The Progress Pod - Episode 1 - My Journey

The Progress Pod is a new podcast hosted by Jordan Cain. The aim of the podcast is to provide actionable steps and valuable information on health, fitness, business, personal development, and more. The episodes will primarily feature Jordan discussing various topics, but there will also be guest interviews. Jordan shares his personal journey, including his background in sports and fitness, his career in accountancy, and his decision to pursue his passion for fitness full-time. He talks about the challenges he faced, including his daughter's heart operation, and how it made him reevaluate his life. Jordan recently completed his first sub-three-hour marathon and is now focusing on a hybrid approach to training, combining strength work and running. He plans to participate in future events such as the Glasgow Half Marathon and an Ironman. Overall, the podcast aims to provide valuable content for listeners to help them make progress in all areas of their lives. Hello and welcome to the first episode of the Progress Pod. My name is Jordan Cain, owner of the Progress Project, and the aim of this podcast is really just to provide values, quick actionable steps that you can take, strategies, hints, tools, all things health and fitness. But on top of that, we will be discussing things like business, personal development, and just everything to allow you to get as much progress in all areas of life as possible. In terms of the format, so the vast majority of them will be me, myself, chatting through topics ranging from, as I said, health, fitness, business, personal development, mindset, everything like that. And it's going to be quick, to the point, actionable topics that you can just listen to on a walk and just allows me to dive a wee bit deeper in terms of providing value than a 60-second Instagram reel, for instance. So, on top of that, though, the other parts of the episodes will be guests on the show. That is going to be my aim. Lots of different guests from within the fitness industry, even outwith, but that will be the format. Those episodes will be slightly longer. But as I said, the main aim for me is to provide easily digestible value that you guys can listen to on your walks and just get actionable steps in terms of your health, your fitness and making progress in all areas of your life. So, in terms of episode one, I'm going to go into depth on my journey and how I got to where I am today, what I currently do, what my kind of history is with regards to health and fitness, how I got into the fitness industry, and just give a good background on your host. So, just to go where I am at the moment, my name is Jordan Cain, I'm 32 years old, and I stay in East Kilbride, which is a town just outside Glasgow in Scotland, just in case this podcast grows, and we get some listeners from outside Scotland, outside the UK. And I've got a wife, Kirsten, and two young daughters, Rosie, who's nearly four, and Evie, who's nearly two. So, the last few years have been madness, to say the least, and just with starting the business and everything like that, there's been a lot going on. But how did I get to here? So, right the way back to a young child in terms of fitness and sports. So, I've always been into football, football's been the main thing with regards to sports. So, I played football from the age of about five until probably mid-twenties. And also big football fans, my dad, my papa, my brother, we all went to party festival games from the age of, like, three or four, and still go to this day. Don't get to as many games now, right enough, with the kids and business and everything like that, but definitely get there when I can. So, football's always been a big part within the household, and, as I said, played football regularly, also did other sports, like karate, did swimming, and I did running from fairly young as well, probably age ten and above. I did running, but I dipped in and out of it, I never ever ran for a running club, it was more just I went out runs to help with my football, and I did a couple of 10K events when I was younger, but never ever, seriously, it's only over the last couple of years where I've really ramped the running side of things up, and really found my love for that again. But, yeah, just in general, did as many sports as I could, was always relatively active, and it was not probably until I was about 17 that I'd say the gym came into play. Probably, like most young guys that get into the gym want to look a bit better, maybe start to go on lads' holidays and things like that, they're coming up, so just one of these things I just wanted to look a bit better, so started getting into the gym, and then quickly just fell in love with it. Just everything about the gym, about training, about progressing, and just absolutely loved it. But by that point, I'd already been accepted into uni to do accountancy, I'd already kind of picked my path, and I think if I'd got into the gym maybe a couple of years earlier, things might have been a little different in terms of I potentially would have went straight into that, into maybe getting my personal training qualifications or something like that, but that wasn't the way it was, and I decided, right, OK, I'm going to just stick with my accountancy direction, I know that if I get through uni, I'm going to get a job, stable job, work through that, and just follow the kind of society standards of what's expected of you, go to school, go to uni, and get a stable job, put money away in a pension and then retire, and that was kind of the route that was planned for me, and I decided, OK, I'm just going to continue with that. But even within my job, I worked within accountancy, qualified as a Chartered Accountant, worked within accountancy for about eight or nine years, various different firms, and even during that time, though, I was always researching, right, what's my training plan going to be over the next few months, or how can I make my nutrition better? I would be the one turning up in the office with a couple of meals with chicken and rice in them, coming straight from the gym into the office, and it was a massive part of my life at that point. I was still playing football at the beginning of that, but all kind of other sports had drifted off, it was more... it was everything to do with the gym. At that point, I was like, I really wish I could just have went into the fitness industry, it was something that I thought, like, oh, I've missed that opportunity now. It was always something that... it was a regret that I had, and I was just like, oh, well, I can't do anything about that now. But as we approached lockdown, so 2019, I had my first child, Rosie, was born in June, and at that point, obviously, life kind of gets flipped upside down, work was crazy, Rosie was here, and training probably dipped a little as it fell down the priority list a wee bit. I still trained, but just the thought of getting into the fitness industry was miles away at the back of my head. Then, in November 2019, unfortunately, we found out that Rosie had to get a heart operation. She had a heart defect from when she was born that was only picked up when she was five months old, and from that sort of November, December time, was a really, really, really tough time. Not knowing what was happening, I ended up at the hospital with Rosie, and it was just a lot of stress, a lot of worry. Thankfully, Rosie had her operation, now she's absolutely thriving, and everything went well, as well as it could have done. But during that time, in that hospital, I'll go into this in another episode in more detail, but in that hospital, there's a lot of times you're just sitting, thinking there, loads of time to think, nothing else, and a lot of me was thinking, like, life is so short, you literally don't know what's around the corner. Rosie, she didn't feed very well, so we always knew there was maybe something wrong, but when we took her into the doctors, because she had a cough, the last thing we expected was to be going into the hospital to get a heart operation, we did not expect that to be the case. And it just shows that from one day to the next, things can really change, and I started thinking to myself about my life and where I was at, and I was in the accountancy role where I knew that I didn't really love it, like, it was OK, but I had no passion for it, I didn't get a lot of fulfilment out of it, and I kept thinking at that stage, like, is this what I want to do for another 35 years, is this where I want to end up? I was looking at my manager, the people above me, where I could be getting to, and I was like, I really don't aspire to get to that. But at that point, as I said, everything was up in the air, finally we got out of the hospital with Rosie, things were improving, things were good again, thankfully she started to thrive straight away. And then early into 2020, started working with a coach, started really taking my fitness seriously. Then we went right into lockdown, so it wasn't really the ideal time to try and get into the shape of my life when the gym's all shut. But at that point, then I started getting a bit more time, and I decided to do my personal training courses online, and got that ticked off during lockdown, started then taking on a few clients online, because at that point, that's all that was there, online was the only option, because the gyms and everything, that was still closed. As soon as things started to open up, started to do some local boot camps, and started picking up clients, things started to take off a wee bit, and at that point, it was still a side hustle. With a mortgage to pay, Rosie was born, Kirsten was then pregnant with Avery, at that point, it was still just a side hustle, there was no way I could see it being a full time, but things started to pick up and pick up, and it got to a crossroads where I was like, I need to make a decision here, because I'm not going to be able to work full time in my accountant role, have almost another full time job with the fitness side of things, and look after two young children, I was just like that, I would die. So I was like, right, I need to make a decision here, and I decided to take the risk, and go all in on the fitness side of things, because what I weighed up, and I'll go into this in another episode as well, that I've got planned about taking risks, but what I weighed up was thinking in my head, where do I want to be in the next 30 years, do I want to be doing what I'm doing just now, what is the worst thing that can happen if I go for this, and then just taking everything like that into account, and the decision was clear, and I said, right, I'm going for it, I handed in my notice, which was quite a shock to the accountancy, the guys in my accountancy firm, they were just like, what, because it wasn't as if I was just leaving to another accountancy firm, I was completely changing direction, it was a big shock, not only to my colleagues, but family, friends, I think were a bit taken aback, in terms of like, what are you doing Jordan? But thankfully, things are going really well, and after handing in my notice shortly after, the Progress Project was born, and I'm absolutely loving life at the minute, I cannot explain how happy I am with the decision that I made, and yeah, just long may it continue, and in terms of where I'm at in my own fitness journey at the moment, so recently just completed my first ever sub three hour marathon, that was a goal that I've been working towards for over a year, and managed to get that done in Manchester just in April right there, had a wee bit of a time off, not time off, but a relaxed period in terms of training, still trained, still ticked the boxes as I always do, but no real focal point, however I'm back at it now, really looking towards more of a hybrid approach, in terms of building strength, staying strong, and keeping my running going, in the past I've always been kind of either or, so I've done photo shoots in the past and things like that, where I'm just fully focused on the gym work, barely any running, then during my marathon blocks I'm fully focused on running, with really not a lot of strength work, which is not the way I want to do it, because when I'm not training as regularly in the gym I miss it, when I'm not running as much I miss it, so really going for a hybrid approach into the future. And coming up in terms of events, Glasgow Half Marathon in October is the next big event, I'm hoping to do a Hydrox event at some point early next year, and then Ironman is a big one that I'm looking to do in the future, but I've got a lot to learn still with regards to the swimming and cycling side of things, but that is the future for myself in terms of my own health and fitness journey, but that kind of gives you an insight as to who I am, how I've got to where I am today, what are the plans for the immediate future, and yes I hope you enjoyed that, as I said going into the next episodes it will be topics, actionable steps that you guys can listen to, take value from and as I said it allows me to dive a wee bit deeper, going into a 15 minute podcast is a lot more valuable in terms of for you guys, than a 60 second Instagram reel, so that will be the format going forward, and if you did enjoy this episode, I know it's only number one, but please give the podcast a review and even better, screenshot it and share it in your stories, because I'd love to be able to reach as many people as I can, and I'm only going to get better, this is the first of many, and let's know how it goes, if it was terrible let me know, if it was good let me know, but yes thanks for listening and I'll see you in the next one.