PRECEDE: John Thyssen has been going to the gym every week for 52 years. Now 72 and still working out five days a week, John could be the longest running gym-goer in the South East of Melbourne, as journalist COREY EVERITT reports.
BREAKOUT QUOTE: “When people are going to gyms, it keeps them out of mischief and once you get that disease for it, you wanna go all the time, you wanna better yourself.”
John has spent most of his life in the gym.
He resides in Officer now, but still goes to his old stomping ground in Dandenong to train.
From Monday to Friday, every morning at 7am to 9am, John is training at Snap Fitness at Dandenong Plaza.
“It takes me half an hour to get here and half an hour to get home, so it costs me about $60 in petrol a week, but I love it,” he said.
“My partner always says ‘how can you get up at 6.30am every day?’ – I don’t use an alarm or anything, it’s just because I’ve been doing it for so many years.
“I can remember in ten years missing maybe three workouts.”
Working in building for a living, 20 years of which he spent working for the Dandenong Hospital, John has spent his off time dedicated to athletic pursuits, including bodybuilding, Ironman and lawn bowls.
The gym has connected all these endeavours and John’s love for it hasn’t waned at all.
Starting at age 20, John has trained at the many iterations of gyms over the years in Dandenong, from the first Frank Burwash Gym over 50 years ago to the popular modern chains like Snap Fitness.
“When I was 20 I started to go to the gym cause I didn’t smoke, I didn’t drink, nothing of that,” John explained.
“I used to go to the hotel here with my brothers and when they finished drinking I would run all the way home.”
With his passion for the gym, John at a very young age found himself helping train people from all over the community, starting with local footy.
“When I was young I ended up doing the Hallam Junior Football Club, I trained them down there and I tried to get the under 16s on the weights, some of the parents didn’t like it,” John said.
“But I said to them, once they’re 16 and go to 20, you get dumped on the ground, you gotta get back up again, you can’t just have skin and bone, so they agreed with me.”
John would become a life member of the Hallam Football Club and would take satisfaction from helping others in fitness.
Despite lucrative personal trainer jobs that are all so common now, John is principled in not taking compensation for his efforts.
“I’ve been teaching people now for around about 30 years, but I’ve never received one penny,” he said.
“Because I do it for the love of it.”
Growing up in Dandenong, John would become a builder in the engineering department at Dandenong Hospital where he was employed for 20 years.
Even here, his personal passion couldn’t help but bleed into his career.
“One day, one of the doctors came up to me and said ‘you always train in gyms, what about starting a gym down here?’ and that gym is still going, it’s been 40 years,” John said.
“I used to get an hour for lunch and for half an hour I would go down there and train some of the nurses and doctors.”
John would craft workout program sheets for his co-workers to follow in the gym.
He was asked if they could be sold, but he always gave them for free.
The gym was originally exclusive to hospital personnel, no money was taken by John for his work, just a community donation was set up which would be used when there was enough money to spend on new equipment.
John’s long time service to the hospital and overall giving nature in his job and personal life awarded him an Honorary Life Governorship of the Dandenong Hospital in 1992.
In his retirement years, John, unlike most, has focused more on fitness and giving out his expertise.
“That’s what I’ve always been doing, raising money for the Children’s Hospital and that, but now I concentrate more on physical fitness,” he said.
“I’ve had two shoulder operations, your joints they start getting you know, around lifting 160 kilos, that’s a lot of weight for bench press and now I only use 20 kilos, cause you can’t do it anymore.”
Despite his limitations, John still makes the drive every weekday morning.
“Now I come from Officer all the way here to train at this gym and the reason is that all my friends are here,” he said.
A big part of making the effort for John is also continuing to help others in their fitness – sometimes he even has no choice.
“I been brought up here since 1956, but I was getting old so I thought well I’ll sell my place down near the Dandenong Hospital and I’ll go to a lifestyle village in Officer where it’s over 50, they’re always trying to get me to help people down there,” he said.
“When I see somebody do something wrong, I don’t say ‘hey, you’re doing it wrong’, I’ll say ‘try this way it might be a little bit better for you’.”
It’s no wonder why John’s advice is sought after when you see his decades of experience competing in bodybuilding, Ironman competition and so on.
In 1989, he would win the Lakes Entrance Ironman Championship which the Dandenong Journal reported on, naming John the ‘Sportstar of the Month’.
While John has made it far in the less physically intensive sport of lawn bowls, having competed in State Championships for the Dandenong Club.
He is also qualified in studies on personal training and physiotherapy at Frankston College.
Being in the bodybuilding community, John has met some of the best competitors across the world, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno and Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Fundamentally, John is always glad to welcome people to gyms.
“When people are going to gyms, it keeps them out of mischief and once you get that disease for it, you wanna go all the time, you wanna better yourself,” he said.
John has decided to holiday interstate this year, going to the Gold Coast to miss Melbourne’s cold winter, but this doesn’t put a stop to John getting a pump going.
“Now at me age, I’m 72 turning 73, I wanna enjoy life too, but when I go down there the first thing I do is look for a gym.”
