Ninja, Gladiator, trainer, author, TV presenter, business owner, wife and mum. We chat to the inspiring Tiffiny Hall about her many roles and why she believes mental fitness is just as, if not more, important as the physical. And she should know – Tiff’s helped tens of thousands of people become Happy Fit.

You probably recognise Tiffiny Hall. Maybe you remember her as the white team trainer on The Biggest Loser Australia, perhaps you recall her from 2008’s Gladiators, or you may be one of her 30,000+ TIFFXO.com health and fitness program members. It could be that her face has popped up in your Instagram feed. Last year, Tiff unintentionally became the face for post-baby bodies.

In September 2017, following the birth of her son Arnold with husband Ed Kavalee (radio host, actor and TV personality and funny-man you may recognise from Have You Been Paying Attention? among many other shows), Tiff posted a pic of her and her five-day-old new son. The reaction was an overwhelming 23,000+ likes. Surprising to Tiff though, all of the comments were about her body and not her baby.

“I didn’t sit down with a team of publicists and marketing strategists and say, ok, how do we get our following up? I had Arnie, I was so proud of his little face, and I posted a photo of us,” says Tiff. “I thought, if it’s so weird to see a post-partum body, I think we need to see more of that! So, I started exercising with all of my jiggle and cellulite and in crop tops with a swollen stomach; I’d put on 30 kilos. And I made sure the message I put out was about self-care and mental health at a time when you’re really at your most vulnerable and raw.”

For someone to have built a career as a fitness expert with fiercely toned abs, then openly share their body in any other state is not the norm. The pressure to bounce back and resume daily life, despite having just given birth is very real, even more so for someone in the public eye like Tiff. Her ‘realness’ is so darn refreshing.

 

“I always say you train the mind first, and the mind will train the body. The hub of motivation is in your mind.”

 

It’s a stark contrast to the growing gaggle of aspiring fitness models whose posts are posed, filtered and altered, and feature faces full of make-up, styled hairdos and designer active wear. That is a highly polished version of reality for most of us.

“Even the phrase ‘keeping it real’ has become not real,” adds Tiff. “You see people wear make up in a #makeupfree selfie, but you’re like – ‘you’re still wearing makeup babe!’ It’s irritating.”

Tiff isn’t your usual celebrity trainer. Growing up in Melbourne, spending afternoons and weekends at her parents’ taekwondo school, Tiff lived and breathed fitness. Her dad, Martin Hall, was the Australian Olympic Taekwondo team coach since 2000 when the sport made its Olympic debut and Martin coached Lauren Burns to win gold. Her mum, Jeanette Hall, was one of the first women to ever achieve a black belt in taekwondo. “Women weren’t allowed to do martial arts back in the day, so mum really pushed that envelope,” says Tiff. “My mum’s always been a beacon of confidence and health.

“When I was at junior school and high school, mum and dad would come down and take the whole school through 15 minutes of fitness and activity, in matching tracksuits,” she recalls. “They were always passionate about getting the community fit.”

Tiff herself is a 6th Dan taekwondo black belt and one of Australia’s most recognised female martial artists. She worked at the family dojang as an instructor throughout university, where she completed degrees in creative writing and journalism, then worked as a journalist, wrote for the Herald Sun, freelanced for various magazines, taught self-defence classes in schools, while still running bootcamps and working as a gym and taekwondo instructor. It was in fact her taekwondo achievements that first caught the eye of TV producers in 2007 and won her TV wings in the role of Angel in Seven Network’s 2008 series Gladiators.

That year, Tiff met her husband Ed (while being Angel), and also published her first book. She has now published nine books (with another three in the pipeline), including five health books and four fiction novels – three novels in her Roxy Ran series, targeted to kids 8+, and Maxi and the Magical Money Tree targeted at kids 13+. [Tiff’s high school English teacher was celebrated Aussie author John Marsden who wrote The Tomorrow Series.]

After Gladiators, her TV career grew with fitness spots on morning show The Circle. The Biggest Loser Australia producers saw Tiff on TV and wanted her, bypassing the audition stage and immediately recruiting her to one of Australia’s biggest TV shows at the time. Tiff won her first series on the show (2011), and earned a Logie nomination. She also developed a substantial fan-base due to her positive approach to motivation and weight loss. “Health doesn’t have to be about punishment and deprivation. It’s about feeling good. When you feel good you look your best. Feeling good has to come first.”

With people approaching Tiff from all around the world wanting training sessions, the idea for TIFFXO was born. “I could have created TIFFXO years ago, but for me it was about finding the right time; when I had done the TV thing, I’d been a Gladiator, I’d learned everything I needed to know as a coach and weightloss expert. In 2015 I felt really confident that I could train any person, any mentality, any metabolism, with any injury or limitations, to get the best results. It was also about finding my ultimate team. Teamwork does make the dream work.”

Tiff’s dream team includes dietician Lisa Middleton and clinical psychologist Cassandra Dunn who helped develop the program which launched in November 2016. Just 18 months on and TIFFXO has helped more than 30,000 members – or ‘ninjas’ as Tiff calls them – achieve sustained weight loss through mindset, movement, nutrition and martial arts.

 

“Motherhood is far more brutal than I expected; but it’s also equally far more beautiful than I expected.”

 

Having grown up in her parent’s martial arts school, and seeing firsthand that business is built on relationships, Tiff’s goal with TIFFXO is to keep it personal. “I can see a point where I will be shutting the doors because I want to maintain quality and keep it personal. That’s probably quite odd for a businessperson or entrepreneur to say.”

TIFFXO’s slogan is Happy Fit, because to Tiff, mental health comes first. “I always say you train the mind first, and the mind will train the body; because the hub of motivation is in your mind. I can help you to lose 5kgs, but unless your mindset changes, you’ll be losing the same 5kgs every five years,” says Tiff. “Mental health is about really understanding how to build resilience, confidence and grit in life. That comes from understanding things like emotional eating and your triggers.”

From the TIFFXO program, Tiff and Cass Dunn created a free-to-download podcast series called Crappy To Happy, which looks at mental and physical fitness. “We live in the most stressful era, we’re ‘on’ 24/7. Positive thinking is so powerful; it can change your body chemically, your cells and biology.”

As a working mum, Tiff’s walking the walk. Her daily workout videos are filmed either at her parent’s dojang, or in Tiff’s home often with a sleeping Arnie in the background. She and Ed coordinate two busy work schedules (Ed’s job takes him out the door at 4am each day) around Arnold’s routine.

“I face many of the struggles my members do; I work from home so I’m often stuck at home with a baby, fitting in workouts and food prep. Five minutes into a workout and Arnie wakes up, or he could have a poo explosion – it doesn’t get more real than that! I have messy and chaotic days sometimes, but it’s really authentic. Motherhood is far more brutal than I expected; but it’s also equally far more beautiful than I expected.”

As for what’s next, aside from continuing to nurture TIFFXO, continuing her health segments on The Living Room, working on her three new books and promoting her active wear line with FILA (“No one knows lycra like me – I’ve lived my life in it!”), Tiff says she’ll “start cracking on baby two” within the next year or so. She’d also love to work on a picture book; “and I’d love to do it with Ed because he’s just so funny!”

If you ask Tiff Hall whether she’s a superwoman, she’d probably laugh at the idea. But the reality is, she is all about empowering people in a positive, authentic way. Whether that’s through her fiction novels for kids, her TIFFXO program, her free Happy to Crappy podcast with Cass Dunn, or daily through her honest and inspiring social media feed. This ninja is kicking arse.

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