I remember reading an article on LeBron James last year where he mentioned his annual investment on personal care including training, nutrition and recovery aids totalled $1.5 million. In a recent interview, Conor McGregor made reference to this and along with a shocking revelation that he himself had spent zero towards his personal physical and mental health outside of training camps.

I’ll admit, when I saw “1.5 million”, the first thing I thought was what kind of house could I get from property pal with that investment. Joking aside though, this caused a profound shift in how I look at personal investment.

“You are the most important piece to every success that happens around you”

You are the most important piece to every success that happens around you. There is continual social and economic opportunity surrounding you, don’t you think it’s worth ensuring you are running at your absolute best to grab these opportunities?

Not to be confused with selfishness but you need to look after you. You are the star player in your life, it is down to you to make things happen for you, so, wouldn’t it make sense to ensure you are at your best?

If you look at it objectively, think of your favourite sporting star and the importance of their or their teams’ performance, would you, as a fan, want your favourite star as healthy and as strong as they could be? Confident and feeling on form to change the entirety of the people around them? Compared to this same star just getting by, sometimes low on energy or lacking in confidence, how does this affect their outcomes along with the people around them?

If you have even briefly experienced a good run of training and nutrition then you know the power of having your shit together. With our backgrounds in sport science and strength and conditioning we often talk about the hard data, fixed numbers of improvements yet, it is the intangibles that have the real power and cross over into your day to day life.

Eating correctly and fuelling your body to perform, not dreading the gym session rather looking forward to getting closer to those training goals.

Feeling completely relaxed and confident in that T-shirt or dress and feeling proud of your physique unlocks a profound levelling up that ripples across every other aspect of your life.

Whether you’re an aspiring athlete wanting to use your talents to create a life for yourself or a young professional hunting that next promotion or starting a business, eating to fuel your daily interactions and decisions and achieving new physical feats in the gym puts you in the best position possible.

If what I have said so far hasn’t started turning some cogs in your head or made you think from a different perspective then it’s probably best to stop reading from here on in. If it has, however, then maybe there’s a chance you could be part of the BIA team.

How to invest in yourself?

Scenario 1

Having close to 10 years in the fitness industry from PT to gym management I have a fair idea of how the industry operates. The average gym-goer who invests in their training and nutrition usually attends personal training sessions on average 3 times per week. This typically involves scheduling slots ahead of time, ensuring they are met with close to zero flexibility if something comes up on the client's end. Normally if they cannot make the session, the PT may be booked up for the rest of the week and so the client is often forced to cancel whilst still paying the fee. This is for physical training alone. PTs will give out some recommendations on nutrition and guidelines, and some will monitor or even suggest an additional sit down regarding nutrition and calories, however, this usually replaces the physical gym session or is at an additional cost.

For one month this would cost an estimated £325 (12 PT sessions @£25 per session + 1 Nutritional Session @£25).

I am by no means implying this is isn’t a good investment or that something is wrong, but what if there was an easier, cheaper, more flexible way, a system that allowed you the freedom to work within your own schedule with even more guidance from your coach?

Scenario 2

COVID 19 has forced everything to adapt and shift, most businesses now moving toward online and remote systems as the ‘new normal’. BIA was established pre-COVID, a dedicated online service before half of the industry was forced online due to COVID.

With the above experience mentioned, we have seen a way to increase the ability and effectiveness of our coaching experience using elements of our sports science and strength & conditioning backgrounds. We developed systems and structures to work remotely with our clients allowing us to guide them toward their goals ensuring the other 15 hours of their day was accounted for and not just the 1-hour gym session we previously worked within.

The BIA service works on a monthly cost of 1 PT session per week, no rescheduling or missed session fees, no additional nutritional sit-down fees, just a monthly subscription of £99, a third of the price of a typical PT course.

The service includes an invitation into the BIA systems, goal setting and daily targets, a specific programme tailored toward accounting for your strengths and limitations, a flexible and informative nutritional strategy, a weekly video check-in and review including video analysis of lifting technique.

When you join the BIA team you get specific coaching from accredited strength and conditioning coaches, coaches with experience working with national and international amateur and professional athletes, whether you’re representing your county or country, or wanting to feel more confident in your physique, BIA may be for you.

“We work with a select number of clients that have the drive and motivation to progress and hit their goals.”

We say “may” as we don’t work with everyone that applies for our coaching, although it may seem like a strange business model to turn down work not everyone is a fit. It is very easy to accept payments for good intentions never to be fulfilled, (this may surprise you but the gym business-model is built on this, they actively plan for you to take your membership out to pay for not using their facilities). BIA, however, do not. We work with a select number of clients that have the drive and motivation to progress and hit their goals.

Are you ready to invest in yourself? Do you want to feel stronger and more confident in your own skin? Do you want to take your physical output to the next level?

Stu