Meet Thomas Higgs

Health and fitness have played an integral part of my whole life, starting in a sporting capacity during my younger years, rugby, athletics, and mainly football. I got into gym-specific health and fitness when I was 16, with the sole purpose of building muscle to impress those around me. I quickly became invested in the science behind training and nutrition and I developed a passion for bodybuilding-style training, but not for the competitions, more to see what I could achieve in both physique and strength, hitting my PBs in a backstreet bodybuilding gym in Liverpool as an 18-year old, and being invited to train with the professional competitors at the gym as they saw potential in me.

The stage was never my destination, at least, not at that time, and when I trialed for the University football team in my 3^rd year, my reduction in mobility, stamina, and overall performance, completely changed how I viewed my own training program, and I re-aligned my goals and training purpose for performance over aesthetic. This lead me down the path of CrossFit and Olympic lifting, and my passion for fitness was reignited. I enjoyed being an apprentice to my best-friend at the time who was also a coach, and I learned lots of news skills including handstand walking, Olympic lifting, muscle-ups, and gymnastic ring work, to name a few!

My education pathway headed in a different direction as I studied Sports Psychology at University, achieving a 2:1 and acquiring my BSc Hons degree. During my three years at LJMU, I learned all about mindset and what effect our mental state can have on physical performance and general outlook on life situations. It helped me adopt strategies to enhance my mental toughness and resilience, whilst it changed my perspective on potentially adverse mental states such as anxiety, which I now use to prepare for and improve upon m performance in all areas of life.

My professional fitness journey started whilst working in my first ‘big boy’ job out of university, which was a sales account management job for a blue-chip company. I knew this wasn’t going to be the ‘rest of my life’ and I was lucky enough to be offered a place on my uncle’s online personal trainer qualification, and I grabbed the opportunity with hands. During the Covid lockdown, like most, it gave me a chance to take a moment and consider everything in my life, and through my content creation and health message spreading throughout the lockdown, I knew that Fitness was my calling.

Lockdown was eased and gyms opened back up, so I applied at my local Nuffield Health. I had the chance to work with a huge variety of people all wanting different goals, starting from various points, and all facing their own individual challenges, and through this diversity my eyes were opened to a whole new world of fitness from a plethora of perspective. I quickly realized that there was a glass ceiling at Nuffield, and in-person, personal training in general, both in my own career, but more importantly, with the amount of people I could have a significant influence on through my coaching, guidance, and general fitness knowledge and experience. This is when I discovered online coaching and the potential it had.

I joined an up and coming online coaching company, who mainly worked with high-level executives residing in the US, and I quickly learned the differences between online and in-person training, understanding the importance of how programs and plans are it together and presented, whilst holding my clients accountable required various methods of communication, because, of course, I would never be in the same physical location as them.

Fast forward 5 months and I was running a small team, taking on sales calls, and promoted to a leadership position that taught me a lot of new skills outside of coaching, but that transfer very smoothly to my coaching responsibilities. Now I am ready to take my online coaching career to the next level and when the opportunity came up to join Physique Academy, through quite a few stars aligning, I must say! The mission, the brotherhood, the ethos… everything matched up to my own beliefs and I am hugely excited to find out what I can achieve with the PA team and how I can help PA take over the online health and fitness world and transform the lives and lifestyles of men across the world!

I employ a hybrid style of training and always look to find the modalities that my clients enjoy most, whilst still being suited to their circumstances and goals. But that’s just the start… I have an invested interest in nutrition, specifically cooking, and I always look to share my knowledge and recipes so that my clients can ENJOY a healthy balanced diet whist improving their relationship with food. My girlfriend is a vegetarian and former vegan, so I have an understanding of varying diet needs, whilst we have both experienced eating disorders at points in our life, so I use our own experiences to help advise those who may be experiencing similar symptoms.

I put a huge emphasis on mental health, partly due to my education in sports psychology, and partly from my own and close ones’ experience with depression. I understand how this can affect individuals and that we are all battling our own demons, and although it is a blight on my otherwise happy life, I use these experiences to help everyone I work with overcome their mental barriers to great effect!

My success is your success, I’m happy when you’re happy, and helping others to change their lifestyle for the better, both physically and mentally, is the reason I get out of bed in the morning.