Hi, my name is Daniel Robson-Petch and I am the co-owner (along side my partner in crime Tia-Alana Hayes) of Resistance Sports Science. Creating such a facility was something I dreamt of for many years. Somewhere where I can work with athletes every day, help grow adolescents into pain free and physically mature beings and above all, make a positive difference to the people I work with and the industry itself. This hasn’t happened over night and its by no means where I want it to be but here is an insight into how Resistance is growing and will continue to grow into Brisbane's leading Strength and Conditioning Facility.
I started my career as a personal trainer on the Gold Coast. Admittedly, I accept this is where I made the majority of my mistakes. With a wealth of experience in sport but a lack of knowledge in training systems, physiological principles and programming I got by with general knowledge used whilst studying Exercise Science at Griffith University. The biggest take home from this experience was the lessons learned and valuable feedback received in this time. I also had the opportunity to learn off the Gold Coast Suns where I was without doubt the sh*t kicker and figured I had a long way to go before earning any respect in the field. Looking back at this, I wasted my internship. I didn’t ask enough good questions and my initiative was poor. Oh how different I would take such an opportunity if I was to do it now.
I had 2 years of practising my trade before I went out and made a name for myself. For any young or aspiring coaches coming into the field, I can not emphasise enough the importance of experience in training people, dealing with different personality types, building confidence in yourself and learning to become sociable. If you are wanting to become successful in this field of work these attributes are a skill that need to be learnt. Trust me, it’s not easy and it’s why 95% of people in the industry don’t last longer than 3 years.. thats if you can get past the first 12 months.
Any-who, after 2 years of learning and confidently strutting around, thinking I was the bees knees. A Sports scientist positioned became available in Brisbane. I applied and a few months later I had the job. I was positioned in the headquarters of the business and my confidence grew. This was however until I realised I was the dumbest person in the room even after 2 years of personal training experience. I still had no idea what I was doing and there were practitioners out there who were miles ahead of me. My programs were ripped apart, my speaking ability was criticised immensely and my knowledge of physiological and anatomical principles was completely scrutinised. That was one way to bring me down a peg.
Im not one to take these things lightly and my highly competitive nature meant I needed to do something about it. My ‘Ill show you’ attitude really came from within. I studied, I watched videos, I practised talking the language, I ran fake consultations on family members, I learnt off the Physiotherapists and Exercise Physiologists, I asked meaningful questions and I went out of my way to better myself. Youtube and journal articles became my best friend and I APPLIED all of what I learnt to paying customers. If theres one thing in this industry which couldn’t be more true. Being book smart at Uni doesn’t get you a job and it also doesn’t get you working with elite athletes. Not only do you need the smarts to understand the principles, you need the social skills to relate to anyone who stands in front of you. Who wants to train with someone who makes conversations awkward?... not me.
After 12 months of growth, I grew my list to 40+ sessions a week. I was making a difference to the people who would see me. I would exude confidence to any person that asked for my expertise. They knew I was the guy they needed to see if they wanted that injury fixed or athletic goal hit. My reputation in the Fight Sport S&C world grew, I took over a high performance role for an AFL team and I found a unique love for training Rowers. There was my clientele right there. I would fix any injury an athlete was struggling with and then turn them into a physical beast in there chosen sport.
The biggest decision I ever made at that time, was to venture out by myself and back my ability to network, run quality sessions and create genuine relationships with people. Scary but exciting I took the plunge and started working at a run down but laid back facility in Enoggera. It was the perfect spot to set up shop, do my own thing and grow a reputation. Resistance Sports Science had been created 6 months prior to the move which helped grow an audience and it was this audience I kept preaching too. Eventually I was being asked to train people from anywhere. It didn’t matter where they lived, they would come up to Brisbane and see me. Palm beach, Broadbeach, Sunny coast. I took great pride in the fact that people were willing to travel great distances to hear my expertise and help them achieve whatever they needed.
As my solo business grew and opportunity arose. The current owner of the facility I worked at asked if I would ever take over his gym. Behold the next 5 months of my life. This is by the far the most stressful, fearful, kind of exciting but also terrifying time I had ever experienced. Tia and I crunched numbers and we argued whether this was a good idea. Theres so many gyms out there.... yes, but there is nothing like ours. The gym we envisioned wasn’t just a weight-loss, body transformation, 8 week challenge gym. In fact, we are none of those, we are an athletic performance and rehab centre which will take Brisbane by storm. We train our athletes unlike any other gym out there. We factor every part of their week. When, what and how to train. Outside of our sessions they will look at there excel sheet and go, ahh yes thats what I need to do today.
Becoming elite isn’t an accident or reliant on genetics. Its also pretty hard to be your best self if you are just winging it. The gym we are creating will have standards so high, the industry better pick up its game or be left behind in the age of burpees, box jumps and high intensity classes.
6 Months on, Resistance Sports Science hosts physiotherapy, massage therapy, exercise physiology and Sports science all under the one roof. We are referred clients through doctors, word of mouth, external allied health providers, sports teams and through our social media guru Tia-Alana. If you have ever wondered why our social media and website looks so crisp, its because Tia stays up until 10pm every night racking her brain about how we can make Resistance better! She's’ the most efficient and hardest working person Ive ever met and together we make an amazing team. Our team of allied health pros are some of the best out there and I couldn’t be more proud of how our team works tirelessly for the individuals in front of them. We have a fantastic bunch of personalities which make it an amazing work environment and we won’t settle for anything less.
We aren’t even skimming the surface of where Resistance is heading. In the first 6 months we have grown monumentally and we don’t expect this to slow down. Our aim is to increase the sporting clubs we work with further, add valuable state of the art performance testing equipment for any athlete and create an accessible link for testing results to be shared amongst Resistance.
There will be nothing like it outside of professional sport and it will be available to any amateur- elite athlete who walks into our doors. Get down to Enoggera, check out what the fuss is about. We promise you, you won’t be disappointed.