Built for the people who've been let down by every gym they've tried.

I'm Dylan Jones — coach, founder, and creator. I built State of Fitness in South Yarra, Melbourne. Everything I've built — the coaching model, the team, the systems — exists for one reason: to give people a place where they feel genuinely coached, not just managed. Gyms have a stigma for a reason. I've spent my career trying to fix it.

View my full story below ↓

The journey

2009–2011

Albany, Western Australia

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.

2011–2012

Melbourne

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.

2012–2016

South Yarra, Melbourne

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.

2014

Melbourne

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.

2014–2015

Melbourne

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.

2016

Melbourne

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.

2017

Florida, USA

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.

Action shot — Cressey Sports Performance, Florida

2018

Melbourne

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.

2018–2020

South Yarra, Melbourne

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.

2020–present

South Yarra, Melbourne

State of Fitness — founded

SOF started under circumstances that weren't ideal. A dissolved physiotherapy partnership. Equity drawn from a townhouse. A partner pregnant with our first child. Then COVID, and income went to zero overnight. For eight months, sessions ran outdoors and over Zoom. The clients who kept showing up during those months taught us more about what this should be than any business plan could. On November 9th, 2020, we opened a 6×6 metre space in South Yarra. It was small. It was enough. Today: six coaches, two admin staff, 170+ members, and every single one of them known by name.

The State of Fitness studio in South Yarra

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.

Education & credentials

Over $120,000 invested in education and professional development. Countless hours of unpaid internships, self-directed study, and time spent in rooms learning from the best across multiple industries. This list isn't a résumé — it's a record of what it took to build a coaching practice worth trusting.