I didn’t know it but 27 years ago began my core reason for starting DIYPT.
I used to be a shy, skinny teenager where I was pushed around, so I hated high school. And it wasn’t the school bullies that pushed me around, it was my own so called friends. So I bounced from different groups of friends.
I went to an all boys high school and our grade was made up of misfits and trouble makers from many different cultural backgrounds so naturally there were cliques formed. For example we had the soccer boys, footy boys and the basketballers.
I was the nice, shy, skinny friend who would say yes to everything... which meant everyone liked me, however, it also meant I was an easy target for insults. My confidence got a beating.
I was an underachiever both academically and in sports due to my lack of confidence. Yes, I sucked in sports. You wouldn’t have thought that, right?!?!
What was 5 years of high school seemed like 10.
The first few years of high school were not too bad and I had the same group of friends. It was in year 10 at the age of 15 when the male hormones are rampant and every boy had an opinion, is when things started to go bad for me and this is where I moved from friendship group to friendship group.
At the end of year 11, I thought to myself, ok Jono, you have only one more year left of school, so just keep to yourself, study hard and do the best you can in your HSC so you can get into University. At least there, they have girls.
So I did just that and did much better than I expected in my HSC scoring 83.5 / 100. Amazing results considering I was heading for a 15 and below.

Me at 17 years old
Nineteen years old is when I first started to exercise, as our University campus had a gym. And from then on I was hooked! As I got healthier and stronger my confidence started to increase.
I knew I would enjoy the gym because I knew it would give me more confidence. In year 10 of school was when the school gym was built, however it was only for our star football players. Not even the other sports teams were allowed to use it. So I would be envious of the football players who walked around with glowing confidence as they showed off their big, strong frames.
So as soon as I got the opportunity to join a gym, I was ecstatic! I know for a lot of people this is not the case. It’s the complete opposite as joining a gym can be daunting and scary because you’re stepping into the unknown.
I wasn’t only attracted to the body transformation, I found the physical challenges of exercising helped build my confidence as well.
Anytime I’d have to take a break from it, going on holidays or getting sick, I fell back into my past bad habits and just wanted to binge on junk food and watch TV. And then I’d notice I was low in energy, feeling sad and kept flapping my loose belly fat and I had to get out of this bad funk.

Me at 25 years old
So I enrolled myself into different physical challenges like running competitions, joined a basketball team and got into boxing because I knew I had to turn my “I shoulds” (I should enter a running race, I should lose more fat…) into “I must”. And I know enrolling into competitions with an ultimatum and a deadline… it MUST happen.
Also, being called skinny all my life haunted me because I was easy to pick on.
And I was ‘skinny fat’, you know, skinny but nowhere near healthy from all the junk food and sodas.
Not taking away from those who want to lose weight or fat... increasing muscle mass is not easy for a ‘skinny fat’ kid . Having a break from training for a month is enough for me to lose my muscle and all the hard work I put into it. Getting sick for 3 days, I would lose up to 2-3kg of weight, muscle mass and strength!
Growing up I was on the path of what I said I would be which was in a comfortable life with a comfortable job that paid well at one of the best Banks in the world, CBA. However, I was too comfortable and I knew something was missing? So I made the brave decision to create an opportunity for myself. I’m going to leave my comfortable job at CBA and the Corporate world all together! The problem is, I didn’t know what I wanted to do.
In fact, I never knew what I wanted to do from a kid right into adulthood. I even went to Uni not knowing what to do. I kept searching and searching until one day it clicked! I wanted to be a Personal Trainer.
Ok, it wasn’t one day. It came about from going to the gym so much, seeing the Personal Trainers working with people and thinking about myself as a HR Trainer, training and helping people was by far the best thing about my role. So I visualised myself being a Personal Trainer and I loved the idea of it. And as fate would have it, I received an awesome bonus from CBA one year and decided to use it to get the qualification to become a Personal Trainer.
I left CBA not long after getting my qualifications and pursued starting my own business as a Personal Trainer.
I had a great business running a one on one PT service for 8 years, however, I wanted to help more people by reaching out to people all over the world, not just Australia and Sydney. So DIYPT was born.
Statistics show that 1 in 4 gym members are dissatisfied with their health clubs, so that’s why I created an online gym that ticked the boxes that stopped people from joining gyms or starting their fitness journey. We value every single one of our members, their needs, results and make them feel part of our fitness family; we give you all the equipment you need; our workouts are 30 minutes on average and you can do our workouts anytime and from anywhere.
As a PT I know how busy people’s lives can get so I wanted to solve our member’s most common problems and excuses in order to overcome any setbacks.
Welcome to DIYPT.
Me at 41 years old