Jay Alderton

Who are you?

Hey, my name's Jay Tonne and my focus is helping men of the age of 40 get healthier, happier, fitter, and stronger.

What's your life story?

I think my life really started around the age of 16 to 17. And the reason that I say that is I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. I was failing at college and I was getting into trouble a lot. And I remember this story that I talk about, and it's called, sorry, Ronnie. Sounds a bit strange, but it was what Whetherspoons had for 2 99 to compete with McDonald's because they'd offer a burger, chips, and a pint for the same price of an extra value meal. Now, why that was great at 17 is that at lunchtime I wouldn't go to McDonald's. I'd go Whetherspoons, I'd have the, sorry, Ronnie, I'd have another couple of pints, and then I'd go back to college and play Bomberman with my other IT friends. I didn't really have much direction where I was going, and I really had two paths, prison or joined the army, and I was very fortunate to have selected join the Army. And at 17, I remember getting a train ticket to go to a, where was it? Litchfield, in Staffordshire. And I remember throwing up twice with nerves because I'd never been away from home in my life. And that was the start really of my life of being uncomfortable doing something I didn't really want to do, but knew I needed to do because the consequences of not doing so was massive. And I joined the British Army and I stayed there for just under seven years. And really that was a massive change in my life. The Army gave me a purpose. The army gave me discipline, and the army gave me a direction in what I wanted to do with my life. And what I wanted to do is be proud of the person that I was becoming. Fast forward to 25, 26, I knew that the army was a stepping stone onto something else, and I made a decision to leave the army. With that decision, once again, I felt like I'd lost a bit of direction. Going from kind of a soldier to a civilian is always a difficult transition. In that time, I was doing a lot of contract work in the Middle East and one of the best, worst things happened to me, and I got made redundant from that job. And it was really poor timing because I'd just got a very expensive mortgage with my wife. Luckily, we got accepted for it, but unfortunately I didn't have a job to pay for it. And that led me down a real strong path of understanding myself, where I ended up applying for around 30, 40 jobs, not getting it, running out of money and realising that I needed to think a little bit differently. And what I actually did is I got a pen piece of paper out and I started to write down, what did you actually want to do with your life, Jay? And the things that came down on the piece of paper was you enjoy helping people. You enjoy going to the gym, you should become a personal trainer. And on reflection, I was like, well, why didn't I do that? When I left the Army, and a lot of the reasons being is that I saw a lot of miserable personal trainers in the gym, and I assumed that if I suddenly turned my passion and hobby into career, I'd end up resenting it. And that was kind of the worst advice that I'd given myself because I started to become a personal trainer. I didn't have the money, but I did have a credit card, and I waxed 16,000 pound on that credit card, did my six week PT course, and rented out a studio about six miles from my house. I didn't have the money for a car, so I borrowed my dad's bike and I cycled up to this studio. Within three years, I realised that this was the thing that I wanted to do, and I became one of the most well-known people in the fitness industry, and I transformed thousands of physiques within that time. Fast forward to 2016, I built my own gym facility, had that for three years, closed it down, moved everything online. We blink another 10 years, and my focus really over that time, and even more so for the last three or four years, has been leaving people feeling better when they find my work.

When did mental health first become something you really started paying attention to?

I didn't pay attention to mental health till my thirties. I didn't know it existed until my thirties. When I left the army at 26, I used to see a lot of people struggling and I just couldn't understand it. I was like, just do the work. Just get into habits and routines. Eat your food, do your training, do your job. It's easy. And what I'd realised is that I was an idiot. I was completely wrong. One of the things I did have going from my life is that I had direction, I had purpose. I really got into my training. I got into bodybuilding for my entire life, from 17 to 26. With the British Army, you always working six months, you always end up getting ready for operational tours. You end up going on operational tours. I went to, I spent 18 months of my life in Baghdad, Iraq. And then you spend six months doing regimental duties, relaxing and getting ready to prepare for the next thing. And I was very lucky that I had that in my life because I was conditioned to think like that. I always had something to look forward to. I always had a direction, I always had a goal. And as soon as that goal was complete, I was moving on to something else. One of the realisations when I started working with more people and helping more people is that I realised how lucky I was to think like that. I was realising how lucky I was back at 17 to make that decision, a very difficult decision to join the army. And I also was very young and very naive because at the age of 30, I had a lot more responsibilities. I had my daughter, I had a gym, I had about 12 staff. I didn't believe in rest. I didn't believe in having days off. And all of that caught up to me in 2016 where I had a massive meltdown, a massive burnout, and really struggled with mental health problems for a good four to five months. And it was during that really dark time that I really started to understand how to balance things out. When is too much, having boundaries and having this thing called rest recovery, relaxation is not a luxury, it's a necessity. And that really only started to come about in my life at the age of 30 and around the age of 34, 35. A lot of the tools that I used in my twenties just didn't work anymore. And I had to test. I had To try lots of different things to help just stay normal, just to reduce down anxiety, to really understand overwhelm, to really know myself a lot better. And not just that. Just really to understand how I can help other people with that too. So that was really my journey. And we'll continue with mental health.

What were early signs that your mental health needed attention before you had tools to tackle it?

Did coming from a military and fitness background create pressure to just push through?