The Australian Men’s Health Forum presents the seventh instalment in our series on health initiatives that help men stay connected through exercise.

Leroy Faure, ex-army, online personal trainer, Brisbane-based businessman and founder of The Fit Dad Lifestyle, gets up at 4am every day. He didn’t do so before joining the military in 2005, nor during training and assignments in East Timor and Afghanistan before retiring from service in 2011.

But he certainly did learn the importance of routine and starting off the day hitting some personal targets with an early gym session and walking his dog.

Instead of watching forgettable ‘trending’ movies and TV series on Netflix, Leroy goes to bed at 9pm – approximately one hour after his young children have settled – and gives himself a chunk of time in the morning to work on his goals without the distractions of family life. “No one can take away that workout,” he says.

This has become one of pillars of his work, since 2019, providing online fitness training for dads and helping them overcome one of the key barriers to staying active: Time.

“They do have time, their excuse as to why they can’t do anything is invalid,” says Leroy, who often asks guys to show him their screen time app, tracking the hours spent on Facebook, You Tube and Tik Tok across devices.