Trainer to the weighty

AFTER seven years of ducking fists and tossing drunks out of nightclubs, it occurred to Paul Davis there might be easier ways of making a living.

He had a friend who worked as a personal trainer and wondered whether there might be a less confronting future in the fitness industry.
It was an intuitive move which he has built into a business which now operates three private training studios catering to the less fiscally challenged end of town, with plans for further expansion.

"I used to work in a nightclub from eight at night until 5.30 in the morning. I was security manager at The Gig nightclub in the city and it wasn't a good-quality lifestyle," says Davis as we sit in the foyer of his Newstead studio.

"One of my friends was doing personal training, so I started doing that from 6am until 9am when I finished at the club."

Davis is a big bloke, heavily muscled with close-cropped hair. Quietly spoken, almost taciturn at times, he exudes the air of someone not easily intimidated.

"Then I started selling gym equipment. People would come into the shop and want to buy a home gym and say, 'How do I use it?' so I'd go around after work and design an exercise program for them," he says.

I ask him how many of those home gyms are still in use and he takes my point.

"A lot of them would end up in The Weekend Shopper a few weeks later," he says.

"People use them for a while and then get bored with it. What I noticed was that the personal training scene around Brisbane was all about three of our trainers with three or four clients all trying to use the same equipment in the same gym."

Davis hit on the concept of having one client with one trainer in one studio at one time and set up a studio at East Brisbane in Stanley St underneath his house. The business has built from there.

He says his main clients tend to be 35 to 60-year-old executives who don't want to be around crowds and want to get the most out of their workout.

"We have a number of people who come here who have very high public profiles who don't want to go to gyms because they'll be recognised and annoyed there," Davis says. "And we have people who are very obese, who haven't got the self-confidence to go to a gym and start a program, who come to us for the privacy."

Davis says poor diet and impatience are the greatest impediments.

"The biggest mistake people make is going too hard, too soon, trying to get the results too fast," he says.

"They'll get home and be too sore, so they won't go back.

"People want instantaneous results but it's a long-term thing. You need at least two to three months to start to see your body changing. At three months you'll start seeing great results, especially if you change your food intake around as well.

"Three times a week with a day's rest in between is the optimum pattern, with the morning preferable because your growth hormone levels are high and you're more rested. Our clients are split half men, half women with a lot of the women 35 to 40-year-olds who either run their own business or are housewives."

Davis has found that while people want to look and feel better and are happy to pay his $60-an-hour-plus-GST training fees, some are unwilling to change their eating habits.

"We find people who come here and expect drastic results in two to three months. We'll tell them to eat the right food and exercise outside the studio and they won't do that," he says.

"They'll say 'No, I'll come to you but I'll eat what I want' and you can't do that. You have to get off the simple carbohydrates and junk food and eat more fruit, vegetables, salads and lean meats."

He says Australians eat too many simple carbohydrates such as bread, rice and potatoes.

"And they're very inactive," he says. "It just sits on the hips and they get larger and larger."

Davis claims that while there are thousands of diets in existence, they have one common trait.

"Every diet in the world is based on the same principle of no bread, rice, pasta or potatoes. They make it sound more exotic, but that's what it's about."

He then taps his barrel chest and tries to tell me he's overweight.

"I'm probably carrying 10 kilos too many now, but I love food," he says.

He's built like a block of flats and doesn't look a gram overweight, but I decide not to argue the point.

Davis says most people start the day badly and it just gets worse.

"The biggest problem people have is with breakfast," he says. "They usually have cereal and it's often almost pure sugar, which helps you absorb more fat, so you're going to get larger and larger. Have a couple of poached eggs one day and a water-based protein drink the next."

Some clients, he says, try to blame restaurants for their excess weight.

"People say, 'Oh, but I'm going to a restaurant tonight.' I say, 'So what? They'll only give you what you order.'

"We say Monday to Friday no caffeine, no alcohol, and only natural foods. On the weekend, when you're more active, you should go to a restaurant, have a drink and enjoy yourself."

He admits that some clients – particularly women who want to keep eating cake and sweets and still look better – can be difficult to deal with, but has found his nightclub experience has been helpful. "In a club, you can either fight all night or use your mouth to calm the situation down, and it's the same here. There are certain ways of talking to clients to convince them you're right," he says, recalling his days as bouncer.

"There were a lot of long nights, a lot of hard times and a lot of court appearances. You're sober and in comes a patron who's been drinking all night and it doesn't matter what you say, he'll take offence to it."

On the wall of his office are framed photographs of Davis striking Mr Universe-style poses and he tells me that, when he started working in clubs, he realised that while he was skilled at martial arts, he lacked the necessary bulk.

"It's always about grabbing guys and pulling them apart, so I started bodybuilding," he says. "I set myself the goal of being on-stage in the Mr Australia contest within two years.

"I competed in Mr Australia in 1994 and was runner-up. I'd reached my goal. The next day, I gave it up."

We talk about our nation's drift into obesity, and Davis adds that his business is now working with kids.

"We're doing kids' holiday camps for one week, three hours a day in groups of four for 11 to 16-year-olds," he says.

"We teach them nutrition and how to train correctly. They say kids are a reflection of their parents. In a lot of cases these days, that's not much of an image."

I can't do push-ups, but if Davis told me to hit the floor and give him 20 I'd probably make it 25 just to avoid upsetting him.

Paul Davis can be contacted on 3252 3161 or at www.pauldavis.com.au