Please fill out the message box below and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible…
Contact Us
Hey, I’m Jai. The Founder of Square One Fitness. And this is the story of how Square One Fitness started and became what it is today.
After a 13 year career in the I.T profession, I realized that it wasn’t my passion.
Doing something I wasn’t enjoying everyday really brought down my energy, my health,
And my happiness. Until the night I had a cardiac arrest, and everything changed for me.
I’d had a late-night celebrating a good friend’s birthday. Then I was up early the next morning
For a basketball training session with my team. My energy was low, my body was under stress from a hangover, and I was really pushing myself on the basketball court. This triggered a response in my heart called Wolf-Parkenson-White-Syndrome. Something I was likely born with but was never recognized/noticed. An additional electrical pulse in my heart.
The extra stress triggered the pulse, which created an irregular heartbeat, which led to a coma, then cardiac arrest. Thankfully by the time this all happened I had checked myself into the hospital where they were able to save my life.
The time spent in the hospital was quite an eye-opener for me. I noticed all the middle-aged men with clogged arteries filling the cardiac wards waiting for bypass surgery.
I realized there are too many of us living unhealthy, and winding up in hospital dealing with heart surgeries. It’s the last place you want to be.
In that moment, I knew I could help people avoid this fateful future. I knew that with regular exercise and a healthy diet and lifestyle, we can all avoid sickness and premature aging.
That’s when the idea came to me to have a career and life change and become a personal trainer, and be completely independent, and run my own business.
I’d always wanted to own a business, but I knew that it had to be a business that I would be excited to be involved in. Fitness and sport have been my favorite things my entire life, so it made sense to take the leap.
It was a tough decision giving up a cushy, high-income career for the complete unknown,
And starting from zero in an industry where I have no experience. But I learned a great lesson from the cardiac arrest I experienced, and that was to make the most of my life. Coming so close to losing my life made me realize how precious life really is.
So I signed up for night classes at the Australian Institute of Fitness to get my cert 3 & 4 in Fitness while working my I.T job by day. By the time I had all my required qualifications, I’d already set up my website, and spread the word that I was the new trainer in town!
With 3 months of annual leave and long service built up from my 13-year career, I was able to use this as my buffer while I got my PT business started.
By the 3rd month in I had 40 clients that I was training outdoors in parks and homes in the inner west area. This was enough for me to quit my job and pursue my PT career 100%.
After about a year of working with clients 1 on 1, I realized that my fitness education wasn’t helping me with the psychological, emotional, and relationship issues my clients were suffering from. So knowing I needed more tools to help my clients, I completed a diploma in Life Coaching. Not only did this help my clients, but it also helped me and my business.
I started hiring contractor PTs and growing my client base, sharing the load of work with other trainers. During that time I met Kate, who shortly after our meeting in 2010, became my girlfriend, then a contractor PT at SQ1, and today my wife, and co-owner of SQ1 Fitness.
In 2014 we went from training in the outdoors to opening a private studio/gym in Silverwater, which we ran right up till the end of 2021.
We found the perfect place in Silverwater that was just the right size for us, and over that 11.5 years we ran 15 group classes per week and over 150 personal training sessions each week for our SQ1 FAM!
In that time we had the most amazing experiences, and met the most amazing people, and were lucky enough to have a thriving gym for many years which enabled us to help lot’s of people with their health, fitness and overall lives.
Today, as of 2022, the world has become a very different place, and so has SQ1 Fitness. We now operate from Casuarina, in the beautiful north coast of NSW, where we offer Personal training, as well as online PT, group challenges, and workout programs.
Our philosophy to training is Functional movements, a combination of weights and body weight exercises, stretching, and with consistency.
And our approach to nutrition is natural, organic, plant based, and with consistency.
We love working with people who are needing guidance and motivation to exercise, and be provided with effective workout programs that are enjoyable, easy to follow, and get the results you want.
We have a great family community vibe (the SQ1 FAM).
We love our SQ1 community and have been helping them with health and fitness for the past decade and look forward to continue with it for another decade to come.
The future of Square One Fitness is to get better at what we do every day and continue to grow our community, so we can provide a positive impact for the world by leading the way with a healthy lifestyle.
If you’d like to be a part of the SQ1 Family, contact me to discuss getting started. I’d love to help you reach your personal health and fitness goals, and welcome you to the SQ1 FAM!
-Jai