Jane Erbacher: Hello. Welcome to this week’s episode of the Your Revolution podcast. My name is Jane Erbacher. I am so excited because I am up in Sidney right now, and I’m sitting across from one of my … I’m having a total fan girl moment that’s lasted the last three hours since I met you. I’m sitting across from one of my absolute favourite Instagram accounts. Can I call you an Instagram account?

Kevin Toonen: You can. Yeah, that’s fine.

Jane Erbacher: Or are you a person?

Kevin Toonen: I’m a person. Yeah.

Jane Erbacher: You’re a person too. This is Kevin Toonen, everybody, or better known as Strength Elite, so if you are not following him, you’re crazy, and you have to start following him because he’s absolutely amazing. I’m really, really, really excited to be sitting here today because I finally got to meet you. That’s the main reason I’m excited.

Kevin Toonen: Me as well.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah. You’re like, “What was your name again?”

Kevin Toonen: I continue to live with myself, and I’m continually impressed now. No, we had a great time this afternoon. It was excellent.

Jane Erbacher: Really good.

Kevin Toonen: Again, like I said, you guys are coachable.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah.

Kevin Toonen: Make’s a big difference.

Jane Erbacher: Thank you. I know. We just had a really awesome training session, so it was great because I reached out to Kev maybe like six weeks ago and said, “I really, really want you on podcast,” and I’ve been eyeing you off for maybe four or five months before I had the guts to ask you. I decided yesterday, I was like, why not do a training session with you first.

Kevin Toonen: Why not?

Jane Erbacher: I thought the main reason I actually asked Kev to do a training session was because one of his main things at the moment is skiing programmes-

Kevin Toonen: It is.

Jane Erbacher: So the skier … So, if you’re after a crazy good skiing programme, this is your guy, so I thought, ‘Well, I love to ski. It’s like my favourite thing in the world. I’m going to ask him for a training session,’ so I had this whole scenario in my head. I was going to walk in here, and you were going to say, “Oh, what do you want to work on?” I’d be like, “Oh, what’s that? Can we use that?” and I was going to completely pretend not to ski, but-

Kevin Toonen: Well, I did a little bit of research on you. I like to know who I’m working with, and I was well aware that you could kill the [inaudible 00:04:24] in the ski, so I set two up as you walked in.

Jane Erbacher: I know.

Kevin Toonen: That’s about as far as I went.

Jane Erbacher: I know. They were set up right near the door, and I walked in with Ronny, and I was like, “See, Babe. We’re going to ski. It’s going to be the best. I’m going to pretend I don’t know how to do it.” Anyway, what we did was so much better. I have to say it was actually one of my favourite training sessions I’ve ever done. I learned so much, and something that I’m so happy that we did a training session first because I’ve actually gotten to know you as a coach, I feel really well, and I am incredibly impressed. Ronny and I have just discussed how we can possibly move to Sidney to train with you, but like all jokes aside, I learnt so much as a coach and as … I’m going to call myself an athlete now but as a being-trained person. We did an explosive power session.

Kevin Toonen: Yes.

Jane Erbacher: It was so good, and I had the biggest tantrum when Kev was trying to ask me to jump on a box from sitting on a box. Got like super anxious. Had a little-

Kevin Toonen: That’s normal. Look, it’s not an easy movement for, like we discussed, for women in general. Also too, if you’ve linked it to a bad moment, which we discussed you had as well, it makes everything a lot harder, so-

Jane Erbacher: Totally.

Kevin Toonen: You not only conquered it, you did it really well.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah. Thank you.

Kevin Toonen: You’re also well aware of what you needed to fix without me saying anything, which is a huge bonus. It’s not that easy to find people that understand their body, and you’ve got probably many clients like that as well.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah, any time you’ve linked a bad emotion to a movement, it’s never going to be easy.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah. Totally. I absolutely loved the session, and I want to talk a lot today about how people can work with you because what we definitely discussed during that session is that I’m definitely going to do some ongoing coaching with you, and it’s fine that I live in Melbourne, so I’m really excited, and I think that a lot of people need to get to know you. There’s a lot of people out there that you can definitely help, so-

Kevin Toonen: Certainly. Yeah.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah, I’m really happy because now I can speak honestly about your coaching capability, not just from an Instagram perspective or from a “we know a lot of the same people … have said great stuff about you,” but now it’s like I believe the hype.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah.

Jane Erbacher: I’ve experienced it.

Kevin Toonen: I didn’t know there was any. Look, to be honest, you’ve got to be careful who you pick as a coach. You really do. Instagram has allowed lots of us to reach out and get in contact with people, but it’s also let a whole bunch of witch doctors get out there as well.

Jane Erbacher: Yep. Totally.

Kevin Toonen: I think what we talked about just before about wanting to be a better coach as opposed to wanting to be a better athlete or a fitter person. One doesn’t necessarily make the other one better. I’ve tried to dedicate the better part of my last, I don’t know, I don’t want to say how long … A long time to just being a better coach, purely because I was never a gifted athlete, so I always went out and sought like every one percenter I could find, whether it was from nutrition, whether it was from movement, whether it was from certain muscle, whether it was from anyone I thought could help. Again, as we spoke about before, everyone can help if you let them.

Jane Erbacher: Totally.

Kevin Toonen: Whether or not it’s from a good experience or a bad experience.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah.

Kevin Toonen: That’s all I want to be is a better coach. I don’t hinge myself to one type of programming apart from fact and science.

Jane Erbacher: Yep. Totally.

Kevin Toonen: If it’s not real and it’s not proven, and it doesn’t make sense to me, I’ll ask why, and if it’s not true then I don’t use it.

Jane Erbacher: Totally. What I thought was really interesting though is coming into this today, I’d done a lot of research on you, and I knew that you had a huge understanding, a lot of education, a lot of knowledge in this area, and I knew that your main sort of shtick is more mindset stuff. I knew all of this, and yet, actually doing a training session with you, the most valuable thing you did in the session was engage specifically and individually to each of us, even though we’re completely different, and we can do things. What you had, you had the foundation of all the knowledge and everything that you knew, every reason why we had to do everything, how we moved, all that stuff, but what you did, what made it actually apply so well to us is your engagement with us and your coaching ability.

You actually teamed the two, and I think that in this industry, there’s too many people that have one or the other quite well, so a lot of people know everything, and they have no way to actually communicate or get it across or there’s people that are great at communicating and getting it across but don’t have as much knowledge.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah, and I think unfortunately, a lot of people ask me how and why and where do you get it from. It’s because I’ve been doing it for 20 plus years. It hasn’t come from one seminar. It hasn’t come from one book. It’s come from 20 years of making mistakes, asking questions, never being happy with just that last seminar or last book I read. It’s just an undesirable need, an unfulfilling feeling that I’ll always have that I just need to be better.

Jane Erbacher: Totally and there’s always more to be learned.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah. Always. There always is. If I ever get to the point where I think I know it all, I think I’ll finish up and leave because there was never a chance-

Jane Erbacher: Exactly.

Kevin Toonen: Ever. Yeah. I think that’s a … In terms of mindset, the communication, what you just said before, it’s the massive key to, not only to your own coaching success, but to everything else in life. I think being able to communicate with everyone on some level, we miss that these days. It’s very easy to text or to email, and it’s very easy to, “Okay, watch what I do,” and not be able to communicate that. I work really, really hard on my communication. I’m not saying I’m great at it, but I pay particular attention to it because I believe that it makes the biggest impact, along with being able to back up all that communication with knowledge. The two need to intertwine.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah. Great. What I really wanted to talk to you about today was broadly, it was the transferability of training and the mindset required, so not just about building a strong body but building a strong mind. You have a really interesting history and lots of experience that I want to talk about, but that’s the main thing that I want people to know, so I want to kick off with a quote. I want to kick off this podcast eight minutes in with a quote and that you’ve got a favourite one … I want to hear it.

Kevin Toonen: Yes, one of my favourite authors is Mark Rippetoe and one of my favourite quotes is, “Strong people are harder to kill than weak people. They’re useful in general.” Not only is Mark a very intelligent man, he also says it as plainly as it can be said, which really resonates with me, so to me, that makes perfect sense.

Jane Erbacher: That completely does. I just love … I think simple is better. It’s like straight to the point, no beating around the bush. You don’t need to. It’s straight there. It’s right there.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah. Again, coming from where I’ve come from, I need strong people. The idea about being harder to kill made a lot of sense.

Jane Erbacher: Totally. That leads me straight to my first question, which is can you just give us a little bit of a rundown of what’s lead you to now? What’s your past?

Kevin Toonen: I was born in … No.

Jane Erbacher: We talked about that. Yeah. I was like, I mean, “We’ve got time but maybe not 38 years worth of time.”

Kevin Toonen: That’s right. You just [crosstalk 00:12:34].

Jane Erbacher: I know. I got your back.

Kevin Toonen: I think I started learning about fitness when I was 16, 17. [inaudible 00:12:43] three in wherever it was back then, gym and fitness or fitness and something else. Basically, I learned how to fold a towel.

Jane Erbacher: Wipe down the treadmill.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah or wipe down some machines fairly effectively. I knew that [inaudible 00:12:59] was probably the best way to go.

Jane Erbacher: I don’t know why you didn’t just stop there. I mean you made it.

Kevin Toonen: I think I peaked. One of the next books I bought was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s encyclopaedia.

Jane Erbacher: He had it all covered.

Kevin Toonen: He did. Yeah.

Jane Erbacher: Strength and fitness.

Kevin Toonen: I’m a huge fan of Arnie. I really am. I think he’s great, but then I decided to process a little bit further.

Jane Erbacher: You ask why and then-

Kevin Toonen: Yeah, I wanted to ask like, “Hey Arnold, why?” I finished high school, enrolled in university, found very early on that … School didn’t make much sense to me. I found it very hard to learn off a chalkboard, again showing my age, but yes-

Jane Erbacher: I’m like, what’s that? Oh, they’re really trendy these days.

Kevin Toonen: You’d be surprised.

Jane Erbacher: You put goals and stuff up on them.

Kevin Toonen: Abacus and … Yeah, but after … It didn’t make sense to me sitting down in a class being spoken to and then told to learn didn’t make sense, so I decided that for four years I’d just jump into the army, learn a little bit, get to maybe go overseas. Probably 18, 19 years later, I left. It just … The army made sense to me. I enjoyed it. It’s the world’s biggest boy’s club. I got to hang around some of the best individuals, men and women, that I’ve ever met. It taught me more than I’ll ever learn about myself in a million years in some sort of university. I got to see communication at the sharp end. In the last seven years, I moved over to the special operations command, and within that area, I worked in the high performance field, so our whole goal was to elongate the career of an operator, which is what we call [inaudible 00:14:57], our soldiers there. We spent millions of dollars training these guys, putting them through courses, and they would continually break due to the stress of the load carriage, the high temper environment, the constant overseas deployment.

We weren’t spending any money on the human. We were spending all the money on the technology, which saying it aloud makes perfect sense what not to do, so we went and just started to find what the best guys in the world do. We went to Europe. We went to the states. We went everywhere, found out what they did, and then we came back and implemented a programme as best we could into a military environment. There’s no template that works, like a sporting team, but I guess to give you a better idea; it’s like an AFL or a rugby union team or one of those high performing teams, they have a staff of say 15 to 20 trainers, coaches, physios, nutritionists, scientists, say 45, 50 players. And we had a lot more players and a lot less staff, so we just had to put together a programme-

Jane Erbacher: And a lot more at risk.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah, I guess, yeah. It is what it is. It becomes less risky with the more knowledge.

Jane Erbacher: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Kevin Toonen: But yeah, definitely, mistakes there make … The consequences are worse. That has been my focus for the last seven to nine years. Moving from Perth to Sidney and doing the same job here in Sidney and then leaving the army on a full-time basis at the start of last year. During that time I started a strength and coaching business, and I just started doing that full-time basically this year. I put little to no effort into it last year because I got pulled back into the army for a certain amount of time.

That’s me in a nutshell.

Jane Erbacher: Awesome.

Kevin Toonen: 21 years of life.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah. Thank you, and so what does now look like? How are you operating that business? What does it look like?

Kevin Toonen: Day to day or week to week, I’ll do one-on-one coaching or some group coaching with individuals ranching from … I’ve got ex-athletes that want that feeling back. I’ve got amateur athletes that want to make the step forward. These are all one-on-one, face-to-face. I’ve got your every day person that just wants to train harder and faster or they want to try and see what their genetic potential is like. I’ve also got online coaching as well. With the online stuff, it’s a mixture again of guys and girls wanting to delve into the technical realm. We’ve got rugby players. I’ve got just a bunch of strength athletes as well, some runners, and unfortunately one AFL guy.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah, so real athletes.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah, who I’m trying to get rid of continually. I have to get him out of his players all the time. Those guys, not having an AFL background at all, and I’ve got to work with West Coast Eagles’s [inaudible 00:18:23], and I’ve got a bigger respect than I ever had before, like knowing how far they run in the game, the injury rates, the fact that that game is so unpredictable. Being tackled from behind in the jersey [inaudible 00:18:36], that would make me angry.

Jane Erbacher: What are you? What’s your background?

Kevin Toonen: Rugby union.

Jane Erbacher: Rugby union, yeah, okay.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah. It’s the sport I play.

Jane Erbacher: So, real rugby.

Kevin Toonen: Men play.

Jane Erbacher: I definitely would never play that sport. Yes, I could agree with you.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah, so then that’s what my week looks like. I’ll split it between working with my online programming and my face-to-face and then the leftover time I’ll squeeze some training in, some eating, and then spend time with the family.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah. Great.

Kevin Toonen: So, I have a full Sunday to myself, which is nice.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah. Great. All of your face-to-face stuff is done at 98 Riley Street?

Kevin Toonen: Yeah, at the gym here.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah.

Kevin Toonen: I guess contact hours a week, I’m looking at roughly five to six hours a day and then on top of that, I spread myself thinly the rest of those hours on some online stuff.

Jane Erbacher: Cool. You don’t do any more work with the tactical stuff? With the military?

Kevin Toonen: I do. Yeah. I continue to do that as well, and that’s influenced by courses and influenced by me, so I’ll work continually with those guys, and I’ll do that until they no longer need me, and I do that for free because that’s something I believe 100% in. Those guys and girls deserve every bit of help they can get. I sit on the board of the Tactical Strength Conditioning Association here in Australia, and the whole goal there is to continually move that forward and improve that realm for everyone and to get coaches, sporting coaches, strength coaches, personal trainers interested in that sort of area as well and to grow that spectrum.

Jane Erbacher: Something that I really like that you wrote down one time, and I really want to talk about the connection between training people like that or working with people like that and then working with every day people, so it’s something you wrote is, “Physical ability is only an accessory, and it’s mindset that makes a difference to what we want to achieve.” That’s really … That kind of message from you is what’s really drawn me to you, so I want to talk about that. And I want to talk about that in terms of its relevance to the every day athlete.

Kevin Toonen: I stumbled across, I think it was 2008 or 9, maybe earlier, I stumbled across Gym Jones and Mark Twights rants and ravings and loved them. Fell in love with them straight away, like something like that resonated with me. I really like the idea of black and white living in a grey world. The idea that the mind is primary, it makes perfect sense to me because if you could influence your mind enough to want to do the work, anything is possible.

Now up to a point, obviously genetics play a certain part, play a certain. Your engine … Whatever, your ability or lack thereof plays a certain part, but we don’t tap anywhere near close what we’re capable of because we’re built on excuses, and we’re built on a culture of instant gratification. It’s okay to try and to not succeed and at least I had a go and blah, blah, blah, which I think is crap.

Jane Erbacher: Mm-hmm, uh ha. Me too.

Kevin Toonen: It’s, I think, seeing a goal and chasing that goal until you’ve failed enough to know that it’s not achievable or until you’ve made it. Now taking the physical out of it, you can use the physical as a bridge to get to the mental, and I think that’s one of the only ways that the average person can do that without stepping into the tactical realm. It’s very, very hard to tap into without pushing your body to a point where you can’t rely on the muscle and the oxygen in your body anymore, you have to rely on the fact that you won’t give up. You’ve made a decision not to give up.

Then test it a few times knowing where you failed, assessing how your mind reacted to a certain feeling or position or the fact that you failed and then where did your head go straight away, and then putting yourself back into the fire and testing it again and testing it again. Not being afraid to fail. That is what everyone can benefit from.

Imagine if we just had a collection of people who would continue to try to be better, who want to push the envelope physically and mentally day in and day out. We would come to a level of consciousness to understand that, hey, failing is okay but not trying to succeed is not okay. That’s, I think, fundamentally what we miss in this life is ever seeing what our true potential. Not even trying to tap into a little bit. Lots of people exercise for fun, and that’s great. Lots of people say they don’t want to push that hard. I tend to not to believe that. I tend to think that’s fear talking, but that’s okay.

It’s also they probably haven’t been introduced to it either. I think you and I are pretty lucky to find a community where this is done day to day, and that’s the difference, I think. Generally think that people haven’t been influenced by it or introduced to it-

Jane Erbacher: Or felt it.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah. Until you get into that position where you’re that exhausted and you’ve hit and pushed past the plateau and then you start to realise straight away, like I haven’t even begun my journey yet. I’ve just scratched off the surface, and I’ve finally pushed my head out of the clouds. For me, that’s what training is about … Not to make you a better squatter, a better dead lifter, a faster skier, it’s to make you a better human. That should be the reason, like so you can go home and be a better dad, be a better mum, be a better boyfriend, girlfriend, be a better coworker, be a better operator on the team. That’s your goal. The mind is primary. The physical is what gets us there. Sharpen everything you possibly can to be the best human you can, and if you never get there, that’s great, but if you keep chasing that goal-

Jane Erbacher: You’re going to be better than where you started.

Kevin Toonen: What’s the worst that can happen?

Jane Erbacher: Exactly. Yeah.

Kevin Toonen: I have little to no tolerance for excuses, purely because I’m probably one of the less gifted athletes that have ever touched the earth, so I didn’t find learning easy. I didn’t find much easy. I just had to try and that was it, and then through that, the continual failing and suffering of not getting there, eventually I decided, well, I’m not going to lose. I’m just going to find a way to win, and that’s it. That’s all it is. It’s just refusing to see the end of the road, and just seeing it as like a blocked off … Got to find somewhere else to go.

Jane Erbacher: That’s just been my favourite 10 minutes of the podcast ever. I’m just sitting here and blown away. Absolutely love it. I completely agree with everything that you’ve said, and I have never been so concise in saying what you’ve just said, and that was really interesting. I just kept thinking while you were talking how great it is for your son to have you as his dad.

Kevin Toonen: I’ll see how he goes… If he turns out to be-

Jane Erbacher: No, but it’s great, and I think what I want to know is do you believe that this kind of resilience can be learned or taught?

Kevin Toonen: Yeah, I do and I don’t. I’m in two minds about that still. It definitely can be taught, but I think there’s a point in your life where if you don’t want to be taught, no one can teach anything to you. It needs to be a want, so I think I’ll rephrase that as yes, it can always be taught and yes, it can always be learned, it just depends on when you’re ready.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah.

Kevin Toonen: It can be really, really hard. You can say you’re ready. You can say you want to be taught. You can say you’re ready to learn, and there’s a big difference to understanding what it takes to get there. I think that’s the big difference, so to me, there’s an intrinsically motivated person, the person that will do what’s right and do what’s needed without having to look over their shoulder to see if anyone’s watching. Then there’s that externally motivated individual that needs a high five, a pat on the back. They need that environment of, “Hey, you’re doing really well. Keep going.” That’s what they need. That is okay as long as you understand who you are.

If you’re that type of person then you need to understand that’s who you are, and if you’re unhappy with that, you need to change that, but they’re the two types of individuals. The majority of people I’ve worked with have been intrinsically motivated, so they don’t need to be told what’s right. They just need to be shown what’s right, and they will do what’s right. Then there’s others that are externally motivated that need a pat on the back. I think our society and our culture at the moment, we’re travelling down a road that can only lead us to a narcicisstic nature of what we’re seeing of everyone being pat on the back for a mediocre results in everything they do.

I saw someone’s job list for the day … One of my friends, he sent it to me. It was a job list of what this individual needed to do for the day. The first thing was get up.

Jane Erbacher: Oh, God.

Kevin Toonen: That was … They had that on their list of things to do for the day. I guess if you look at it as a goal, how you’ve tick one thing off-

Jane Erbacher: I mean … Done.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah. The next one was eat breakfast.

Jane Erbacher: Did better than yesterday. Oh my God.

Kevin Toonen: So, you’ve got probably two lines in of a five point list, and the last one was like, “Go to bed early.”

Jane Erbacher: Wow.

Kevin Toonen: This is the type of things we think are big achievements.

Jane Erbacher: Totally.

Kevin Toonen: Getting up is just-

Jane Erbacher: Just being alive.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah. Totally.

Kevin Toonen: If you don’t wake up, that’s what we call death.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah. Exactly. That’s interesting because I do definitely think that we’re in a culture of “good try” and “aw, you tried” and then people say, “I’ll try.” I’m like, “No, you won’t try. You’ll do it or you won’t do it.”

Kevin Toonen: Yeah.

Jane Erbacher: Like you get to choose what you want to do.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah.

Jane Erbacher: So, this whole thing of … I think it was Friday Night Lights, that TV show, which I just absolutely loved … I think it was “Good enough is the enemy of great” is one of the things I actually said to him, and I’m like … How did I get such a gem from this show? See why Netflix is important?

Kevin Toonen: It is. Yeah.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah, it’s actually true. It’s “Good enough is the enemy of great” is kind of what you’re saying. It’s like people will get up and eat breakfast, and that was good enough. I survived today, but it’s like-

Kevin Toonen: You look at what’s around with the TV shows, the media driven stuff is that everything is mediocre. We start to say the stuff like, “Eating good is good 50% of the time or 40% of the time,” or like, “Hey, do this, and you’ll get this,” or you can-

Jane Erbacher: I showed up at the gym.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or just doing something through the day is better than nothing.

Jane Erbacher: No. Exactly.

Kevin Toonen: You might as well do nothing if that’s what you’re going to do.

Jane Erbacher: Totally.

Kevin Toonen: That’s where your brain is set. It still blows me away that we have to convince people to take care of their bodies.

Jane Erbacher: Totally.

Kevin Toonen: My God, I would love to live in a place where if you’re refusing to take care of your body then bye bye, healthcare. You’re a massive burden on us. Like smoking and being confused when you get cancer?

Jane Erbacher: Yeah. Exactly. And the amount of disease now that’s related to sedentary lifestyle and poor diet and stress.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah, that’s it, and there’s … We’re living in an age where all the information is so accessible.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah.

Kevin Toonen: Even when I was growing up, it was books, and if I wanted to speak to a coach, I had to travel.

Jane Erbacher: Totally. We had the encyclopaedia at home.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah.

Jane Erbacher: If I’d do a project, I had to look at the encyclopaedia.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah. The same thing we had National Geographic subscriptions-

Jane Erbacher: Yeah.

Kevin Toonen: I had to read those.

Jane Erbacher: You couldn’t just search the first two letters of what you’re looking for and then you had to go through every volume … Yeah, so interesting.

Kevin Toonen: I had a miniature kind of like a library. Mum used to take us down there. We’re allowed a certain few books. Three had to be educational. One could be something we were interested in-

Jane Erbacher: And then the other one’s Arnie.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah, that’s right. No, I bought that myself.

Jane Erbacher: A blend of the two.

Kevin Toonen: Arnie was required reading. No, that’s-

Jane Erbacher: You’re so right. There is a lot of access to information, and so that’s why I think that this missing link for so many people is resilience, and I talk about this a lot to mainly Ronny, to my boyfriend, about this, and we talk about how I think one of the things that actually creates resilience is feeling immense pain in whatever way and realising that you’re okay after.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah. Yeah.

Jane Erbacher: Whether it’s the pain of letting yourself down, letting someone else down, death, injury, or something, but actually allowing that pain to be a learning experience.

Kevin Toonen: Pain’s all relative as well. A lot of people can’t get over the fact or don’t realise that if you tell yourself, “I’m really hurting,” it’s true.

Jane Erbacher: Oh, yeah.

Kevin Toonen: If you let yourself believe that you’ve got nothing left, well, that’s also true. If you fundamentally believe there’s always one more thing you can do then that’s also true. Like are you hurt? Yes or no. Like can you give anything else? It’s funny when you put someone through a session, and I’ve done it many, many times where I’ve said, “This does not end until you hit this number. I don’t care what you do.” Funny enough, after the 20th rep or the 20th set, they’ll get it. Like why the fuck didn’t you do that before?

Jane Erbacher: Totally.

Kevin Toonen: It’s because you haven’t pushed them through enough pain for them to either get angry or right something in themselves and then, lo and behold, they thank you for it afterwards.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah. Totally.

Kevin Toonen: Because it’s a realisation, like, “I’m capable of more. I’m also more than what I’m showing,” and that’s refreshing. Everything is relative, and whatever you say to yourself or think to yourself is true.

Jane Erbacher: It’s the truth. It’s your complete reality.

Kevin Toonen: As we remember the box jump.

Jane Erbacher: Absolutely. I know. I’m a bloody … I’m explosive. I’m explosive now. I’m so explosive.

Kevin Toonen: It’s, but you are.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah.

Kevin Toonen: And that’s the thing. Like that last box jump that you did was the best.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah.

Kevin Toonen: You should’ve been more tired, more fatigued, and it’s just links to old habits.

Jane Erbacher: Totally, and I absolutely loved what you did with me because I was actually really getting very anxious, and I was trying to laugh it off, but all I could visualise when I was sitting there … I was supposed to be standing, but I was sitting … Was crashing into the box and how embarrassed I’d feel in front of you, so I wasn’t afraid of hurting myself in any way. I was just like, “Oh, how embarrassing would that be.”

What you made me do was you made me do this breathing exercise-

Kevin Toonen: Yeah, which we call combat breathing-

Jane Erbacher: Yep.

Kevin Toonen: Which is just simple four breaths in, hold for four, out for four, hold for four, repeat a few times, and all that is is bringing your heart back down, returning, giving your fine motor skills back, returning your brain back to a logical state as opposed to an emotional state. You can make better assessments in the situation. I lower my voice. I slow things down. We focused on one thing as opposed to everything else and suppress your thoughts.

Jane Erbacher: Totally. It was awesome because then all I thought to myself was, “You can do this,” rather than, “You’re going to crash into the side of the box and everyone’s going to laugh, and it’s going to be so embarrassing and then da, la, la, la,” like all this stupid stuff, but I’m so much more proud of doing it now as well because I fear it as well.

Now I’m really like … I’m super keen to improve on this stuff, like I’m excited, and you really related to the stuff I’m working on right now, which is my rowing and my skiing and stuff-

Kevin Toonen: Yeah.

Jane Erbacher: And how important this kind of training actually is to that.

Kevin Toonen: Lots of people forget to load their reality with what they’re good at-

Jane Erbacher: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Kevin Toonen: At the same time, so, “Hey, I’ve done this. That means really when I break it down, I’m going to be good at this. I’m able to do this. I just need to find a way. I need to relate it back.” It’s just like learning. Like math for me was never fun. It really wasn’t until years later, someone told me that if I wanted to get the bullet from A to B then I need to do this, this, and this, and they’re like, “By the way, this is called math.”

Then I linked it to something I enjoyed and something I wanted to be better at, so suddenly I got better at angles. I got better at mathematics because I was like, “Well, okay, this makes sense.”

Jane Erbacher: There’s a reason for it.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah. That’s all it is with training. What’s your reason for training and what is your why? As silly as it sounds, each session I’ll tell someone, “This is what we’re going to do. This is why we’re going to do it.” Because people want to know why.

Jane Erbacher: 100%.

Kevin Toonen: There’s no point keeping secrets.

Jane Erbacher: No.

Kevin Toonen: All the information we’ve had, we’ve stolen from someone else.

Jane Erbacher: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Kevin Toonen: Squats, dead lifts, percentages, sets, reps, chains, bends … We didn’t invent this. Someone else did, and that information is there to be used. It’s why hold onto it all?

Jane Erbacher: Yeah.

Kevin Toonen: I just think most people, if they coached themselves the way they would coach others, they’d be way less harsh on themselves.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah. I love “why”. It’s my favourite question about everything, and I love coaching by teaching people why they’re doing something.

Kevin Toonen: It makes you a better coach.

Jane Erbacher: 100% and it makes people able to retain the information as well because then they’re like, “Okay,” and so it works in terms of movement and exercise science, I’m going to say loosely, but it also really works in terms of mindset.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah.

Jane Erbacher: Which leads me to my favourite question, which is what do you feel is your purpose in life? Why are you here?

Kevin Toonen: Two years ago, I would’ve said something… I don’t know… Something completely different from what I’ll say, but since having a son, making a better human and in terms of that, I mean trying to make anyone better than where they are now is what I think is most important, so to me, coaching someone in any way I can to make them better than they were the day before is what I think I’m here for. First and foremost, I’m here to be a great father. If I can do that then I think I’m a success. That’s it.

There’s nothing else that’s more important to me. Then it is making sure that I’m a good coach because then I can affect so many more people, and that’s really … It’s not profound. I’m not saving the world. I’m not curing hunger, and it’s a selfish thing as well because I feel good when I help someone else. I feel good when someone gets something, and I’m like, “Yes, they hit that [inaudible 00:38:01] or they ran faster or they said, ‘Thank you. You really made a difference.'” That’s the selfish reason. It makes me feel better, but at the same time, I really enjoy that stuff.

It’d be a lie if I didn’t say I didn’t …

Jane Erbacher: And you’re really great at it too.

Kevin Toonen: Thank you.

Jane Erbacher: Now I want everybody to work with you, so how do I get in contact with you?

Kevin Toonen: Through Instagram, through Strength Elite. I’ve got a website, which is strength-elite.com. There’s a hyphen on strength to elite. Yeah, that’s just as easy through there. The online coaching, I think it is great. If you haven’t got a chance to come and do some one-on-ones, John, my business partner, we’re looking at doing some seminars later in the year. Just waiting for John to move from Perth to Sidney.

Jane Erbacher: Yeah. Yes. Come on, Johnny!

Kevin Toonen: Yeah. I know.

Jane Erbacher: It’s closer to me too. That’s awesome. Oh my God, you guys have to come to Melbourne.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah. I’ll look … We’re … Yeah. It’s just trying to-

Jane Erbacher: Luke, can we host one?

Kevin Toonen: Just trying to pull John away from [inaudible 00:39:12]. It’s tough.

Jane Erbacher: Yes, it would be hard. Yes.

Kevin Toonen: He keeps asking me why as well. He keeps asking us to keep [inaudible 00:39:22], so just because, John. Yeah, so John-

Jane Erbacher: For those of you who don’t know-

Kevin Toonen: Johnny works at Gym Jones… Was the first Gym Jones fully certified instructor and his nickname is Quota and that’s because he has a limited number of words he uses every day.

Jane Erbacher: Yes, so the opposite to me-

Kevin Toonen: Yeah.

Jane Erbacher: We decided, but it was funny. I met him at Jim Jones last year, and there was about 10 of the Jim Jones instructors standing at the front of the room, and there’s this one guy standing there with board shorts and bare feet, and I was like, “I wonder which one’s the Australian.”

Kevin Toonen: Yeah, that’s right.

Jane Erbacher: Which one has just come from the beach in Perth?

Kevin Toonen: Yeah. No lie, he has a Valiant tatted on him-

Jane Erbacher: Yeah, oh my God-

Kevin Toonen: The car.

Jane Erbacher: That is so funny.

Kevin Toonen: Pretty sure he’s got the … I think he has the that as well.

Jane Erbacher: I was about to say, “Please don’t tell me.” I’m really excited. It looks like your next, I would say, 12 months are going to be really exciting, and I think there’s going to be lots of opportunities for people to work with you, which is really cool.

Kevin Toonen: Yeah, I hope so. I enjoy it. I think a big misconception is the fact that I’m scary.

Jane Erbacher: Yes!

Kevin Toonen: Which hopefully we’ve debunked.

Jane Erbacher: Oh my God, absolutely. You’re like the nicest guy. I hope that that’s not offensive now.

Kevin Toonen: No. No. I don’t ever really… I never really saw it. I’m just deadly serious about what I do, and that’s all it is, and I like black and white photos.

Jane Erbacher: Yes, I know, which looks cool. I think that my favourite thing is how much you believe in what you’re doing, and that’s just… It’s amazing. It’s fantastic.

Kevin Toonen: Thank you.

Jane Erbacher: So, thank you so much for today. You’ve been amazing. Did we keep to our-

Kevin Toonen: Yeah, we did.

Jane Erbacher: Oh, we did pretty well. Under 40 minutes.

Kevin Toonen: A little over.

Jane Erbacher: We were aiming for 20, everybody, so I guess if we were aiming for 60, we would’ve done really well.

Kevin Toonen: We just hit the mark. Yeah.

Jane Erbacher: Yes, thank you so much. You’re the best.

Kevin Toonen: Thank you very-

Jane Erbacher: Thank you everyone so much for listening. Bye.

If you’d like any information on anything that was discussed today, you can contact Jane Erbacher at www.the-me-project.com.au or you can contact Revolution Performance Training at www.revolutionpersonaltraining.com.au or if you’d like to talk to Kevin directly, you can contact him at his Instagram account at Strength Elite. Thank you so much for listening.