Transformation coach Chief Brabon reveals the secrets to training smarter and living stronger and longer.
2 min
Chief Brabon, Australia’s original transformation coach and co-founder of The Sweat & Social Club, has spent more than two decades reshaping how people approach fitness and ageing.
Known for training everyone from elite athletes to busy executives, he champions a longevity-first approach, focussing on strength, mobility and stability to help clients not just live longer, but live better.
Kanebridge Quarterly Magazine sat down with Chief Brabon to talk about his longevity-based training philosophy, the mistakes people make as they age, and the daily habits that keep him sharp.
What are the core principles behind your longevity-based training?
Firstly, it is important to define what “longevity” really is. To some people, it is “to live as long as possible”. In my personal (and professional) opinion, longevity is “to live as well as possible, for as long as possible”. Who really wants to live to 100 if they weren’t physically able to enjoy their last 30 years?
It’s for this reason that our focus is on improving our clients’ current overall health & fitness, and laying the groundwork for maintaining it long term.
What do most people get wrong about ageing well?
They don’t adjust their fitness priorities as they age. In our 20s and 30s, it’s all about building muscle, staying lean, lifting heavy and moving fast – structure, strength and speed come first. But by our late 40s, that order should flip. Mobility and stability need to move to the top of the list, with strength and stamina still in the mix, but with a different approach.
How is functional training different from standard fitness routines?
Functional training attempts to combine three or more of the 6 Pillars of Fitness (listed above) into each exercise. For example, a standard fitness routine may see you performing a two-legged press on a machine where your body is entirely supported – the focus here is strength. A functional alternative might see you doing a single arm/single leg dead lift to target strength, mobility, and stability all at the same time.
What bad habits do you commonly see in high-achievers, and how do you fix them?
Most high achievers have often made their businesses/ careers and their families their priorities for years (if not decades), but have neglected their health and fitness. As they near 50, they often realise that without their health, they are not going to be able to truly appreciate, or enjoy everything that they have built, or at least not for as long as they would like.
What’s one daily habit you swear by for staying sharp, both physically and mentally?
Find one thing that you can do every single day, no matter what you’ve got on, or where you are. My personal suggestion is a quick 5-minute mobility flow that you can literally do beside your bed, in your pyjamas, before you do anything else for the day.
When not at the gym, how do you relax?
My wife and business partner, Emilie, and I are real foodies. As we work, train, and race together, we have made a pact to take one another out at least three times a week. This allows us to focus on each other while enjoying great food. It’s an added bonus that we train many of Australia’s best chefs and restaurateurs.
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A growing number of employers say Gen Z job seekers are bringing their parents into the hiring process, from attending interviews and negotiating offers to questioning performance reviews. Recruiters warn the trend may raise concerns about independence, even as some families see it as support in a challenging job market.
4 min
Steven Clark had the unpleasant task of firing a 24-year-old—twice. Once was in a brief conversation with the new hire, who’d showed up late or not at all four times in his first week at a construction job.
Then Clark had to do it all over again, this time with the guy’s mother.
She called him a few hours later, pleading to give her son another chance. When Clark told her no, things got heated before he ended the call.
“I said, ‘Look, you know, this is between us and your son. He’s the employee,’” says Clark, who is chief operating officer of a Fairbanks, Alaska-based staffing firm.
Gen Zers make up nearly one-fifth of the adult workforce, and bosses and recruiters say it often feels like the nervous parents who hovered over them through childhood and college are right alongside them. What began as the occasional parent ride-along to a job interview coming out of the Covid era is now full-on career “co-piloting,” said Jasmine Escalera, head career coach at résumé templates service Zety.
More parents are calling up hiring managers, applying for jobs on their adult child’s behalf, and even showing up—or lurking just off-screen—on Zoom calls to help navigate difficult conversations or go over benefits packages.
“The first time it happened, I was appalled,” says Clark, who has fielded calls from parents asking why their child didn’t get a job. “Since then it’s become more of a here-we-go-again reaction.”
Human resource professionals have expressed outrage on social media.
“Parents should not be calling employers to check on their application status or ask questions on behalf of their child,” says Lynne Alba, a director of talent acquisition and physician recruitment at a large health system on Long Island, who vented about the phenomenon in a Tik Tok video she reposted on LinkedIn.
At a recent job fair, a mother approached Alba with her daughter’s résumé, explaining that she wanted to work as a nurse. “While I appreciated that she was trying to help, I intentionally shifted my attention to her daughter. No matter what Mom said, I wanted to hear directly from the candidate,” says Alba.
Some parents who step in say it’s a challenging job market for young people, and that they would only intervene in extreme circumstances—social anxiety, a toxic boss, unfair treatment. There’s also a gray area of intervention that some see as an extension of the parental advice and networking help that’s been happening for generations.
Rick Wainschel last year published a post on LinkedIn asking his network to help his daughter, a recent college graduate, find a corporate entry-level position.
Wainschel, a vice president at an automotive marketing technology company, says he doesn’t think his outreach qualifies as helicoptering. “Well, maybe a little,” he said, before quickly adding he was being half tongue-in-cheek. “It was really merely just to help her get a network established. I just think the work world is a challenging place.”
Wainschel’s post, which was OK’d by his daughter on the condition he didn’t embarrass her, didn’t lead to a job but did result in productive conversations, he said. She found a job with a credit union on her own shortly after.
Recruiters and other HR types say aggressive parental involvement signals a lack of independence and raises fears that mom and dad will be checking in regularly if their kid gets hired.
What’s more, they say, such interference rarely, if ever, works.
The phenomenon is becoming so commonplace it made the agenda of human resources organization SHRM’s national conference in June. When James Harrell asked a room of 250 professionals if they ever had a parent calling on behalf of a young employee or coming to an interview, more than half raised their hands.
“The first time it happened to me, I got high up on my soapbox and I shook my fist,” Harrell says. “The 15th time I said, ‘OK, well, I gotta figure out how to do something differently.’”
Harrell helped run an apprenticeship program for high-school students while he was the human capital management chief for the San Antonio Independent School District. To run interference, the district introduced a “signing day” when parents could come and ask questions.
After a Gen Z employee at Nation’s Best Holdings, a chain of hardware and home goods stores, didn’t get an “exceeds expectations” designation on his performance review last year, HR chief Amber Little got a call asking why.
It was one of a number of calls from parents her office has picked up recently about issues ranging from negative feedback to understanding which health insurance plan to choose. Little has even noticed parents are now calling in sick for their adult kids.
“Instead of coaching them, they do it for them,” Little says. When it happens, she adds, “we encourage them to tell their child to come talk to us and we will walk them through it.”
A Zety survey of more than 1,000 Gen Zers found 20% had a parent attend a job interview with them.
“You get a sense it’s all hands on deck for some families,” says Keith Wolf, managing partner of recruiting firm Murray Resources in Houston. His office has received emails from parents seeking jobs for their children, and Wolf says he’s always wondered if the kids even knew.
Paul “PB” Branson, who graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia in May, bristles at the thought. The 22-year-old says while he understands their anxiety, parents shouldn’t be joining their children’s job interviews or contacting employees on their behalf.
“That trend,” he says, “has really hurt my generation by creating this kind of stereotype that we need our hands held.”
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