My Well Inspiration – Keiran Barry

I graduated from NSW Uni in 1991 with a degree in exercise science and have been in the fitness industry since. I’ve been really lucky to do so much in the industry having been a personal trainer, owned and ran my own gyms, corporate health business, coached at the Olympics and trained elite athletes in a number of sports. I’ve worked with people of all ages, body types and fitness levels.

During the past thirty years I’ve witness the industry evolve enormously and seen a lot of trends - some great, some terrible. The most important lessons I’ve learned are that no one training method is the best and fitness is not just about exercise.

I’ve watched training develop to a point where many people are training like elite athletes but from all my experience with elite sport I know that as much as they need to perform and be super fit, the number one rule for elite athletes is to stay injury and illness free; so training needs to be progressive and balanced – you need to think about all aspects of fitness, build the program sensibly and you simply can’t train hard all the time. It had long been a dream of mine to be able to offer a range of training options to provide that balance.

I’ve known Robby for more than 25 years and his background in business and retail, together with his passion and belief in wellness and preventative medicine, gave us great balance to set up The Well.

We wanted to create a place where all clients, regardless of their fitness level, can be treated with a high level of care and follow the most important principles of training i.e. to work on all elements of fitness, push their personal boundaries, but avoid injuries, so we worked on putting together a great support team of trainers to run the classes and programs and quality therapists who are experts in their field and happy to work together with other therapists and trainers.

We also recognised that the absolutely critical role nutrition plays in health. We wanted to offer fresh, natural ingredients that were put together in simple yet creative ways, so people could experience that eating well didn’t need to be boring. This has come together beautifully with Robby’s south coast farm supplying a lot of our fresh ingredients and Kate our nutritionist (and former five star chef) designing a brilliant menu and changing people’s lives in her consultations.

The business is new and we’re all still learning but our dream was for The Well to be so much more than a gym, a café or a therapy centre - We wanted to create a health community and I genuinely believe that the amazing staff in this place have made that a reality.