If there’s one person who really should have no time for training, it’s Jason Dundas. You’ll know him as a host of various TV shows — ranging from The X Factor to Getaway — but he also manages to squeeze into his busy schedule running both his own fashion label, which is sold in David Jones stores and a media content company.
Yet no one believes as strongly about the powerful role that fitness plays in turbocharging your career as Dundas. When he got into television in his early 20s he was already known as the guy who was fit. “I was a bit of an over-achiever and a workaholic, but it wasn’t until I moved to New York that it all changed, and for me it went to a whole other level,” Dundas tells Fitness First magazine.“Nowhere on earth do you have 11 million people on one tiny island that all have their own
“Nowhere on earth do you have 11 million people on one tiny island that all have their own singular goal, and they will stop at nothing to do it. I wanted to host American Idol to 20 million people in the US. I asked myself, ‘how do I do it?’" Dundas knew that to make it, he needed to be at the absolute top of his game, not just physically, but mentally. Fitness would give him that. “So, I went and got advice from a friend on what to eat and then went and dropped a lot of money on a really top-tier personal trainer at a club called Equinox, one of the top level gyms in New York," he says. “All my friends called it an obsession, but in New York there are other people that are just as crazy as you are.” Dundas lives by a theory that you make your own opportunities, which is exactly what he
Dundas lives by a theory that you make your own opportunities, which is exactly what he did. When you take that initiative and say, I’m going to give myself the best opportunity to be the best version of me, that’s when everything starts to happen, he points out. There is a misconception where people believe you wait until an opportunity comes to you, but my advice is it’s the exact opposite. You are the chain reaction that causes all the events that happen in your life, good and bad, and you have the power to make them happen now.
It starts simply, by getting up early in the morning. It starts by going to the gym at 5 am, you crush your bulletproof coffee, you’re first in the door at the gym, you're out the door and back home, showered, stretched, meditated, in the office by 7am with a full breakfast ready to go.”
Almost as if on cue, the opportunities came for Dundas. At a dinner with some Australian friends, he met the marketing manager for David Jones who asked whether he’d model for the department store. Dundas hadn’t modelled before, but to make sure he was ready he embarked on an insane12-week training program in which he trained seven days a week and ate nothing but chicken, broccol, and nuts. When he finally took to the catwalk, he looked like the statue of David.
Then other offers started pouring in: “Entertainment Tonight in the US, I hosted The Big Adventure on Channel 7, The X Factor, America's Best Dance Crew. I hosted about 10 of these humungous reality competition shows both in Australia and America, all the while doing Getaway at the same time.” Throughout this, he trained like an athlete. “It kind of allowed me to do all this, being that fit and razor focused,” he says. But he felt that since fitness was such a pillar of his life, he needed to know more about it. "So, I studied for a year at the Institute of Integrated Nutrition in New York to become a certified holistic health coach. Then I studied for three or four months to become a personal trainer. I did that out of pure passion, to understand more about how it can benefit my life and my friends and family around me.”
Basically, if you were to view life like Dundas, then nothing is impossible, and you turn obstacles into advantages. Take, for example, his teeth. Yes, his teeth. A few years ago he became concerned they were slightly crooked and it might affect his TV career. So he found invisible teeth straightening treatment and got them fixed. He was so happy with the result he contacted the company, Invisalign, and asked if they were interested in sponsoring him. Given his public profile, of course, they were! So he fixed his teeth and got a sponsorship at the same time. Dundas is inspired by The Rock, Dwayne Johnson. The Rock refers to exercise as his anchor and I look at it in a similar way.
I want to do all these things in my life, but without being the best version of myself, Im never going to achieve them — or Im not going to give myself the best opportunity to achieve them.”
