Welcome to the High Performance Gym podcast where we discuss practical tools for high performance in everyday life.

So whether you're a young athlete chasing big goals, a warrior parent juggling it all, or in your golden years and you just want to defy the aging process, we've got you covered.

My name is Keir and I am a health and performance coach and founder of Lift Performance Academy.

We deliver health and performance programs to female athletes and busy professional women of all ages.

For over 15 years, we've worked with more than 700 clients, athletes, business owners and high achievers to help them train both their bodies and minds.

Our female orientated approach combines evidence based sports and nutritional science with hormonal health.

This enables our clients to harness their menstrual cycles and perimenopause without burning out.

Right now we're offering a free workshop for women over 35 who are drilling the demands of their career, family and fitness, but are held back by low energy mental fatigue and struggling to lose those extra 20 pounds.

You can find that free training in the show notes.

I want to see a world where all humans align with their unique physiology, master the minds, and use health as a performance tool to reach their full potential.

So this is a brand new podcast.

I say it's a brand new podcast.

I actually started this podcast back in 2021, got about 24 episodes in and then life happened and you know, it just didn't progress.

But it's been four years in the making.

I've been thinking about this a lot and it's the right time to then relaunch this podcast in a way that's going to benefit you, the listener.

So will it actually benefit you?

Well, that's what we're going to discuss now, see if it does, see if it relates to you.

See, this is something that you want to get involved with.

So what is this podcast going to be about?

So this podcast is all about human health and performance at all stages of life.

But what do I mean by performance?

Performance is basically this is you showing up as the best version of yourself in your current age of life.

Okay.

So that you.

Everyone's at different stages of life, which we're going to touch on.

I'm going to go through this, but it's about you showing up as your best self.

So it might be competing in sports or a high level competition.

It could be thriving in your business or career without burnout.

It could mean having energies to play with your kids, train for a triathlon or something.

Just getting through the end of the day.

Without wanting to throttle somebody, it could be just you being the strongest, healthiest, badass version of yourself that ever existed, regardless of your age.

And I want you to keep that in mind regardless of your age, okay?

Because it doesn't matter what age you're at, you could perform at your very best regardless of where you're at, what your experience is, and what your current beliefs are.

And that's kind of what I want to make this podcast all about.

So over the next few weeks, months, we're going to talk about a range of topics.

So these topics are going to include things like women's health and performance, men's health and performance, kids, health and performance performance across different phases and stages of life.

So I have three stages of life.

It's the age of the athlete, age of the warrior, and age of the legacy.

We can really use these phases of life to be the best versions of, of ourselves.

Things like harnessing your hormones through the menstrual cycle and perimenopause, longevity and anti aging, the change in brain for health and performance.

And the female triathletes, the female athlete triad.

Sorry, this is a big one for female athletes of all ages.

But basically what we're going to be doing is we're going to be delving deep into health health.

The way I see health, health is health for performance.

See a lot of, like, there's a lot of podcasts about high performance and all of this kind of thing.

A lot of people talk about high performance and they really sort of get into, you know, like the complex side of performance which, you know, has its place.

But for a lot of people, it's just about optimizing your health, like health for performance.

If you want to perform, you got to work on your health.

Your health is a priority to everything.

You work on your health, get good at your health, you know, make this make you the best version of yourself.

Performance will be a side effect.

And that's kind of what I want this podcast to be about because again, a lot of, a lot of problems I do see online now.

I've been in the industry now and we're quickly kind of tell you who I am because, you know, you listen to this now and thinking, okay, this dude's kind of talking, but who is he?

What's he all about?

So this is basically the big problem that I see in the industry.

So the fitness industry, health industry, you know, whatever you want to kind of call it.

I've been here now for what, being involved with it, like technically coaching for now for over 15 years.

I started out in 2009.

My very first client was a 14 year old go Karten athlete.

He's at really kind of high levels now and he's doing absolutely amazing.

But one of the most what I see mainly done online now, it's very generic advice.

Okay?

It's very generic advice and this is the problem because we aren't generic.

We aren't generic people.

We are our own people.

We have our own problems, we have our own issues, we have our own strengths and weaknesses.

We are unique in terms of our own experiences and how we're perceiving life.

But the advice online is very much linear.

It's very much based around very generic stuff.

So what we've got to kind of look at is how does this fit into your life, right, like your kids are going to be slightly different to you, but doesn't mean that you can't work together.

Your or the parents are going to be different.

Different to you, but it might not mean, it doesn't mean that you can't work together.

You can work together.

The whole principles are the same.

But applying those principles based on our own unique life and that's what we want to kind of delve into.

So anyway, let me just kind of quickly tell you who I am because I realize we kind of about what, how many minutes now know?

We're probably about 10 minutes in.

I haven't actually explained who I am, so.

I'm Kia and I'm a health and performance coach.

Like I said in the intro, entrepreneur.

I don't know whether I even like that term entrepreneur.

But the way I say it, it's like I'm not employed, I'm building my own business.

I'm trying to solve big world problems.

So I suppose that does fall on the category of entrepreneur.

But yeah, either or doesn't matter too much.

And I'm a dad to three incredible humans, which we'll probably talk about in time.

But you know, it's.

I'm at that kind of stage of life.

I'm 43, 44 this year.

So I'm at that stage of life where life's pretty busy, life's pretty chaotic.

I'm building a business, I've got kids.

It's not easy, you know, it's not easy.

And anybody who tells you that it is easy is just either lying or they've just figured something out that most of us haven't yet.

But it's not easy and you've got it, you've got, it's Almost like a balancing act.

And you know, this is kind of the things I want to talk about in this podcast to help people who are struggling with maybe certain phases of life.

So I've been in this industry now since 2009 actually.

Started in, when I was 14, I had a gym money gym in my bedroom.

That's where my love, if you like, of health and fitness came from, or certainly fitness or trying to grow some muscles.

Anyway, I don't suppose my health was really a priority at the time considering I was doing probably things that I shouldn't be doing at that time in my life.

But I certainly wanted to build some muscle.

That was always my main driver as a young kid was to build muscle.

So I had a multi gym and a bedroom and.

But then I officially went into it in 2009 after where I was doing my degree in sports science.

So I've been training, coaching people now for over 15 years.

Youth athletes, busy parents, helping you know, people to kind of lose weight, get healthy if you like, and you know, balance the craziness of life.

Professionals, business leaders, work with a lot of high end business leaders, you know, running, you know, multi million pound companies and that type of thing.

So I've worked across a range of people.

And why that benefits you is because this is what I think is missing.

People, we are people, okay, but we kind of give more, I don't know, credentials maybe or we give more, I don't know, I don't kind of think what the word is.

But we can look at these people who maybe it's like an athlete who competes in the Olympics and we're like, oh wow, you know, this person's amazing.

The competing Olympics and blah blah, blah, and it's like great that person does and they've done really well.

But like what about the parent who is, you know, trying to kind of juggle family life and a business or a career and you know, they're trying to kind of bring the kids up at the same time.

Like is that not performance?

That is absolutely performance.

So why aren't we giving credit to these people?

Why aren't we giving strategies to help these people?

Why are we always just worshiping the people who been successful in life?

And I'm not taking anywhere away from these guys by the way.

I think absolutely phenomenal for what people do and the feats that they kind of achieve.

But you know, why, why can't we just look at everyday people and think, oh, why can't I?

Why can't I be a high performer why can't you be a high performer?

And I think we all can.

And that's kind of what this is about.

But there's a theme.

There's a theme to this, and this is what's going to make this different.

And the theme to this whole podcast is something that actually makes me so excited to even talk about, and it's neuroplasticity.

I don't know whether you've heard about neuroplasticity.

So, basically, neuroplasticity, in a very basic definition, it's your brain's ability to learn, adapt, and change to its environment at any age.

And I want you to remember this at any age.

Basically, what that means is you can change your brain at any age of life.

Okay, I'm not going to go too much into this at the minute, because I want to do an episode on this, on the floor.

I want to bring some experts and actually talk about this in depth.

However, like, this was something that really changed the trajectory.

Can I get my words out?

The trajectory.

Bloody hell.

Change the direction of my life.

Okay.

This was something really changed the direction of my life.

So neuroplasticity is basically, you can adapt and change your brain.

Okay, so we talk about, like, kids.

Kids brains are really malleable.

Like, between the ages and 00:25, they're really malleable.

This is why we should never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, you know, write kids off just because they're not good at school, just because they're not good at sports, just because they're not picking up things straight away.

This is why we should never write off kids, because we should never write off anybody, but especially our kids, because the brain is adaptable.

It's malleable for everybody.

0 to 25 is when it says most malleable.

This is when, you know, the brain just absorbs information, takes it all in, and, you know, it becomes an incredible tool for life.

As you kind of get older, it does become harder to access that plasticity, but there is ways and mechanisms to do that.

And this is why it's.

I'm so kind of excited about this, because for me to understand this has almost given me, like, clarity to how my life went and where I'm at now in my position.

So I'm not going to go too deep into my story because I don't want to kind of get you too sort of bogged down with it all.

But, like, just to give you context to where I'm at now, to where I was.

So I was what I would call the epitome of a loser in life.

I was never at school, I was always playing truant.

I failed my exams, all my exams.

I think I got five GCSEs.

The best one I had was a D, I think was in.

Was in history, if I remember rightly.

I took drugs.

I would drink on a weekend.

Even when I was a young kid, you know, I'd done all of the things that really is the opposite of what I talk about now.

And after that, I just kind of went and done an engineering apprenticeship.

No idea how I got through that.

Hated it from day one.

But for some reason I kind of got through it and mustered through it, became a qualified engineer, hated the job.

I was always depressed.

I was going out on a weekend, I was getting absolutely smashed every single weekend for about 10 years.

I was inebriated for 10 years, you know, and then at the age of 26, I actually sort of said, you know what?

I'm sick of all this.

And just.

I saw at the time I had a house, I bought a house, I sold that, I quit my job and I went to university and done a degree in sports science.

And that was like the changing point of my life, where it was about, you know, this is kind of.

This is a new chapter of my life.

And it was absolutely phenomenal because I went to university.

Bear in mind, again, I had no exams, I had no qualifications, I'd done nothing, but barely written my name on my job sheet of work for the past sort of nine, 10 years.

And I couldn't read it.

I couldn't read it right, I could, but I was.

I wasn't really good at it yet.

I went to university and absolutely thrived.

And I couldn't understand why I did.

It was just.

It was just.

It was like.

It was like something just clicked into place and it was amazing.

Anyway, that kind of sent me down the sort of personal training route.

I ended up becoming a personal trainer, going into performance coaching with young athletes, coaching a lot of women in the gym with fat loss, performance, lifestyle.

And then I owned my own business.

In 2015, I owned my own gym.

And that was very difficult.

That was almost like going back to university, only without the support.

And I really did struggle.

I would be absolutely open and honest about that for five years.

It was great.

I learned so much from it, but it was such a stressful time because I didn't have any support, I didn't have any mentorship, which, again, I think it's absolutely critical that people have mentorships.

Mentors, people who can guide them in life.

And I never had that.

And I do think that was a big part of why I struggled so much.

Don't get me wrong, I learned loads from it and I wouldn't change a thing.

But as I had that business, we had two kids, life became extremely stressful and in 2018, I become burnt out.

And I know you'll see loads of people telling you about the stories online, they're like, got burnt out, this happened, changed my life, blah, blah, blah.

Now I'm a multimillionaire, I've got everything sorted, life's fantastic.

I'm not going to tell you that because that's not how it happened.

I did get burnt out in 2018, but I didn't stop.

I just changed things around.

And I decided then, as I'm not going to, I'm not going to quit the gym, I'm not going to do that, I'm going to carry on, I'm going to push through it and I'm going to find a smarter way of doing it.

And that comes down to.

We'll delve into more about this.

But know this kind of came down to me actually focusing on my health because at the time I was 30 pounds overweight, wasn't sleeping, extremely stressed out, hence being burnt out.

Burnout, by the way, is, is, is absolute.

It's a, it's a psychological condition.

A lot of people say the burnt out or I've worked two weeks in a row and I'm burnt out.

That's not what burnout is.

Burned out is a psychological condition that can be extremely detrimental.

You know, it happens across all spans of performance.

Athletes, people in business careers, parents.

You know, when we're these high stressful situations and we're dealing with people specifically, burnout can be a big factor.

That's a topic that I do want to kind of dive into at some point anyway.

So, yeah, I did get burned out in 2018, but I did turn things around in terms of my health.

I was in better position.

I was most energized I ever was.

But it still wasn't easy.

It was still hard.

I had two kids at home, I wasn't seeing them.

That was really awful that, the fact that I wasn't at home in a night time to put them to bed because I was trying to run this gym, trying to make this successful.

And then in lockdown, lockdown happened.

And then that was even more difficult because my wife's in there, she was on the front line and the hospitals, I was at home with the two kids under the age of four.

That was probably the most hardest thing I've ever done in my life because I was trying to salvage my business as well and keep that running as well as managing two kids at home.

And it was just.

Again, I was.

I would say I became burnt out again, but it was different this time and again.

I'm not going to dive too much into this.

I'll talk about it at a different time, but it's just to give you some context.

But what really changed the game was I came across a book and it was recommended by an amazing lady and she recommended a book called Neuroplasticity.

The Power of Neuroplasticity by Shard Helmstetter.

And I read this book and it was just like, wow, this is amazing.

Like, you can change your brain at any point in your life.

Like, I was at a time where I didn't know what I was going to do.

My business wasn't.

I was decided to close my business at this point, I think because it was just too much to handle.

I didn't know where I was going to go.

I hadn't been employed for the past sort of, what, 10 years.

So I was kind of unemployable to a degree.

And it was a very, very difficult time.

We didn't have any income and life was bloody hard.

But the fact that I knew that I could change my circumstances through this power of neuroplasticity was almost like hope.

It was like, you can do this.

But the book was very basic.

I know it was very basic, but it was like a good place to start.

And this is why I want to kind of talk about this and.

And really use it as the theme.

The theme to performance.

Because you can change your brain state at any stage of life.

And like I say, this book was amazing, but it was very much basic.

I've got more into depth with this now and started really understand the mechanics behind it.

But neuroplasticity and how you actually change your brain, the things that you have to do.

And it's not as easy what people say.

There's a lot of people online who talk about it and say things like, all you've got to do is brush your teeth with your left hand.

That's Neuroplasticity.

It's like, yeah, kind of is, but that's not really what it is, if that makes sense.

We're really talking about Neuroplasticity.

We're trying to make a change in our lives.

Okay, that could be a situational change, that could be a skill change, that could be, you know, a habit change.

It could be whatever we're trying to change to make in our lives better and improve our lives.

And at any age.

That is what neuroplasticity is.

And it takes a lot of effort, it takes time, but it takes real precision to actually do it.

But it is actually possible.

Okay, that's, that's kind of, I'll leave that there with the neuroplasticity side of it.

But I feel that it's supported.

This is, this is my kind of belief that neuroplasticity is supported by three key pillars.

And this is your physiology, which is pillar number one.

This is your physical health.

This is everything.

How your body functions, how you generate energy, how you deal with stress.

You know, this is you, you physically.

This is backed by science.

This is what we're going to get through.

We're going to get deep with the science.

We're going to bring experts in to talk about different areas of the physiology, how you can optimize your physiology so you can be at your best physical self, because that is the foundation.

And then we go into psychology, which is more about the brain and how the brain operates.

And there's.

What I love about psychology and physiology is I used to be so far apart when I was at university.

It was like, it was almost like different ends of the spectrum where you've got like psychology on one side and you've got physiology on the other.

But actually what neuroscience does now, it almost blends the two together, which is absolutely phenomenal.

And this kind of comes back down in neuroplasticity as well.

It does come back down neuroplasticity.

So it's about like you being at your best physical self, but using that.

If you can change your physical self, you can change your brain state.

Okay.

And that's what you want to be able to do.

You've got to be able to change your brain state to be able to perform at your best.

So you need to be physically healthy, but you also got to be mentally healthy.

And this is where the psychology kind of comes into it.

And that's kind of blending all that together to make that sort of like rocket fuel.

And then the third pillar is philosophy.

Okay, so philosophy is, what I say is that your North Star.

And this is unique to every single person.

And this is, you know, you talk about like physiology and psychology.

This is science.

This is like hard fact, science based tools that you can use to make yourself the Best.

But philosophy is almost like spiritual, if you like, this is kind of you.

This is your ideas, your values, your beliefs.

And we all have them, we've all got them.

Sometimes we just need to have little bit more direction on them.

We've got to have more support to actually see them.

Some people are afraid to actually express the ideas and the values and the beliefs.

But this is like, this is your North Star.

You've got to.

You've got to have this pillar in place.

And this is something that I kind of want to talk about a lot and I want to bring people in who do talk about different philosophies because it's not about adopting someone else's philosophy.

You know, I got like stoic philosophy and these types of things.

And it's not about saying, well, I'm a stoic and you know, I love stoic philosophy, I love stoicism.

But it's about having your own philosophy and you can take bits from other people's, but you kind of blend this together and you make it your own.

And this is what gives you your place in the world.

This is what kind of gives you that confidence to say, this is who I am, this is what I believe in and this is what I'm working towards.

Yeah, this is kind of what my North Star is.

And we'll get sort of kind of deeper into that.

So I'm going to be bringing in experts and professionals in their field to talk about these topics.

Okay.

I'm going to give you my insights into it.

And the first few episodes will be just me solo going into the topics that we kind of spoke about before.

But then what I'll do is I'll bring experts in to go into, deeper into these topics who are specialists in those particular fields.

I see myself more as a generalist and with a lot of sort of different ideas and a lot of knowledge around different topics.

So I want to bring specialists in to really sort of make these topics pop.

But.

But with practical application to the real world.

That's absolutely critical because what I kind of feel a lot is missing now.

There's loads of really great information out in the world, but what I feel is missing is that practical application to the real world.

And that's what I want to do.

This is, this is why, you know, you identify where you're at, what stage of life you're in, and then you can apply those principles to where you're at and what you're kind of dealing with at the time.

Somebody in the 20s is going to be somebody different who's in the 40s.

Yes.

They might have the same goals and they want to lose weight or they want to get fitter, want to build a business, whatever it is.

But the problems that they have and they're dealing with are completely different.

If you've got a 45 year old woman and she's wanting to get in the shape of her life and you've got a 20 year old woman, they're completely different in the physiological makeup.

Right?

So you've got a 45 year old who's dealing with perimenopause, potentially now dropping estrogen and those types of things, and she's kind of struggling with perimenopausal symptoms.

And then you've got on the other side of it, a 20 year old who's actually at the peak of a hormonal profile, who has all the time in the world.

You can't give the same strategies to those two people because the problems in the situations are completely different.

And that's what I feel is missing.

And that's what we're going to kind of get deep into.

So this is what you're going to get from the podcast.

Number one, three things.

Real world science, okay?

Real world stuff backed up by science, backed up by experts.

No bullshit, no kind of, you know, you've got to do this method, that method, all that kind of jazz.

It's like, oh, it's like real world science that you can use and tools that you can use to go away and start implementing these and making that, making you the best version of yourself.

Expert interviews, which is number two.

Number two is expert interviews to dive deep into certain topics, top topics, topics.

Again, we'll bring experts in in different topics, such as neuroplasticity, hormones, nutrition.

We get these experts to come in and dive down deep into, cut into certain different problems.

And this is again, because what's done a lot on what I find is done a lot is things are spoken about, but they're not given context to people's situations.

I sometimes listen to podcasts and think that's amazing, but how does that relate to me?

How can I use that in my life?

And I would love that for that person to say, okay, if X, Y and Z, this is you, this is how you would apply it.

This, this is how you would apply it.

And that's kind of what I want to do.

I want to make it clear.

So when people listen to the go, ah, great, I can use that.

That's for me.

The third one is, well Actionable advice for you.

Okay.

So you can listen to it and go, yes, I can use this.

This is for me.

Which is why I want your questions, problems and challenges you're currently facing at this stage of your life.

I don't show.

I'm not sure how this works in terms of how you ask me questions.

I'll have to figure that out.

But if you're listening to this and you're really savvy with podcasts and maybe you do comment on podcasts and things, then I'll put my email in as well.

You can email me, but send us a question.

Like send us a question.

Send us a problem that you're facing that you like some help with, that you like some guidance with.

So then we can really sort of tailor this to your unique needs.

Because although we are kind of unique in terms of our profiles or sorry, Normalcane is similar in our profiles, sorry.

Although we're kind of unique in our own profiles, generic makeup and challenges and that kind of thing, but a lot of problems are the same.

And what I mean by that is let's say that, you know, you've got two people who want to lose weight, right?

The problem is they can't lose weight.

That is the problem that they're having.

So the problem is the same.

How you approach that problem is different.

And it has to be unique for each different person.

That's what, that's what we'll talk about.

Uniqueness.

We talk about unique as your unique circumstances, like your unique situation, your unique challenges.

That's what we're going to address.

And that's kind of it.

I'll leave the podcast where it is for there.

That's the first episode.

I don't know how long that's gone on for.

Hopefully not too long.

I hope it was insightful.

I hope it's something that you think, wow, I would like to get involved with that and have a listen and see how that goes.

So just as a kind of quick one, if you want to kind of get in touch, I'll put my email into the show notes.

That's kind of it really for today.

Drop me a question, drop me answer.

Let me know how you found it.

If you want to subscribe, brilliant.

That would be great.

I'm sure that helps me if you want to subscribe to the podcast, because the more subscribers to get, the more visibility it gets, more people who see it.

That means that I can put more time and more effort into it to make it even better.

Bring bigger guests on, talk about specific problems and issues.

But that's not a push for you to subscribe.

That's entirely up to you.

But anyway, I'll leave it there.

So thank you for listening.

Thank you for your time.

I appreciate your time.

And let's see where this podcast goes.