Meet Ashley Smith

I’m a psychologically focussed fitness fanatic who gains a deep level of fulfilment and accomplishment from helping as many men as possible. It is my sole purpose and ambition to take people from A-to-B with the most efficient-strategy and educate that client to eventually have the individual confidence for their own accountability and structure.

Fitness coaching is all I’ve ever known since a teenager. My love for fitness & health stems from my old man’s bodybuilding days and being thrown in at the deep end at the age of 12 years old. My dad’s coaching philosophy was sink or swim. Thankfully, I was able to grasp it quite quickly, but I have now a deeper understanding of the struggles when first starting out in the gym from the past 7 years as a personal trainer and online coach. This is also why I have an adaptable approach to coaching a variety of clients.

I was always a sporty kid and had regular competitions within Blackburn Harriers athletics club – my main events were 100m, 200m, 400m and 110m hurdle dash. This is ultimately what drove me into the sport of bodybuilding and building lean muscle mass, as I was always naturally a stick-thin kid. I needed to bulk up to improve on my explosive power with sprinting, so it was around the age of 13 that I started to take the gym seriously.

Investing in my health was probably the best thing I could have done at that time for my mental health, it was what helped me cope with personal struggles growing up as a teenager. Regular exercise helped me gain a lot more confidence inside and outside of the gym, I felt like I had purpose, and knew I wanted to make a career out of it.

After leaving school at 16, all I wanted to do was train people to help them reach their maximum and true potential. So, as I worked part-time as a Lifeguard and attended my sports courses at college, I enrolled on my personal training qualification at the age of 17 before landing a job at a local gym where I began to gain experience with a large variety of clientele, each with different individual needs.

After completing my college education, I wanted to take my knowledge to the next level so ultimately ended up completing my undergraduate bachelor’s degree in Sports & Exercise Science at Lancaster University – which is heavily based around research in physiology, psychology, nutrition, anatomy, biomechanics as well as current debates in the fitness industry. I like to provide a research-based approach to coaching my clients at Physique Academy.

Now, for the past 10 years, I have loved to train religiously at-least 5 times a week with a varying programme split comprising of Push/Pull/Legs and a different muscle group each session, which I typically alternate in each block of my fitness journey. In the last few years I have also began to introduce conditioning to my training which has helped me retain a low level of body fat year-round. The general daily habits and disciplines of my fitness routine is what drives me in other areas of my life and is critically important for me to keep my energy levels sky high.

However, it hasn’t always been plane-sailing. My biggest setback came in 2022 when a close friend suddenly passed away which left my motivation and mental state at an all-time low. I found myself over-indulging in alcohol and bad sleeping habits which had me in a chaotic way of living with no care about anything in the world, except trying to take my mind off the pain that I held inside. I slowly began to overcome this obstacle by being thankful for each day and recognising the support from the people around me in my close-knit circle. This is what makes Physique Academy different to any other coaching because each coach has been through hell and back to where they are today, and we care about each individual client’s mental wellbeing. This is why Physique Academy means a great deal to me personally.