realised that more and more people were coming to me to help them get started out in fitness, during my final year at university it dawned on me that effectively I had already been working as a personal trainer for years without realising it, I’d found my ideal career I just needed an official qualification and I could really go out into the world and get started.

In my early years as a personal trainer I was getting pretty decent results with my clients, helping people get more active, and confront some of the beliefs holding them back, I quickly saw the connection between mind and body and it’s played a big role in the way I coach. It wasn’t all positive though, in my own training I often found it hard to make progress. Sometimes I’d try one routine and end up muscular and big but also what I used to affectionately and embarrassingly term ‘over-bulked’, then I would try to lean up and I would end up back where I started by crash dieting and running off all my hard-earned muscle with unnecessarily long cardio sessions.
Throughout my adolescence and young adult life the damming words of that individual never truly went away, I knew that for a trainer, I wasn’t in the kind of shape I ought to be and didn’t want to confront nor accept the idea that I just didn’t have the kind of body that could achieve the lean muscular physique I had been seeking since childhood.
In 2011 things had reached a boiling point, I couldn’t reconcile my identity as a top-flight personal trainer without being satisfied with my own aesthetics, I needed congruence mentally to move forward so I set myself a challenge that if by the end of the year I couldn’t get to 10% body fat I would leave the fitness industry forever, and I meant it! It was the only way I could feel authentic and that I belonged among the top coaches in the field, if I couldn’t even figure my own body out I felt it would be best to quietly bow out of the industry I loved.
With my future as the stakes, I was highly motivated to find the best methods and techniques from all over the world. Having not worked for me, I was willing to throw out all the conventional knowledge I had accumulated and challenge every assumption I had made about my own body, training and nutrition. To my astonishment, many times actually doing the very opposite of what was conventional produced startling results!
Some of the questions I asked were:
Was running really the best way to go out and burn body fat?
Absolutely not! actually I was running for too long at too high of a heart rate and losing muscle mass! Now I sprint and brisk Walk regualrly and jogging is utilised for baseline fitness and mental focus, but is considered a pretty blunt tool for fat loss.
Was it always best to lift as heavily as possible?
Actually no, there’s a time for that but I actually lift my heaviest weights when losing body fat, to my astonishment I found that I could pack on muscle faster with as little as 30% of what I used to lift by manipulating rest periods and rep ranges, the key to buidling muscle is progressive overload and adapations, it’s nuanced but its a different than strength.
Was breakfast truly the most important meal of the day?
Perhaps it’s true that your first meal of the day is the most important, but that doesn’t have to be in the morning, I’ve used intermittent fasting for three years now to recover faster and stay leaner, this means i don’t eat my first meal until noon. It’s not a pre-requiste for working with me, though I’ve seen it yield excellent results for my clients.
Were protein shakes and other well marketed supplements really a necessity?
Under close inspection it turned out that many of the top supplements on the market were little more than milk protein, sugar and preservatives. There is definitely a place for supplementation, but you’ve got to be careful not to be taken in by the hype! Focus on supplements that improve health not perfromance and get the appropriate advice. You don’t need supplements to have a great workout, cultivating your mindset to be able to switch into a focused state at will is far more empowering.
Was training two or three times per day like an athlete the best way to ensure success?
No! This was pushing me further and further into fatigue and actually slowing down my results, I started training 3-4 times per week, shortened my workouts and got great results.
Over the course of the year I trialled and adopted many cutting edge training regimes, nutrition frameworks and protocols to force my body to change. This process is beginning to have more mainstream adoption and has now been given the appropriate name of ‘biohacking’.
By the end of the year, for the first time in my life, by my own assessment, I was ‘that guy’ and had achieved the kind of physique I had seen in all those movies and magazines. I’d achieved the change that I always theoretically knew was possible, but never really had the absolute belief that I could do it myself because I lacked the blueprint. Now equipped with the methodology that had actually delivered, I knew that I had accomplished a life-changing achievement.
This lit a fire inside of me, I felt like the fitness industry’s best kept secret and my express goal was to explain my techniques to as many people as I could get to listen and help them achieve what I had.
From that point, I built my reputation as a personal trainer on rapid body transformations, often taking those that were lost with exercise to cover model shape in a few short months. As my career developed I began getting more and more opportunities coming my way, there was only a certain number of training sessions I could deliver in a day, I was often delivering 10-12 sessions per day such was the demand, as my exclusivity grew, often I was fortunate enough to work people who had achieved incredible worldly success, not coming from that type of background or surroundings, I learned a lot through osmosis.
Whilst this was a great experience, I noticed that no matter where people were in life career or business-wise, the vast majority were making huge sacrifices with their health in the pursuit of a ‘better’ body or their personal ambition. I always thought that once you’d achieved a certain level of success, life became easy but I was observing on a daily basis that you also had to be aware of the way in which you pursued your worldly goals because often the bill for the fatigue, lack of sleep and stress comes months and years later.
The reality of this hit home for me personally when despite being in good physical shape I was taken down with 6 months of repeated illness by way of a recurring sinus and chest infection that took four rounds of antibiotics to cure, in other words, a nuclear bomb to my digestion, which led to almost a year of further problems, I literally couldn’t digest a meal without discomfort for nearly a year.
Taking time to meditate and look back at my behavior and lifestyle, I was able to connect the dots as to what had gone wrong. I had made work my priority time and time again, never resting, always pursuing achievement over recovery, and allowing the stressors in my everyday and personal life to go unchecked. Eventually, stress and inflammation had built up to the point of inviting illness into my body like an open barn door.
Once again forced to question everything I knew, I went back and studied the very fundamentals of maintaining true health, In my estimation I had a fantastic handle on the aesthetic side of fitness, but it had come at the cost of everything else. Over time I learned to integrate aspects of Yoga, meditation and nutritional therapy to create a strong yet balanced body that could support the physical demands of training and the psychological demands of everyday life and building a career. Learning to listen to the language of my body was my second big revelation in my journey.
Some of the Questions I asked at this time and found surprising results of were:
What effect does stress have on my physical training?
The relationship between stress and results is so profound I cant believe it’s not talked about more. A stressed mind and body just cannot perform the same way as a calm one, not only that, but in a stressed state, intense exercise can actually push you more and more into fatigue.
Hows does inflammation of all kinds affect my health?
It’s important to understand that inflammation is a form of immune response in your body. But when inflammation is chronic and allowed to go unchecked it can weaken your immune system and leave you vulnerable to ill health.
What could I do to enhance recovery and increase energy levels?
As you push your body recovery becomes more and more important, I learnt how to eat to recover quickly, enhance my sleep quality and implement hot and cold therapy to vastly speed up recovery and provide numerous health benefits.
What supplements, food or actions could I take to enhance my immune system and avoid frequent illnesses?
This is an ongoing process as there is always new research coming out, but I’ve found some fantastic foods and supplements to improve the immune system. Actually, I believe It should be an intention at the start of each year to have 365 days of good health without illness. Of course, life has it’s curveballs, but prioritising good health and all-around robustness is never a fruitless pursuit.
Could digestion be improved to avoid common or recurring issues?
Absolutely! Too often people see their digestion as pre-ordained, but there is a wealth of adjustments you can make to improve your digestion, I went from a ruined digestion system to being symptom-free within 6 months. Let me tell you going from regular problems to being discomfort free can change the quality of your life.
What is the best way to quieten the mind and liberate it from limiting beliefs or negative self talk?
Meditation, yoga and mindful walks in nature have massively helped me still my mind and open the flood gates of creativity. Establishing a daily mindfulness and productivity practice is essential to the pursuit of your ambitions.
Enriched once again with a new approach to my work I went out to try to help as many people as possible. As my message and priorities changed, I began to work with an even more diverse spectrum of clients, and was able not just to help them develop a great physique, but also to help to avoid, offset and even reverse health ailments, join forces with their medical practitioners to reduce dependence on medication and create a sustainable balance between body and mind.
Over time it struck me that there was no scenario in which sacrificing one’s health in pursuit of ambition was justified or even productive, no matter how aesthetically pleasing a physique or how much personal success had been achieved, vibrant health must always remain a priority, because once neglected to the point of no return, no amount of worldly success can bring it back.
I’ve seen the same behavior patterns all over the world, the same desire for fulfillment, self-esteem, and achievement, and similar costs to bear for them, often the price is too high, our health. Closer to home as a child I saw members of my own family lose their lives to a lack of knowledge of what to eat to maintain health and due to not being able to take care of the fundamentals of health. It’s sad to think of how many millions of people out there today are on a similar and largely avoidable trajectory.
My ambition is to bring as much help as I can to people looking to enhance their health, refine their physique and fuel their ambition. Knowledge of health I believe is a basic human right and my mission is to provide that life-changing knowledge to as many individuals, homes, and workplaces as I can across the world.
My online personal training service is my comprehensive solution to the problems I have outlined above. I will work with you to work out exactly what we need to do to achieve your health and fitness goals without paying the price of your health. The intention is that by working with me as your coach, I will help you not just achieve your goals, but equip you with the tools you need to sustain your results and understand the ‘why’ of everything we do. As you’re coach, I pride myself on my level of availability so I’ll be on hand with you throughout your journey to provide support, clarification, accountability, and motivation. I’m excited to join you as we work together toward a long healthy, and successful life.