How Sam Wood is going to get you fit in 2024

Make this your fittest, healthiest year yet

Celebrity trainer Sam Wood shares how transforming your health is less about abs and bicep curls and more about your mindset, and how the power of community can change everything

Sam Wood wants to set something straight. If you’re looking to transform your health – and make 2024 the year that you stick to your goals – whether that’s to feel fitter, stronger, less stressed, or simply to kick-start your energy levels – you don’t need to spend every spare minute struggling at the gym and subsisting on grilled chicken and steamed broccoli for the rest of your flavour-less days. 

And you definitely don’t need to get yourself a workout onesie (no one but influencers tolerate wearing those). Wood wants you to stay comfy in your “dorkiest track pants or PJs” and dramatically wind back your expectations of what it means to live a fit and healthy life.

“You don’t have to train two hours a day. You don’t even have to train seven days a week,” the celebrity trainer says (as the whole country lets out a collective sigh of relief). “People overestimate what it takes to become healthy and that's a big reason they often don't get started at all. On the flip side, others will try to do too much too early and get burnt out, injured, or just find it unsustainable.”

If that’s a hard relate, especially as last week marked what’s internationally known as Quitters Day (aka the day we’re most likely to give up on New Year’s resolutions ), understand that it is for the majority of us.

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In our ground-breaking Health of the Nation report – which polled Aussies across the country about their health, food and fitness habits, along with the health issues that concern them most, from chronic stress to not getting enough sleep– 80 per cent of Aussies said their health could benefit from being more active but 60 per cent blamed a lack of motivation or difficulty sticking to a routine as the major roadblocks.

That’s why Wood is here to steer us in the right direction as Body+Soul’s newest Chief Motivator. After all, the Melbourne-based fitness pro has learnt a thing or two from working in the industry for 25 years, running 65,000 one-on-one personal training sessions and welcoming the one-millionth user to his health and fitness app, 28 by Sam Wood.

“As crazy as it sounds, being a personal trainer is far less about abs, bicep curls and using the rower properly as it is teaching people if they get their head in the right place, their body will follow,” the 43-year-old says. “Even as a young trainer with relatively little life experience at the time, I was really fortunate that I could naturally connect with people and get them good results, but I also genuinely cared about them.”

It’s an ethos that’s only grown stronger over the years, from his beginnings on the 5am shift as a 19-year-old gym instructor at Ballarat YMCA through to launching 28 in 2016 as a more inclusive alternative to what he calls the “full on” fitness programs of the time.

Sam Wood wants to help you change your life. Image: Supplied

And now, as he joins Body+Soul to offer Australia a free eight-week Health Club with at-home workouts, personalised meal plans and daily motivation as part of our Health of the Nation campaign to create a groundswell of support across the country that will ultimately change lives. And, most importantly, help Aussies get fitter, feel stronger and live longer.

“The Health of the Nation campaign isn’t about perfection. It's not about comparison. And it's not about trying to undo 20 years of not taking care of yourself in eight weeks. It's about taking positive steps and building habits with your food, with your mindfulness, with your movement, and that wonderful feeling of doing it together,” Wood says. “This collective sense of thousands of us making 2024 the year that we hopefully make it stick, and that it all started with the Health Club, that's really what I'm excited about.”

Ready to take the first step with Wood in your corner? Here’s everything you need to know to make 2024 the year you turn your life around, in the best possible way.

Wood reveals the new (realistic) rules of fitness. Image: Supplied

It’s okay to start from zero – Wood did

Most people wouldn’t guess by looking at him, but Wood says he was a “real piece of spaghetti” at the start of his own fitness journey, back in his hometown of Hobart. “I discovered the gym because I was a super-tall, super-skinny kid who wanted to build some confidence,” says the father-of-four, who won the nation’s hearts (and that of his now wife Snezana’s) in the 2015 season of The Bachelor.

“When I was 16, I was the same height that I am now [188cm] and 68 kilos – I'm now 100 kilos, I was 32 kilos lighter at the same height. I wanted to get into the gym to build a bit of strength, build a bit of confidence, and when it dawned on me how much that had helped me [that’s when I decided I wanted to help others].”

That’s why the man genuinely cares about getting people moving. Not necessarily the ones who are already running 10km and squatting PBs, although he’s happy to help them too, but those who are starting from nothing, or coming back from an injury, or returning to exercise after giving birth.

“There's a lot of gyms out there that are great at getting fit people fitter, and that's fantastic. They have their place. What I love is getting someone from a 1/10 to a 7/10, and all the confidence, health benefits and mental improvements that come with that,” he says. The lesson? Don’t let where you are now stop you from where you want to be. Got it? Good.

You don't need to spend your whole week in a gym to rediscover your fitness spark. Image: Supplied

You don’t need to slog it out at the gym

If a legitimate fear of (or a plain aversion to) those fluorescent gym lights and endless mirrors is keeping you from pursuing your health goals, we have very good news. As Wood wisely says, you never have to step foot inside a gym. (Unless, of course, that kind of thing actually floats your boat.)  “I hear on a daily basis how intimidating those environments are. Whereas training at home in your dorkiest track pants or PJs with your phone isn't,” he says.

So here’s the deal. Grab your phone or laptop, access the free at-home workouts in our Health Club, and make that first move. Wood says, “If I can help people build up their fitness and build up their confidence in the comfort of their own home, bedroom, lounge room – whatever it is – and then get them to be part of a really supportive online community with like-minded people, I mean, I've witnessed those results firsthand.”

You might feel that your five-minute effort (yes, you read that correctly, Wood says if you don’t feel like doing anything “just do five minutes”) won’t amount to much, but trust that it does. “I’ve seen so many people who never in their wildest dreams would think they'd be signing up for a fun run, fitting into their old jeans or whatever their thing has been. If you'd said to them on Day 1 [that’s what they’d be doing], they'd scoff at you, but they build confidence, they build habits, they start to get results and it's quite addictive.”

Balance is key, according to the celebrity trainer. Image: Supplied

You don’t have to overhaul your life

It’s time to retire that well-intentioned version of yourself who wants to make all the changes right this very moment. “The best results I see are from people who make small incremental changes; they don't turn their world upside down in a week,” Wood says.

“They don't go, ‘Okay, I'm now depriving myself of all these things I love. No more red wine, no more chocolate.’ People who do that are miserable! They might be able to hang on for three days a week, two weeks, and then they're like, ‘Ah, stuff it’ and it all goes back to square one. So taking baby steps in the right direction is where you’ll see the most success.”

So whether that’s simply eating breakfast, or going for a 20-minute walk every morning, Wood and a growing body of science are here to confirm that seeing tangible health and well-being change doesn’t have to mean radically changing everything. Start with even the tiniest lifestyle tweak, and the well-being results will quickly snowball.

Commitment is forged, not found. Image: Supplied

You’ll never find the time, you have to make it

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. Life will always get busy. In fact, according to our Health of the Nation report, 44 per cent of you said that not having time was the main reason for not making a dent in your health goals. Unsurprisingly, Wood isn’t immune to time pressures either.

“As a 22-year-old personal trainer, if someone told me, ‘I don't have time to train’, I’d be like, ‘Oh, come on, that's rubbish’. And then now I’ve got four kids, a business, and life's pretty hectic, it actually is hard now,” he admits. “So I think it's important that you’re not trying to find the time. As you get older and busier, you have to make the time. You really do need to carve that time out if you are going to invest in your health.”

But the good news? Most of us overestimate how much time we need to spend on our health. Out of the 168 hours we have each week, Wood says you just need to put aside five “to really take care of yourself properly”. That includes “a bit of time at the supermarket to buy some good ingredients, two or three workouts and doing a walk or two.” See? Totally doable.

Exercise for your mind, as much as your body

While Wood’s desire to transform people’s lives hasn’t changed over the years, what has evolved are his personal reasons for staying fit. “In my early twenties, it used to be about biceps and abs, and I dunno, girls probably, if I'm being really honest with you,” he says. “Now it's far more about how I feel than how I look. It’s about my energy, my mood, my mental health, being able to keep up with my kids and being a good role model for them, and practising what I preach. If I can look half okay, because I do all the right things for those reasons, that's just a bonus.”

The reason he shares this? Because he wants you to think about your personal “why”. “If you have a really powerful ‘why’, the first time you hit a speed bump, you won't throw in the towel. So spend time thinking about why you’re doing this. Is it for preventative health reasons? For mental health? Is it to be a good role model for your kids? Is it for self-esteem, self-confidence, self-love? Everyone's ‘why’ is different. There's no wrong or right answer, but I think it's important to write something down.”

Community support is everything

If you’ve tried and failed more times than you’d like to admit, then know this: the power of a supportive crew cheering you on can be transformative. It was for Wood.

His toughest personal challenge came in 2022 when his youngest daughter, Harper, was born with an infection that kept her in the neonatal intensive care unit for three weeks. “We were pretty stressed and overwhelmed with it all and exercise was the furthest thing from my mind. That was the first time properly in my life that I really felt like that. I gained six or seven kilos. I was in terrible shape,” he recalls. Once Harper was home and well, he tried to get back into his usual routine, but “I felt crappy and it was really hard to get out of [my fitness rut]. I tried two or three times and failed.”

Luckily for Wood, he could call on his “beautiful, organic, supportive community” – the one he himself had built up by checking in regularly, offering words of encouragement, and inspiring members to do the same with each other.

He says, “I ended up telling my 28ers I was in a rut. It was at the start of one of our eight-week challenges, and I told them, ‘I'm going to do this one with you.’ I made myself accountable and I got an enormous amount of support when I'd usually be the one giving them the support. That was enough momentum to get me going and, by the end of the eight weeks, I was not totally back [to where I wanted to be], but I was pretty close.”

If any story encapsulates the positives of joining a community like our Health Club and having Wood as one of your cheerleaders, it’s that one. As he says, “You do get back what you put out there. I really believe in that.”

Originally published as How Sam Wood is going to get you fit in 2024