ABOUT
Built for the people every other gym let down.
I'm Dylan Jones — a coach, first. I help high achievers, CEOs, weekend warriors, and busy mums and dads get out of pain, move well, and get their energy back — the kind of change that's still there in ten years, not gone in twelve weeks. I spent the early part of my career chasing elite-athlete performance before I realised the work I love most is this: helping normal people feel good in their bodies again. So I built State of Fitness to do exactly that — somewhere you're coached, not managed. My heart's on the gym floor; these days my focus is also on the systems and business that keep great coaching alive for the long run.
The full story is below ↓
THE JOURNEY
Seventeen years in the making
Albany Leisure & Aquatic Centre
Started my fitness career supervising a public gym and managing school holiday programs. Completed Cert III & IV in Fitness — originally a gateway into PE teaching. A senior trainer introduced me to evidence-based coaching through books and anatomy textbooks. I never looked back.
Fitness First QV
Moved to Melbourne and ran a franchise within Fitness First QV as a Level 3 trainer. Paid rent to use the floor, learned to build a client base from scratch. It taught me firsthand how transactional the industry could feel — and I decided early that whatever I built would never operate that way.
Smithfit — Senior Holistic Performance Coach
Joined Smithfit as senior coach and head of movement assessments, program design, and strength testing. Working closely with owner Shannon taught me that remembering a client's history, their injuries, their wins — that precision is what builds real trust. It's the foundation everything at SOF is built on.
Melbourne Football Club — Sports Science Internship
Worked one-on-one with the club's sports scientist tracking athlete speed, work output, and peak effort during training using GPS. Assisted strength and conditioning coaches with sessions involving 20+ athletes during Paul Roos' first season.
Brunswick Hockey Club — Physical Development Coach
Head of physical development for two state-level men's field hockey teams. Led preseason preparation focused on power output, cardiovascular capacity, and injury prevention across two to three sessions per week.
GW Performance & Athletics Victoria
Worked as a performance coach across a wide range of athletes and clients in individual and group settings of up to eighteen participants. Developed and presented a movement workshop to the top under-21 throws athletes in Victoria through Athletics Victoria.
Cressey Sports Performance — Strength & Conditioning Intern
Interned at one of the most respected strength and conditioning facilities in the world, coaching elite baseball, tennis, golf, and water skiing athletes. The methodology, the precision, and the genuine investment in each athlete's development confirmed everything I believed about what coaching should look like. (Also where this whole Florida-sunset thing started.)
Port Melbourne VFL — Head of Strength & Conditioning
Led the strength and conditioning program for the Port Melbourne VFL team. Working inside a large sporting organisation — navigating the coaches, physios, and politics — taught me that the best results come when a coach is fully empowered to serve the person in front of them. I missed that directness.
Back to Smithfit — the idea takes shape
Rejoined Smithfit and built a strong referral pipeline with a prominent physio clinic in Richmond. The vast majority of new business came through rehab referrals. It became clear that precision coaching for general population clients — people who wanted to move better, feel stronger, and live well — was where I could do my most meaningful work.
State of Fitness — founded (against every odd)
The timing was almost comically bad. A dissolved physio partnership. Equity drawn from our townhouse. My partner pregnant with our first child. Then COVID — income to zero overnight. For months I coached outdoors in a little park and over Zoom, driving around like a gypsy with equipment in the back of the car. Members Rob and Mem even let me live at their place in Toorak for two weeks so I could keep working through a ring-fenced lockdown. Our son Edison arrived November 2nd; we opened the doors November 9th — newborn at home, no sleep, mounting TRX straps with a hammer drill the night before. A 6×6 metre room. It was small. It was enough.
Six coaches. 170+ members. Known by name.
If we could start and grow a business through two years of not being able to set foot in a gym, we can get through anything. Today the sessions are booked out, retention is strong, and I still coach on the floor every week — with a team and systems strong enough to hold the standard around the clock, even when I step away for something like our third child. The industry is filled with a lot of garbage; it's nice to go against the grain with education, community, and actually being welcoming.
INSIDE THE STUDIO
A look around
PHILOSOPHY
What I believe
Built for people, not numbers
SOF stays small on purpose. Six coaches. Appointment only. Every client known by name. When you walk in, your coach already knows your history, your loads, your injuries, and what you need that day. That's not a promise — it's how we've operated since day one.
The kind of results that stick
Matt lost 65kg and now competes in jiu-jitsu. Lahiru's bio age dropped five years in ten months. Cindy came through a hip replacement stronger than before. These aren't outliers — they're what happens when coaching is genuinely individualised and consistent over time.
When it works, families follow
Some of our most meaningful moments aren't in the data. They're when a client's partner joins. Or their son. Or their mother. It happens more than you'd think — and it tells us something we can't measure: that people trust what we do enough to bring the people they love.
HOW I WORK
The operating system behind it
Up until COVID, all of that obsession went into the craft of coaching. COVID turned the same relentless pursuit toward systems and operations — and now toward the business acumen to grow this sustainably for the long run. The discipline is identical; only the target has moved. My heart is still on the gym floor.
Relentless ownership
If something goes wrong, it's almost always on me — I didn't explain it clearly enough or give enough context. Owning that is where everything else begins: high communication, our standards, and how we deliver every product and service.
Systems & SOPs
Endless mind maps and documented standard operating procedures — the whole customer journey, every touchpoint, every client communication — refined until it's repeatable and calm under pressure.
Enable the team, reach more people
My biggest leverage now isn't another one-on-one slot — it's coaching my coaches, and learning just as much back from them. It's a genuine collaboration, not a one-way street: I invest in the team, they sharpen me, and that care trickles straight down to every member — reaching far more people than I ever could alone.
A relentless pursuit of better
COVID forced me to slow down and streamline; I never stopped. That discipline became Professional OS — CRM automations and workflows — and AI has magnified it: data that's digestible and genuinely useful. It's why I'm doing a postgrad in analytics, with a master's in AI likely next.
CREDENTIALS
Education & credentials
Over $120,000 invested in education and professional development, plus countless hours of unpaid internships and self-directed study. This isn't a résumé — it's a record of what it took to build a coaching practice worth trusting.
Formal education
La Trobe University — analytics & business strategy (Power BI, SQL, R)
Deakin University
Applied experience
Melbourne
Florida, USA
Melbourne
Movement & assessment
Dallas, Texas
Lee Burton, Sydney
Dan Pfaff, Melbourne
Perth & Melbourne
EXOS, Melbourne
Nutrition
Business & professional
Rhys Livingstone — scaling, sales systems & operations
Melbourne
Automations, CRM systems, streamlining
OFF THE CLOCK
Married in 2019. Three kids. A dog and five very opinionated chickens. The whole reason I obsess over good systems and a strong team is so I can actually be there for all of it — and so everyone who trains with us gets a coach who's present, not burnt out.
See what this looks like in practice
Book a free consultation at State of Fitness — no pressure, no pitch. Just an honest conversation about where you are and where you want to be.