I grew up playing rugby. From the age of ten it was my whole world, and I went on to play at county level. I loved it, but somewhere along the way, something else started pulling me in.
When I was 15, my dad built a gym in our back garden. The first thing he did was hand me a pair of knee wraps and a belt and point me at the squat rack. I had no idea what I was doing. My mates were doing bicep curls in their bedrooms, and I was getting buried under a bar. I've got him to thank for the legs.
But I loved it. What hooked me was simple: in the gym, I didn't have to wait to be picked. I could put the work in and see exactly how far it took me.
I didn't have to wait to be picked.
By 2016 I'd hung up the rugby boots and chosen the gym. Around the same time, a few mates started asking me to help with their training. That's where the coaching started, and I haven't looked back since.
Then I wanted to see what I was capable of myself. In 2018 I stepped on stage for the first time and finished second at Miami Pro, then second at PCA. Prep is a brilliant teacher. It shows you the difference between an okay result and an outstanding one, and how much of that comes down to doing the boring things well when nobody's watching. It also showed me exactly what my clients go through when they push for something big: the hunger, the doubts, the weeks where the scale won't move. I've been there.
In 2019 I went all in on coaching, starting out as a PT on the gym floor, and I'll be honest, I got plenty wrong in those early years. I thought coaching was about writing a great training and nutrition plan. It took a lot of courses, seminars and mentors for me to realise the plan is the easy part. The real work is the person following it: their job, their family, their stress, their weekends, and the moments they feel like giving up. That's what I coach now.
The plan is the easy part. The real work is the person following it.
In 2020, during lockdown, I spent the year building my online coaching from my bedroom and grew it to around 30 clients. It opened my eyes to what was possible. Today Flick The Switch is fully online, and I coach people across the UK and abroad.
Along the way I've also coached and mentored other online coaches, helping them build successful businesses of their own. Seeing coaching from both sides has made me a better coach for my own clients. And I've never stopped learning. Ten years in, I'm still investing in courses and mentorship, because the more I understand about physique change and about people, the better my clients do.
So who do I work with now? Mostly people a lot like the ones I've just described. They've trained for years and work hard at everything, but somewhere along the way they started putting everyone else first. Their physique doesn't reflect the effort they're putting in, and they're tired of guessing.
If we work together, here's what you can expect from me: honesty, even when it's not what you want to hear. Compassion when life gets in the way. And a high standard, the same one I hold myself to. I'll always know where you're at, where we're going next, and why.
I'm genuinely passionate about what I'm building with Flick The Switch. I want to work with as many people as possible and make a real impact in this industry, and ten years in, I still feel like I'm only just getting started.
It's been great to have such an impact over these years. If you're reading this and looking to achieve the same results my clients have, I look forward to combining forces somewhere along the line.
Luke