In 2015, I turned my phone camera on and started filming my fitness journey… uploading… publishing (365 days in a row, and I never missed a day!). I served these videos to an audience of zero.
In 2016, I started sharing my Muay Thai training journey in Bangkok, Kanchanaburi, Chiang Mai, many of the islands, and later, Phuket, to encourage more people to embark on a fitness journey.
I visited a run-down gym in Bangkok where I was paired up with UFC athlete Thiago Tavares as my training buddy (I didn’t follow UFC back then, so I had no idea who this guy was). He told me about Phuket Top Team and how I “needed” to train there.
My vision and ambition involved creating content that “bridged” all the training camps, healthy eating bars/restaurants, accommodation facilities, etc., into a place I coined “Fitness Street”.
It became an obsession to promote Fitness Street as a catalyst to change people’s lives through fitness—and have them feel part of a supportive fitness community. Over the years, I have spent tens of thousands of dollars to produce hundreds and hundreds of videos, thousands of editing hours, and countless late nights… over almost 8 years… and it’s a 100% passion project.
I feel most “alive” when I can help another person… and see it in their face. This creates a feedback loop to create another video, to inspire another person, to see another face, which leads to another video. When someone looks you dead in the face and says “your videos helped me so much”… it’s hard not to get addicted to wanting to help more people.
For me, the “payment” I have received for this passion project has been the thousands of comments, messages, DMs, handshakes, face-to-face stories, where people have personally shared their unique story of how the videos have helped them.
The most extreme have been the several suicides that have been prevented. One young lad walked up to me and said he “wanted to die” and shared with me how the videos saved his life. This hit home as I have lost a brother to suicide.
Another guy was wheelchair-bound and used the videos as inspiration to learn how to walk again… so he could visit Fitness Street (he stumbled up to me at Tiger Muay Thai to shake my hand and show me his MRI scans of his spine). Thousands of transformation stories. Several “I met the love of my life due to your videos” stories. It goes on and on.
On this mission over the years, many people have criticized me, doubted me, trolled me, and ridiculed me, including certain close family members that do not believe in me. If only these detractors lived in my inbox and read what I see.
My long-term vision is to create a “Fitness Island” where hundreds of thousands of people could visit to transform their lives. This has never been done before. More to come…
Looking at visiting Fitness Street? Check out the Fitness Street Travel Guide here.
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