About
I work with people who have demanding schedules and no particular interest in spending their lives in a gym, and I help them become leaner, stronger, and able to maintain it.
@jakobmcdowellBackground
I am a Brisbane based fitness coach with more than ten years across personal training, gym management, health and fitness, and community recreation. I have trained, competed, coached clients, run gyms, and built my own business.
None of it was a straight line, and that matters more to how I coach than any qualification does.
I know what it is to be unhappy with your own body. I was overweight when I was younger, and eventually decided to change how I lived. That decision changed the direction of my life and is the reason I ended up in this industry at all.
There have been serious setbacks since. More than a decade ago I fainted and fell through a shower, and it very nearly killed me. I was lucky, and I had to rebuild from close to nothing.
More recently there has been another round of upheaval. Losing a job, having a car stolen, buying a house, and dealing with the uncertainty that comes with starting over. All of it reinforced something I already believed: your health should not be the first thing you give up when life gets hard or busy.
So that is the approach. You do not need to live in a gym, eat perfectly, or abandon your social life to get in good shape. You need something built around the life you actually have, that makes you stronger and fitter without feeling like you are permanently on a diet.
Personalised training, nutrition guidance, accountability, and someone genuinely in your corner. Whether the goal is losing body fat, building muscle, improving your fitness, feeling better in your clothes, or simply getting back on track, the work is building habits and consistency that hold.
No extremes. No quick fixes. No starting over every Monday.
Your life does not need to revolve around fitness. Fitness should help you get more out of your life.
Approach
The most theoretically optimal program is worth nothing if it assumes two spare hours and no competing commitments. I would rather build something marginally less efficient that you will complete every week for a year.
Reducing someone's body fat over eight weeks is not difficult. The skill lies in what follows: establishing maintenance intake, defining the training you continue with, and preparing for weeks when adherence is not possible.
Restriction works until it does not, at which point it tends to work forcefully in the opposite direction. Intakes are built with flexibility included, because a plan with no flexibility has a limited lifespan by design.
The objective is not for you to require a coach indefinitely. Every adjustment comes with an explanation, so that in twelve months you are able to manage your own training without consulting anyone.
Structure over willpower
A good proportion of my clients have ADHD, diagnosed or strongly suspected. Coaching them has changed how I build every program, because what goes wrong for them goes wrong for most people, only sooner and more visibly.
I coach training and nutrition. I do not diagnose or treat ADHD, and nothing here claims that exercise manages it. If you are under professional care, that advice comes first and the training is built around it.
Read the full article on training with ADHDThe weekly review is the mechanism, not a formality. A set day, a short set of questions, and a person who notices. A bad week is caught at seven days, not seven weeks.
Sessions arrive written down with last week's numbers. Meal structure is a short list, not a spreadsheet. If it has to be remembered, it will eventually be forgotten, so nothing has to be.
Two sessions instead of four and one nutrition rule, decided in a calm week. When the interrupting week arrives you switch to it rather than deciding whether to keep going.
Small things vary every block so it does not go stale. The main lifts and the structure stay fixed long enough for progress to show. Both halves are deliberate.
Suitability
I am not the appropriate coach if you are working toward a scale figure by a date that is not realistic, if you want a plan delivered with no subsequent contact, or if you are looking for confirmation that a supplement is the missing component. I will decline that work and explain why during the consultation, rather than accepting payment and hoping for the best.
Apply for coachingFree resource
A concise guide covering the five factors that make the greatest difference when training time is limited, including what to do in the week you would normally fall off. You will also receive one short email a week on training and nutrition. One click removes you at any time.
6 of 6 places remain for October.
If you have started well before and stopped once life got busy, that is the situation this coaching is built for. The application takes about two minutes, the call is free, and nothing is charged until you have a written quote in hand.