The Mariolis Method: Move Think Evolve

02/10/2026

Story to come!

01/10/2026

Thanks, but i prefer MY way!

We all understand what is meant by the 'generational gap' but this is getting to be a bit ridiculous!

There isn't a day I walk into the gym and I don't see a very overweight person - first time in the gym, — nervous, anxious — and the "PT" with chest puffed, escorts him to the deadlift, and that's the first thing they do.

No warm up. No friendly chat - and that becomes their introduction to weight training. Or, a junior is introduced to the leg press for the very first time – and he’s struggling - with no weight, and the PT says "great job" and adds a plate each side – knees are caving in the whole way, feet so wide apart they've got to message each other just to stay in touch. And my favourite - balancing on the Bosu ball on a bench on one leg, KB in the other hand, reaching down to the low pulley cable with the other doing a Cirque Du Soleil kinda thing that defies gravity and logic.

That I see almost every day.
We have a problem.
Almost every direction I look, — so few people are doing movements that actually resemble exercise. Form? Out the window. Functionality? Not needed. Common sense? What’s that?

Bodies with no brains, no connection to the movement they're doing or how it connects to their own physiology. And no one to offer a few words of advice, direction or help.

For someone who has spent over four decades studying human movement and coaching people, it is bloody hard to just look the other way.

Once upon a time (yeah, showing my age) - sounds like a fairy tale - but people would not only welcome a few words of advice and direction, they also showed respect and appreciation. Today, my inside voice screams – insisting I go over and just say: 'hey - try this.'
Some time ago I actually did that. She was on the cable doing what was meant to be a tricep pushdown but looked more like an arm assisted Good Morning with a sort of hip hinge thrown in! I very professionally and politely offered a little tweak. She lit up — "Ooooh, I really feel that! Yes! It's right in my triceps." Surprised!

Big smile on her face. She then said, and not politely like me, "Thanks, but I prefer to do it my way if that's okay. Please don't interrupt me again."

There you go! The 'generational gap.'

When ego and wilful ignorance completely trump decades of qualified experience, you realise the game has changed.
So now I just do my own thing, keep my head down and search Facebook Marketplace for a good pair of blinkers.
God help the next generation.

The Mariolis Method: Move. Think. Evolve.
Coaching - the Way Coaching Should Be.

29/09/2026

THE BUCKET METHOD

Is there an epidemic happening at the moment that no one's told me about?

Over the last few days I've had quite a few ex-clients and friends reach out (too many to be a coincidence), all asking me to break down their blood test results. And boy, what a mess - painted highlighter red!

Now, I've been reading blood tests for a long time, and I know a mess when I see one. Cholesterol that would make a cardiologist look at you with eyes that scream WTF! Liver markers that look like a mathematical equation, and those hormones! Oh gosh. What have you been doing???

And that's exactly what I said. The answer was almost scripted, the same from every one of them. "My doctor said to take this..." "This mate told me to take that..." "Jonny Glinko on Insta said this stuff is great for fat loss, and I can eat an extra 2,000 calories a day and still actually lose fat."

A bit of everything, including a few things I can't pronounce, never mind spell. The good old Bucket Method. Throw it all in, and something's gotta work.
One had even done his bloods the day after a brutal leg day, and half the results were just his quads screaming.

It seems the hard work ethic went out the door the day the shortcut mentality walked in. We want it all, we want it now, and any side effects will deeply offend us! It's nuts.

And apparently science has changed too. Science is now whatever the loudest voice on social media says it is, provided it tells your starving ego what it wants to hear. A great physique can now be found in a syringe, a GLP-1 cutting drug, a bottle of peptides, and a life-saving hydration drink with minerals sourced from somewhere so exotic nobody's found it on a map yet. And let's not forget the generic gym app that guarantees to turn those love handles into slim, trim, shapely curves in just six weeks. All available right here on social media. No hard work required.

Yes, we have a problem. A rapidly growing one.

I'm in my 60s. I've coached pretty much everyone, from people who just wanted to take the bins out without puffing, to elite strongmen, powerlifters and bodybuilders. But of course, what do I know? I’m just an old idiot who still puts actual thought into my own training. I still focus on how to structure my programs, when to modify them, how to progress sensibly and which exercises I actually need based on what my body is telling me that week. I’m just trying as hard as I can to give the ageing process a serious run for its money. I think I’m winning - but it's still early.

Now, I'm not knocking medical advancement. Some of it has its place - especially when it's prescribed or recommended by a legitimate practitioner who has been there, done it, understands it, and can relate it to the real world. Funny thing is, the one thing a doctor actually prescribed was usually sitting at the bottom of a bucket full of Instagram hype.

But more than any chemical shortcut, I respect progressive overload, real ex*****on, and basic honest nutrition. Because there will come a time when all those chemical helpers are completely useless without the physical work that gives them a purpose.

If you don't train, exercise or move, take whatever you want. Nothing's going to work.

So if you're motoring through your 40s, 50s or even 60s and you want some direction towards ageing a bit younger, without the bucket, you know where I am.

Bring your bloods. Just don't do legs the day before.

PS: Jonny Glinko doesn't exist. I made him up. Mind you, many years ago a well-known bodybuilder walked on stage under the name Jonny Glinko, wearing sunglasses, and won easily. Anyone remember him? He didn't exist either. Confused? Drop a comment and I'll explain.

The Mariolis Method: Move. Think. Evolve
No BUCKETS. Just the work.

23/09/2026

21/09/2026

TRAIN SMARTER. NOT JUST HARDER.

Almost every second client these days is hitting me with the "I'm just getting older" line, and they are ready to accept the consequences rather than listen to and trust a coach who's transformed so many lives he's lost count.

'Age' has nothing to do with getting old. The body's changed — sure. But what's really happened is their life has changed around them, and their physical activity — gym, running, swimming, Pilates, Zumba, or whatever they call "exercise" — hasn't caught up.

They're not even doing the old workouts anymore, not properly. They're doing the bits they still like. The lifts that feed the ego, even a little, to remember who they used to be. The other stuff — the movements that actually protected them — they got dropped along the way, because there's less time now. A job that takes precedence. Kids. The holiday that's overdue, where they'll sit back and watch the kids enjoy themselves while their joints scream for a tune-up. And that retirement that's not far off, where they'll sit and watch the waves roll in between doctor's visits.

So they stick to those mediocre exercises that still carry a bit of past "fitness," while the tendons and ligaments struggle to do half the job on their own. Meantime the muscles — well, they've gone on holiday of their own. All those years of neglect, feeling not needed, they're probably hibernating somewhere on the Greek Isles. And when I tell them we need to build some muscle to support those worn-out ligaments, they respond with: "But I'm getting older."

I'm 69. Forty-plus years in the gym. I still train heavy, hard, four days a week, sometimes five — haven't slowed down an inch. I walk out of every session energised, not wrecked. Okay, okay — sometimes I'm wrecked My wife would say often. But that's me!

But I'm not doing what I did at 40, or 45, or 50. Not because I've gone soft. Because I paid attention. The principles haven't changed. The intensity hasn't changed. But the ex*****on has, completely.

So next time it's tempting to blame the years — "oh, poor old me, I'm getting older" — check whether it's really your age talking, or just the leftovers of an old program, on a life and a body that have both moved on, and a mind that is otherwise pre-occupied.

And if that sounds like you, you need to start looking at how you train, not whether you should. Find a coach who's done it, is still doing it, and has helped scores of people change their lives. Listen to him. Trust him.

Happy to introduce myself.

The Mariolis Method: Move. Think. Evolve.
Coaching Lives.

18/09/2026

Non-Negotiable!

Yep, the years are passing by. I'm not old yet — younger than most my age, if anything — and I'm still training the way training needs to be done.

But I try not to talk about "training." An activity separate to real life. Something you schedule in to hit a goal — drop a few kilos for a wedding or a holiday, give the local gym's 12-week challenge a crack. A burden, even.

I've never understood that. It sounds temporary. And if you think about it that way, it is.

Here's what I believe — prove me wrong if you think you can: humans are designed to be physically active. That's not an option. Yet multitudes seem to think they're so unique that this law of science doesn't apply to them, even while they're surrounded by people who once thought the exact same thing and are now living the consequences — slower, stiffer, weaker, highly medicated future versions of who they are right now.

For me, "being active" was never training for a Hyrox, or the next powerlifting meet, or chasing a number. It's the operating system I've run my entire life on.

I've owned gyms. Coached athletes. Run strongman events. Supervised weight loss programs. Trained thousands of people through decades of it.

But none of that is my point. This is my point: my body has always been part of the job description of being me. I don't do the physical stuff because I "should." I am physically active because life demands it. And if you don't get that simple fact, you're going to be in a world of pain by the time you get to my age.

Training, lifting, exercising, competing, being physically active — it shouldn't be something you consciously choose to do. It needs to be non-negotiable. Because life — especially a good life — demands it!

It demands it so you can carry the life you've chosen.

The Mariolis Method: Move. Think. Evolve.
More than Coaching.

14/09/2026

Humans are the only species that can stand in front of real food and still choose garbage.

11/09/2026

Train for the Life you Live

Need to think about that for a bit.

Most people in the gym are chasing a number that means nothing outside the gym. A bigger squat. A heavier deadlift. A number on a barbell that has no relationship to anything they'll actually be asked to do with their body, ever, in real life. Or a single-leg, bosu ball on a bench cable RDL — yeah, that's a thing. That's not strength. That's bad Instagram influence and sometimes just simple stupidity.

So what is your training, really?

It's not the hour with your trainer. It's not the two hours you spend at the gym a few times a week — fifteen minutes training, forty-five minutes scrolling, and an hour resting and scrolling. Your training is your life.

For the tradie, it's the same 20kg bag of cement, forty times a day, every day, for thirty years. For the young mum, it's a toddler who won't be carried one-handed anymore, and a pram that has to go up a garage step whether your grip's ready or not. For the weekend warrior, it's the mate who wants to kick the footy after eight years off, and a body that's about to find out the hard way what it hasn't been asked to do. For the older bloke, it's getting up off the floor, carrying the shopping in one trip because you couldn't be bothered with two, hauling a suitcase into an overhead locker, chasing a grandkid across the backyard, getting out of a low chair without using your hands.

None of that cares what you can bench. Or what you do on the Bosu ball.

That's the training. Every single day, whether you show up for it or not.

So ask yourself honestly — are you strong enough for the training you're already doing? Because most people aren't. They're not chasing PBs. They're not even meeting the bare minimum their own life is quietly demanding of them.

You don't need to be the strongest person in the room.

You need to be strong enough for your own life. And most people, right now, today, wouldn't pass that test.

That's not a strength problem. That's a training problem — training the wrong thing. Oh, and if you're doing that Bosu ball thing, on the bench and the cables. Please stop. It's stupid and it's doing nothing - unless you're trying out for Cirque De Solei.

The Mariolis Method — Move. Think. Evolve.
Strength That Transfers