My Story: Strength Through Resilience
I’ve been in fitness for nearly 30 years. Not as a hobbyist. As someone who has built a career around understanding what the body is capable of, and what gets in the way.
Before that, I spent a decade playing professional squash. It was my life from the time I left school until my early thirties. I trained hard, competed seriously, and loved it. Then chronic knee tendonitis made the decision for me. The career ended, and I had to figure out who I was without it.
That transition wasn’t clean. Most aren’t.
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Toward the end of my squash career, and in the years after, the transition back into ordinary life was harder than anything I’d faced on court.
I was not the person you see now.
I hid underneath alcohol and substances for a while. It was easy to fall into, and I’m not proud of it. But it took a real toll, mentally and physically. Trying to find the next version of yourself after losing an identity you’ve built your whole life around is not a small thing. Most people don’t talk about it. I’m talking about it because some of the men reading this will know exactly what I mean.
What brought me through was not a programme or a plan. It was facing what I’d been avoiding, and finding genuine gratitude for the life I’d already had. The adventure, the competition, the experiences — some people never get any of that. That perspective became my foundation.
I’m still learning. It’s still an ebb and flow. But the difficult periods are shorter and further apart than they used to be. I’ve built an understanding that hard times are not a sign something has gone wrong. They are inevitable, and necessary. Contrast is how we recognise the good. I’ve come to believe you have to do hard things to truly appreciate the life you’re building.
I always say: focus on the good, and be prepared for the bad. Expect more from yourself than you do from anyone else.
That’s not just something I tell clients. It’s how I live.
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I found my way through fitness and coaching. Completed my first PT certification in 1997, and I haven’t stopped since. Over the years I’ve coached people on squash courts, in commercial gyms, outdoors, and eventually inside my own facility. I built a gym, ran it for years, and sold it. I know what it takes to stay in this industry long term, and I know how quickly life can shift.
Along the way I’ve trained through my own phases. Heavy bodybuilding. Stripping it back. Triathlons. Muay Thai. Each one taught me something the last one couldn’t. I still train every day. Not to perform for anyone. Because it’s how I think clearly, stay grounded, and keep showing up.
I’ve also had years where things didn’t hold together as well as they should have. Health challenges that knocked me around. Periods of uncertainty about where I was headed. The kind of internal heaviness that doesn’t show up in a training program but affects everything. I understand that the physical and the mental are not separate problems.
That’s shaped how I coach.
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I’m not here to push you through a program and hope for the best.
I work with men over 40 because that’s where my experience lives, and because that stage of life is genuinely underserviced. Most coaching is built for younger bodies with fewer complications. But by 40, most men are carrying old injuries, real stress, less recovery time, and a growing sense that the window might be closing.
It isn’t. But the approach has to change.
What I build for each person is based on where they actually are, not where they should be. Strength, movement quality, fueling, recovery, and the habits that hold it all together when life gets busy or hard.
After nearly 30 years in this, the lesson I keep coming back to is simple. The body responds when you give it the right input, the right support, and enough consistency. That’s true at 40, at 50, and beyond.
If you’re ready to build something that actually holds up, I’d like to help you do that.
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*© Jason Groves Fitness