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Inside Candice Warner’s fitness program for SAS: Australia

Nov 3, 2020

How did Candice Warner, a retired professional Ironwoman and mum of three prepare for SAS: Who Dares Win Australia, the new reality series that sees celebrity recruits attempt to conquer a series of physical and psychological tests from the real Special Forces selection process?

She enlisted the help of the Roosters Head of Strength and 98 Gym’s Kev Toonen – a former Strength and Conditioning Coach for Australia’s Special Operations Command with 18 years of military experience.

‘To develop Candice’s training regime for SAS: Australia, I took the same approach as I did when I was working with the Human Performance Cell within Special Operations Command,’ he explains. ‘I look at the goal, I examine what the demands of the task are, I test the individual and, from there, I reverse engineer to create a program. For Candice, I set about making her body bullet-proof.”

To create 35 year old Warner’s program, Toonen looked at her strength and aerobic energy system, focusing heavily on lower body strength – adding to her ability to carry heavy loads over long distances and varied terrain – as well as upper body strength and endurance so she could tackle the physical training over extended periods.

Toonen had Warner endure “pack marches” – carrying a 25kg backpack over long distances and irregular ground – just to get to 98 GYM where they would then train for 60-90 minutes.

Injuries, too, were top of mind. Warner and Toonen wanted to ensure that Warner’s body could meet the physical strains of the show. It’s clear that SAS: Australia is as close to a real selection course as the producers and ex-Special Forces soldiers, including Chief Instructor Ant Middleton, can make it.

‘When you’re tired and fatigued and you fall or take a bad step, someone with strong ligaments, tendons and relative strength will be able to get back up and keep moving; someone who doesn’t have that will have a course-ending injury,’ Toonen explains.

But physical preparation was only part of the work Toonen and Warner did together. Mental preparation was critical. Toonen programmed sessions where Warner was fatigued, sore and exhausted: ‘Military need to perform at their best when they are at their worst – physically and mentally. You don’t get to have a bad day in combat.’

Toonen says: ‘There are lots of great things about Candice, but the best is that she works hard. All the time. I guess that’s why she was a pro-Ironwoman at 14 years old, and able to do all this training while also being a mother of three. It’s hard to understand just how exhausting something like this is unless you’ve done it. It’s a huge accomplishment.’

New 98 TRAINING app just dropped

Fans of SAS: Australia, and everyday athletes of every fitness level, can access Toonen’s expertise for themselves via the new 98 TRAINING app – the long-awaited expansion of 98 GYM into the app space.

98 TRAINING has been programmed by Toonen to offer an unrivalled global industry standard of training. And it’s been strength-tested by the best – including Warner, Owen Franks (All Blacks) and Daniel Kowalski (Olympic Swimmer).

98 TRAINING is designed to deliver effective and continual growth via daily workouts and meaningful, in-depth assistance including exercise tutorials, nutrition education, mindset insights, expert content, and engagement with a like-minded active community.

The 98 TRAINING program can be broken into three key pillars – Physical, Mental and Social – and has been created to build and develop each one of these pillars to ensure a rounded approach to training and lifestyle.

The 98 GYM community including David Warner, Boyd Cordner and Senator Briggs, has been integral to the success of the business and now, its expansion into the digital space.

98 GYM founder and owner, Chris Feather, says: ‘We knew we had a great product because we were getting great results from the 250 members in the gym who followed the 98 Program – and we had professional athletes following it in their off season and getting really strong results.

‘We were getting a lot of requests for remote programming, too, so we were sending training programs out manually to people all over the world.

‘With the 98 TRAINING app we’re able to replicate what we do in the gym but on a bigger scale – training, knowledge and community.’