HOW I CHANGED MY LIFE

Before I ever helped someone change their life, I had to fight to get mine back.

I didn't grow up as the fitness guy.

I found fitness in my late 30s.

At the time, I weighed more than 135kg.

My marriage was coming to an end, and I was trying to navigate that transition while being the best father I could be to my young daughter.

I was working as a bus driver.

I had a job. I earned money. I got through my days.

From the outside, I suppose you could say I was functioning.

Inside, I was dying.

I was exhausted.

Angry.

Embarrassed.

Lethargic.

I couldn't see my toes anymore. Bending over to tie my own shoelaces was becoming difficult.

I felt judgement from people around me, but nothing anybody else could have thought about me compared with the judgement I was placing on myself.

I was living on autopilot.

Wake up. Work. Eat. Sleep. Repeat.

I wasn't living an inspired life.

I didn't feel like I was contributing anything meaningful to the world.

And there were periods when things became very dark.

At my lowest, I couldn't see light at the end of the tunnel. There were moments when I questioned whether I even wanted to keep going.

Looking back now, I realise something.

I didn't need a diet.

I didn't even really need a gym.

I needed my life back.

I needed love.

Connection.

Energy.

Purpose.

I needed to revive a part of myself that I felt was slowly dying.

And then someone came into my life.

His name was Paul.

Give me four weeks.

Around 2006, Paul inspired me to start training.

And something extraordinary happened.

I loved it.

Within that first month, I started seeing results.

Not just on my body.

I started feeling something I hadn't felt for a very long time.

Hope.

Training gave me small victories.

Small victories gave me confidence.

Confidence started changing the way I thought about myself.

And gradually, I began understanding that fitness could give somebody something much greater than weight loss.

Freedom.

Freedom to move.

Freedom to participate in life.

Freedom to feel comfortable in your own skin.

Freedom to discover what you're capable of.

Perhaps that's why, all these years later, our introductory program at U8F is 4 weeks.

Because four weeks changed something inside me.

I don't expect somebody to transform their entire life in a month.

But give me four weeks and I believe I can help you discover something far more important:

that you CAN change.

That discovery changed everything for me.

Eventually, I left bus driving.

I became a personal trainer.

And for the first time in a very long time, I felt like my life had direction.

Fitness gave me more than a career.

My first real opportunity in the industry came at Planet Fitness Casula.

I will always be grateful for that chapter.

I met incredible colleagues.

I met incredible clients.

I eventually became Group Fitness Manager.

And I helped hundreds of people through their own transformations.

The atmosphere was electric.

There was music.

Movement.

Dance.

Sweat.

Laughter.

Energy.

Connection.

I had found life again.

And something else was happening.

As I entered my 40s, I started looking around at people my own age.

Some were slowing down.

Some were getting sick.

Some seemed to accept that getting older automatically meant becoming weaker, heavier, more tired and less capable.

I didn't believe that anymore.

I'd experienced the opposite.

Fitness had shown me that age didn't have to dictate how alive you felt.

And I wanted other people to experience that.

But another feeling was growing inside me.

I was helping build somebody else's dream.

And I had dreams of my own.

I had ideas.

Programs I wanted to create.

Things I was learning about the human body that I wanted to explore.

I was constantly reading, researching exercises and studying better ways to train people.

I wanted freedom.

But I had absolutely no idea how to create it.

Then I met Tanya.

Enter Sophia.

Tanya originally came into my life as a client.

She was a young gun working in governance for one of the Big Four accounting firms.

She is super smart.

Fast.

Witty.

Extremely driven.

I remember thinking this girl is a machine.

But underneath all that ability was somebody who was also questioning life.

She'd spent her early years studying, achieving and doing many of the things society tells young people they're supposed to do.

And she was already burnt out.

She wanted more.

So did I.

Despite the difference in where we were in life, we connected deeply over something - we wanted people to love life again.

As our friendship grew, I introduced Tanya to my family.

And something happened that still touches me today.

She loved them.

My family has had its problems, like most families do.

But Tanya has this extraordinary ability to look beyond people's imperfections and find the goodness inside them.

She encouraged me to reconnect with my brother around Easter 2017.

Seeing Tanya and my brother become close at the time meant more to me than they probably realised.

For a period, she helped bring my family together. Even now with the crazy things happening in our lives Tanya will never let me remember my family in a negative light.

I've never met anyone so resilient and unconditional with their love and support.

And she did something similar with me.

She gave structure to my ideas.

She gave ambition to my dreams.

And when I couldn't see what I was capable of, she could.

I nicknamed her Sophia. In Greek, Sophia means wisdom.

And it suited her perfectly.

Tanya doesn't sugar-coat things.

She's blunt.

She's honest.

She's frighteningly intuitive.

I've joked over the years that people spend money visiting psychics trying to find out what's going to happen in their lives, while Tanya somehow sees things years before I do.

She always tells me "you'll see when it's your time to see."

She holds me accountable to the person she believes I can be.

And together, we started imagining something different.

U8F 2.0

In 2017, we started again.

Not in some magnificent fitness facility.

In a living room.

We had around 30 clients.

Five or six people might train together at a time.

It was small.

But something beautiful started happening.

People weren't only coming because they wanted a workout.

They liked being together.

They laughed.

They connected.

Friendships formed.

People felt comfortable.

And I began understanding that perhaps the most powerful thing we were creating wasn't a fitness program.

It was belonging.

Some of those people followed us from that living room into our first warehouse.

Some stayed with us for almost a decade.

That still blows my mind.

Then it became real.

We moved into a warehouse on Newbridge Road.

Suddenly, U8F wasn't just an idea.

It was a business.

And businesses come with reality.

Bills.

Software.

CRM systems.

Xero.

Marketing.

Risk management.

Policies.

Procedures.

Rent.

Problems.

And approximately 400 other things nobody tells a personal trainer about when they dream of opening a gym.

There were difficult neighbours.

Parking was a nightmare.

Space was limited.

But inside those walls...

magic was happening.

People came rain, hail or shine.

For many of them, U8F became their hour of power.

An escape from work.

From stress.

From relationships.

From whatever life was throwing at them.

They had space to think and reflect on their life and their purpose away from the noise in their lives.

For one hour, they could walk through our doors and simply be themselves.

And then everything nearly disappeared...

I thought U8F was over.

We were outgrowing Newbridge Road.

Our relationship with the landlord had become difficult.

We needed to leave.

And we didn't have somewhere to go.

I became overwhelmed.

I stopped believing there was a solution.

When I'm stressed, I have a tendency to shut down.

I sleep.

I eat.

I retreat.

Tanya did the opposite.

She stayed up all night.

Searching warehouses.

Researching.

Calling agents.

Looking at funding.

And somewhere amongst all of that, life-coaching me through my depression and reminding me why we had started. All while encouraging me to go home to my family and find love to pour into them too.

I went to three or four inspections.

Nothing felt right.

Eventually, I gave up.

Tanya didn't.

Then one day she told me:

"I've found somewhere."

An off-market warehouse on Alfred Road in Chipping Norton.

I didn't want to go.

I'd lost hope.

She practically begged me to come and look at it.

So I went.

Mostly to keep her happy.

And then I walked through the doors.

I'll never forget that moment.

It was an empty warehouse.

But I didn't see an empty warehouse.

I saw everything I had dreamed about.

Space to train.

Space for recovery.

Space for physiotherapy and allied health.

Space for my pain-relief treatments.

Space for people.

Space for community.

It was almost as though someone had listened to every crazy idea I'd ever had and carved the building around them.

I became emotional.

There was only one problem.

I couldn't afford it.

Tanya and I would park across the road from that warehouse.

And I would pray.

Please God, help me do this.

Help me make this happen.

I promise I'll serve.

I'll serve our community.

I'll help people find the best version of themselves.

I'll help people find the magic inside themselves the way I was helped to find mine.

And then something happened that I still struggle to explain.

A friend called.

We started talking.

They offered to help fund the business.

Someone believed in the dream enough to back it.

We got the warehouse.

Even writing that today, I still can't quite believe how it happened.

Then our community carried U8F to its new home.

Moving day wasn't a removal company arriving and doing everything for us.

Our members came.

Cars.

Utes.

Trucks.

Hands.

People carrying pieces of the gym from Newbridge Road into Alfred Road.

Think about that for a moment.

The very people we'd created U8F to serve were physically helping us build its next chapter.

That's when you realise a community doesn't belong to its owners.

It belongs to the people who believe in it.

From 2018 onwards, thousands of people have walked through these doors.

And the transformations I've witnessed have changed me just as much as we've helped change them.

Some transformations can't be measured on scales.

I remember one woman who came in wanting to lose weight.

She did.

But something much more important happened.

She found her confidence.

She began speaking up for herself.

She realised she had value.

And that newfound confidence followed her outside the gym.

She earned a promotion at work.

That's transformation.

Another woman was desperately trying to find the love of her life.

Date after date wasn't working.

I told her: love yourself first.

She trained.

She worked on herself.

She grew.

Eventually, she met the man she'd been looking for.

They married.

Later, through tears, she told me that U8F had helped her find herself.

That's transformation.

And then there was a man over 100kg who had essentially given up on life.

He committed.

He didn't miss sessions.

When things became dark, he'd call me.

We'd talk.

Then he'd get back up and continue.

Today?

He's one of the strongest men in the room.

His marriage changed.

His work changed.

His life changed.

Most importantly...he's here.

Alive.

Well.

Thriving.

That's transformation.

There are hundreds of stories.

People have lost weight.

Become stronger.

Escaped pain.

Made friendships.

Changed careers.

Found partners.

Saved relationships.

Found confidence.

Found themselves.

And that's when I realised U8F was never really about fitness.

It's about the everyday human.

The fitness industry has changed enormously.

There are gyms everywhere now.

Competition is fierce.

The economy gets difficult.

Trends come and go.

But there is something I don't believe will ever disappear.

The human need for love, light and connection.

That's why U8F isn't designed for the gym junkie.

I don't want them here. We're not the right fit for them.

There's no judgement here.

There's no competition about who lifts the most.

You don't need the perfect body.

You don't need expensive activewear.

You don't need to walk through our doors already fit.

We're here for the everyday human.

The person in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond who suddenly realises:

I need to start looking after myself.

The person who feels embarrassed.

The person who hasn't exercised for 20 years.

The person carrying an extra 30kg.

The person recovering from pain.

The person whose confidence has disappeared.

The person who walks into a conventional gym and feels like they don't belong.

You belong here.

Because I know that person.

I was him.

If I could speak to that 135kg bus driver today...

I'd tell him to hold on.

You have absolutely no idea what's coming.

One day, the body you're ashamed of will become the reason you understand somebody else's shame.

The darkness you're experiencing will teach you how to recognise darkness in another human being.

The weight you're carrying will teach you compassion.

Your mistakes will teach you humility.

Your transformation will become your profession.

And eventually...your pain will become your purpose.

Would that man have believed me?

Not a chance.

And maybe that's exactly why I'm writing this.

Because perhaps you're reading this late at night feeling the way I once did.

Maybe you don't recognise yourself anymore.

Maybe you're overweight.

Exhausted.

Unhappy.

Embarrassed.

Maybe you've spent years caring for your children, your partner, your parents, your career and everybody else...

and somewhere along the way you disappeared from your own life.

Please understand this:

You are not too old.

You haven't left it too late.

You don't need to change everything tomorrow.

You simply need to make one decision that moves you in another direction.

That's how mine started.

One friend.

One workout.

One month.

One glimpse of the person I could become.

And then another step.

And another.

And another.

Until one day I looked around and realised I'd built an entire life from the decision to start living again.

The next chapter of U8F

We're not finished.

In many ways, I think we're only beginning to understand what U8F can become.

I want to continue bringing together training, strength, mobility, recovery, pain relief, coaching and allied health.

Not another gym.

A place that helps humans live better.

A place where somebody knows your name.

Where somebody notices when you haven't turned up.

Where people laugh.

Where they connect.

Where they heal.

Where they become stronger.

Where getting older doesn't mean surrendering what your body is capable of.

Where the person walking through the door at 135kg is treated with exactly as much respect as the strongest person in the room.

Because everyone deserves another chance.

I did.

And somebody gave it to me.

Now I get to spend my life giving that opportunity to other people.

If U8F disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn't be most proud of the building.

Or the equipment.

Or the logo.

Or how many memberships we've sold.

I'd be proud of the people who found themselves here.

The friendships.

The marriages.

The confidence.

The laughter.

The second chances.

The people who walked through our doors believing they couldn't...

and discovered that they could.

That's the legacy I want to leave.

And if you're standing where I once stood, wondering whether you still have it in you to change your life come and find out.

You might walk through our doors looking for a workout.

You might discover something much bigger.

You.

Happy days.

Michael "Paps" Papavsioliou

Founder & Coach

U8F – Ultim8 Fitness (Chipping Norton)