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Scott Laidler
Founder & Fitness Coach
I was frustrated with my results too
Everyone’s fitness journey is different, and few are without their challenges. It would be easy to assume getting in shape comes easily to personal trainers and that’s why they do what they do. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve certainly seen that scenario many times. But it isn’t always the way things play out, at least it wasn’t for me. Interestingly, in fitness, many trainers find themselves so fascinated with their subject matter because it once represented hope. Perhaps if they learned enough they would be able to solve their own problems. Interestingly I’ve also seen this mirrored by those that enter the realm of psychology.
My journey in fitness wasn’t driven by aspirations to become an athlete, bodybuilder, or fitness model. It was a personal quest for self-esteem and mastery in a realm without the usual barriers to entry nor any significant gatekeepers. From my late teens, I acknowledged fitness as an area of life where you really could get back out what you put in.
During my childhood when watching action-hero movies, I’d been told I’d never look like those guys, I just didn’t have the ‘body type’ capable of seeing much change. I’ve always been the type to try to falsify the barriers put on me, so although initially discouraging this observation actually spurred me on. I wanted to grow, not just physically by gaining muscle but in spirit and confidence. And I did, but not in the way I expected. After a few years of training, I found myself in decent shape, the kind that whispers of regular exercise but never shouts.
Taking my cues from the world of bodybuilding where I would trawl the early internet forums for tips, I’d go through the typical long winter ‘bulking’ cycles during which I would gain unwanted body fat, then in an effort to correct this, get very restrictive on the opposite approach to bulking, which was and still is called ‘cutting’ which was all oriented around losing body fat. By the time I finally achieved what many would call ‘lean’, my advances were almost invisible under everyday clothing because I’d been so restrictive with carbohydrates and calories that I had worked much of my hard-earned muscle off. It was a bit like keeping a leaking boat afloat by continuously emptying jugs of water.
I continued to make incremental progress through my university years, but never really felt muscular and lean at the same time, it was always one or the other. Following a degree in psychology, I entered the fitness industry because I recognised exercise as a powerful vehicle for change. It had given me discipline, confidence and resilience and I’d be able to apply what I had learnt about psychology with regard to motivation and behaviour change. It felt like the perfect intersection of my three core interests: fitness, psychology and entrepreneurship, which is the subject matter of my podcast.
I discovered I could get results for those that I worked with who in particular felt that they had already tried everything. I seemed to have a knack for understanding what really motivated them, and then helping them keep these motivations top of mind through their training program. Which helped keep them on track when the path got tough. Perhaps this was a call back to what I’d learned in my psychology degree, but I found working with people intuitive, never academic because every person brings something unique to the table. It was fascinating work, like a Rubik’s cube to solve to help every new person.
It was here, in these vicarious victories, that I found my footing in such a competitive industry. But even as I helped others attain their ideal bodies, deep down I knew I was unsatisfied with mine. Driven by the image of who I thought I needed to be to succeed in this industry, I set myself an ultimatum: achieve the physique I desired or leave personal training for good.
How would I know I had achieved it? Well, technically I wanted to be between 10-12% body fat and be able to maintain that year-round. How this would actually play out would be that I’s be in a position to hire a photographer, take some pictures and be in the kind of shape where it wouldn’t be a complete embarrassment. That’s not a statement on body image, but a reflection of the fact that I was beginning to position myself as a ‘body transformation expert’ so it would be pretty soul-destroying if I turned up to my own photo shoot out of shape, at least by fitness industry standards.
There was only one thing for it. Book a photoshoot, abroad. I believe when your back is against the wall and you have to make things happen, it helps to raise the stakes. So this way if it didn’t work out, not only would it be demoralising and force me into a whole new career path, but it was also going to end up pretty expensive, offering an auxiliary motivator.
This challenge led me down a path of questioning everything I thought I knew about fitness. I’ve learned through reading the works of people like Tim Ferris, Peter Thiel and Adam Grant that good can be the enemy of great, so I was willing to do away with the status quo. I discovered that sometimes, the opposite of conventional wisdom holds the key to breakthrough success.
Questions that changed the way I looked at fitness
Was running really the best way to burn body fat?
Absolutely not! actually, I was running for too long at too high of a heart rate to be effective for fat loss and it was costing me muscle mass. Now, I sprint and hike regularly to burn fat. 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 trying to set your PB’s, and I’ve found that I actually lift my heaviest weights when working to lose body fat. To my astonishment, I found that I could put on muscle faster with as little as 30% of what I used to lift by manipulating rest periods and rep ranges, the key to building muscle is progressive overload and adaptation, it’s nuanced but your ability to gain muscle won’t be determined by how strong you are.
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 early in the morning. I’ve maintained an intermittent fasting practice for years now and have found it easier to stay lean, feel more energy and enjoy better digestion. Which means I don’t eat my first meal until around noon. It’s not a prerequisite for working with me, or for achieving your goals, but I have 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 fast-selling 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 performance and get the appropriate medical 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 that any pre-workout will be.
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.
Finally, a solution
I put an end to the ‘bulking’ and ‘cutting’ cycles. Figuring out a way to do both simultaneously, with recomposition. Why? Because if you can go in both directions at the same time, you are getting in progressively better shape every day, in a way that has no bounce back. This is a game-changer. I also made some significant shifts to the way I thought about fitness as you can see in the section above.
Applying this new approach to fitness, I was able to break through to a new level of conditioning, finally being able to hold a good deal of muscle and stay lean simultaneously.
I followed through on my photoshoot, and affirmed in my own eyes, my ability to feel authentic as a personal trainer. Of course, I’m no bodybuilder or anything like that, but this kind of conditioning gave me a sense of accomplishment. In London, I started to become a trainer people talked about, I built a waitlist, wrote for a national newspaper, which all led to training Hollywood stars on big-budget movie productions. I was living my dream. And by dream, I mean doing something I didn’t think was even possible, not for a kid from Northwest London without familial wealth or business connections. But in this whirlwind of progression, I had started to lose sight of a crucial part of life’s puzzle, and that was balance.
Not necessarily with my physical training, that was finally on point, at least on the surface. My identity became too interwoven with my physique, I felt that I had to hold on to it at all costs. And because I never really felt ‘entitled’ to my success, having not grown up around it, I basically said yes to everything. If someone wanted a session at 5 am on the other side of London I’d be there. If the film studio needed me to work 14-hour days, that’s what I did. It was fine at first, but before long I started to feel the consequences.
Finding balance
Over the years, I often found myself walking the line between healthy living and burnout. As demand for my time grew, I focused on what I was afraid to lose. Which was my muscle and relatively low body fat percentage, silly now that I look back but back then, it was who I was.
So pushed for time, I skipped a warmup up here, or a stretch session there. I sat and worked a little longer than I knew I should a little too often. Over time I started to rationalise away the loss of the ability to perform the occasional exercise due to discomfort, or a niggling injury, even as a personal trainer. I reasoned that I needed to stay in physical shape as a priority and that I could always catch up on remedial work later.
In the midst of one particularly intensive film production, where the demands of my job plus maintaining my external client base had me working 16-18 hour days, I encountered a moment of unexpected reflection. Despite the success of the sessions I was delivering and the accolades for the results I was delivering, the producer of the movie pointed out something seemingly trivial but profoundly impactful — my car needed cleaning.
I was a bit taken aback because this really didn’t have anything to do with fitness. At first, I brushed it off with the rationale that my relentless schedule, which had me at the studio for 12 hours or more a day and running my business in the scant hours beyond that, left no room for such seemingly mundane tasks as washing my car. But upon deeper reflection, I recognised a profound message hidden within the observation.
For years, I had worn my lack of sleep and non-stop work ethic as badges of honour, believing that my ability to outwork others was going to be the key to success. Yet, this mindset, while initially seeming to reflect a commendable work ethic, subtly betrayed a deeper issue — a significant lack of balance. In its extreme form, this imbalance manifests not just as a car that could do with a clean, but as it has in many of my clients, in physical signs of stress. Such as stubborn visceral fat around the stomach, often mistakenly attributed to the effects of ageing.
I’ve heard it from countless individuals, “It’s just age catching up with me,” ironically usually from those around 30. But the truth I came to realise, mirrored in the state of my car, was not about age but lifestyle. My car had become an extension of myself, a testament to the relentless pursuit of my goals at the expense of self-care and balance. What I thought signalled dedication and ambition actually revealed a neglect of my own well-being and that of my possessions, and for those looking through a certain lens, this was all they could see.
Perhaps you can see a reflection of your own life in this story, not necessarily with your car, but with your body, your energy levels, your rushed meals, and your freedom of movement. This doesn’t signal the success of a high flyer, but rather a warning of the lack of self-prioritisation and balance needed to maintain physical and mental well-being.
The success of my personal training service helped launch businesses which brought with them gruelling admin. 12 hour days on a film set began to look part-time in comparison. I started getting more serious injuries, the kind that stop you training. I started to lose ground on my physique, and my health. Stress started to make itself known in more ways than one. I started to get strange things I’d never had before like sinus infections and digestive problems, even though I was eating well.
One day it all came to a crescendo, a sudden bout of acute costochondritis that triggered a host of other muscular and nerve problems that kept me completely out of training for 5 months. I wish I could tell you an exciting story about a triumphant sporting injury or some wear and tear I picked up on some kind of mountain accent.
But the truth is, that I’ve had my worst injuries not from the martial arts I’ve done, the cross-country hikes, mountain biking in the Andes or even attempting some kind of weightlifting PB.
In fact I’ve never had a serious injury training, my significant setbacks have always come from what amounts to typing and sitting at a computer for longer than I should have been. Why did it happen, I bit off more than I could chew without the right systems and habits in place and basically didn’t want to let anyone down, so I just kept working when I knew I should rest.
One day I was asked by two different online clients, what timezone I was in, by people who like me, lived in London, the implication being that they could see I was often working on their programs at 3 or 4 am. I knew I was burning the candle at both ends.
It’s not comfortable even to relay this story years later. But I’m doing so to highlight that even when you know exactly what you need to do, and it’s actually your profession, as it was mine. You can still cut corners and let things slide, because in our fast-paced lives, it can be so hard to practice self-care when we spend so much time and energy in the name of our work and responsibilities. It can feel like a trap. And an insidious one at that, because you often don’t know you’re ensnared until you start feeling the consequences.
I’d basically worked myself into a situation where I couldn’t exercise. At the height of this period, I was in too much pain to walk around the block. Laid up, it dawned on me that when I looked back, not one of my highest-flying clients had achieved their goals without it taking a serious toll on their health and that in comparison to what many of them had been through, though I was in a bad spot temporarily, I was lucky. Whether Entrepreneurs, C-Suite executives, Actors or musicians, it seemed success came with a hefty price tag.
Some even sought my services specifically to reverse the very damage they had done by burning themselves out, in the hope of turning it all around. So that they could actually enjoy the life they had spent the last few decades working so hard for. I’ve seen people spend tens of thousands on doctors, physios and treatments just to counteract ailments that would have been easily avoidable with a more balanced approach to their work.
It was a long road back. I basically had to start from scratch, it took nearly 9 months to the day to get back to the point where I had recovered enough that there was no longer any activity I couldn’t do that I’d been capable of prior to this period.
I remember vividly the feeling of being confident enough to walk deep into a forest to a point where I knew there would be no help if my body failed me. it was the first moment I had felt like myself in nearly a year.
The aesthetic side was relatively easy to reprise. It was just retracing previous training programs. But self-prioritising, bulletproofing my joints, making my muscles strong, flexible and functional through their full range of movement, not just looking good, plus giving freedom of movement equal training time to physique work required real planning and discipline to implement.
As you can imagine all of this was a major wake-up call, one that forced me to step back and re-evaluate not just my career, but my approach to life, even my location. I realised that ambition without health is an empty endeavour.
This journey birthed ‘Healthy Ambition,’ my methodology grounded in balance, freedom of movement, and sustainable energy levels. It’s designed to ensure that ambition fuels our health, rather than undermine it.
Questions that changed the way I viewed work/life balance
What effect does stress have on my physical training?
The relationship between stress and results is so profound I can’t 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. That’s not hyperbole, you’re more likely to accumulate fat when stressed especially around the midsection. All things considered, it will also be harder to lose fat and gain muscle even when your training is perfect. Not to mention that you’re more likely to get sick or injured when stressed, which could render you inactive for extended periods of time. Yet many people focus on exercise, selection, number of training days or the best protein powder before ever addressing stress management.
Hows does inflammation of all kinds affect my health?
It’s important to understand that inflammation is a natural form of immune response in your body. But when inflammation is caused by stress or poor food choices it can become chronic. If allowed to go unchecked, it can weaken your immune system and leave you vulnerable to ill health as well as slow your recovery times. For this reason, I encourage my clients to defend a position of wellness as vehemently as they would look to treat an illness or disease.
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 whilst providing numerous health benefits. This took recovery rates to a new level and boosted my everyday energy level.
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 its 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 digestive health as pre-ordained, but there is a wealth of adjustments you can make to improve your digestion, I went from a ruined digestion system due to years of fruitless cycles of antibiotics for acne to being symptom-free within 6 months once I learnt about the lifestyle factors, exercises and stressmanagement practices that influence digestion. 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 floodgates of focus and creativity. Establishing a daily mindfulness and productivity practice is essential to the pursuit of your ambitions.
When I look back on those days now, I’m almost thankful, otherwise, I think I’d still be focused on the more aesthetic, two-dimensional elements of fitness, nothing wrong with that but helping prevent burnout has given my career a lot of meaning in it’s more mature stage.
Actually, without this experience, I’d never have stumbled across the fitness industry’s biggest blindspot. Which is that so many people who are juggling professions, businesses and personal responsibilities at home are forced to take their training cues from athletes, bodybuilders, influencers and fitness models who basically live in the gym. It’s a major disconnect and the cause of a lot of overwhelm and frustration with fitness programs.
Most programs just don’t meet their clients where they are, they are calibrated for the finished article, the trainer wants you to meet them where they are, rather than the other way around.
Ultimately over-exercise and caloric restriction, the fitness industry status quo are just very cleverly packaged forms of further fatigue. So when you’re reeling from stress, and burnout these are not solutions, they are exacerbations of the problem.
In hindsight moving online, running a ‘real’ business and being forced into a far less active lifestyle have helped me see the world through my client’s eyes.
So now the methods I’ve developed to build aesthetic bodies, have been made even more efficient to waste no time. They are also now bolstered by stress management techniques, an invitation to form a restorative connection with nature and guidance on how to use food to restore your health, not just manipulate your body composition.
There is no escaping the mind-body connection. From dealing with setbacks, and developing motivation and emotional resilience to the key necessity in modern life to learn to slow down, and prioritise self-care. If not for yourself, then for those who hold you up as a role model.
Of course, I’m acutely aware that I haven’t overcome a truly life-threatening situation in this story, I can only bow my hat to those that have. However, everyone’s lived experience is real and many of my client’s experiences echo my own.
As I write to reassure the reader that my boots are still in touch with the terracotta, I’m going to take the risk of quoting Confucius:
“We all have two lives, the second starts when we realise we only have one”
So whilst we may not face death in a literal sense, sometimes we are offered unexpected opportunities to be reborn.
If you’re ready to redefine success and find a balance that brings energy and vitality back into your life, join me. Let’s embark on this journey together, because your ambition to be the best version of yourself shouldn’t cost you your energy, or your health.