Never stop trying and training, says Keith Milkins
IF EVER there was a walking, talking advertisement for resistance training combined with aerobic training as the secret to a happy, healthy and fulfilling life it’s Wonthaggi’s Keith Milkins.
IF EVER there was a walking, talking advertisement for resistance training combined with aerobic training as the secret to a happy, healthy and fulfilling life it’s Wonthaggi’s Keith Milkins.
Known to many local sportspeople, especially the footballers and netballers who’ve been put through their paces by Keith over the years, as ‘The Commando’, he still trains three times weekly with a group called to Octogenarian Club.
And he does so on one lung after a series of operations in recent years that would have killed most mere mortals.
But Keith is alive and kicking, very much so, and on Friday, January 9, which just so happened to be his 86th birthday, Keith was more than happy to preach the gospel of resistance training, weights and aerobics training during the seventh in a series of nine ’15 Minute Histories’ put on by the Wonthaggi and District Historical Society.
Keith said he first started experimenting with fitness training at the age of 7 and while he claims to be “the worst footballer in the world”, he loved the game and played and coached extensively locally, using the knowledge he’d gained from personal training to give his teams the edge in fitness and ultimately turning his commitment to weights and fitness training into a business sideline.
“The fitness business is a huge industry now and across Bass Coast and South Gippsland there’s lots of options and people running the gyms as money-making opportunities,” said Keith.
“I did it because I loved it and also because I believe in the benefits of resistance training for anyone at any age.
“In all that time that I did it (run gyms) I don’t believe I ever made a profit, but I got the biggest reward out of seeing how people have benefitted by doing it,” he said.
Keith was into gyms before gyms were a thing, setting up at various locations around the town before being invited to bring his equipment and training methods to the Wonthaggi Recreation Reserve where they have benefitted both Wonthaggi football clubs, and in recent times, the combined Wonthaggi Power Football Netball Club.
It’s where he meets with other 80-year-olds three times-a-week.
“I only work at 75kg now but I do it in 10 sets of five as part of a program which I still thoroughly enjoy. One of the members of our group, Mick Loughran, does 135kg on the bench and is in superb condition for his age.
“It’s never too late to start and you’re never too old to gain real benefit out of resistance training, not necessarily weights, but some sort of resistance training.”
One of those who attended Keith’s talk at the Wonthaggi Museum on Friday, Peter Hughes, credited Keith’s training methods as the secret to two of Rovers’ premierships.
Keith also coached the Dalyston reserves and did fitness training for the seniors in the late 80s where he is also credited as having players supremely fit at the time, and one of the reasons for the small club’s success against bigger, better-resourced clubs.
The players there recall pushing cars around the oval commando-style, running for miles for endurance and, inspired by the great man himself, Percy Cerutty, pushing players to develop their leg strength by training in the soft sand, and up and down sand dunes at local beaches.
“I had the pleasure of meeting Percy Cerutty and watching him train Australia’s greatest-ever 1500 metre runner Herb Elliott on the soft sand at Portsea.
“Elliott would run on the soft sand and then sprint up the dunes, picking up a piece of iron equipment at the top, doing a series of squats, running down again and doing that over and over.
“He told us that when he won his gold medal in Rome, he thought he could hear someone coming up behind him so he kept going as hard as he could. He needn’t have worried; he won by more than 20 metres.”
Keith acknowledges a certain fanaticism about training and also making do with some rudimentary equipment when he first started out.
“It seems mad now to be getting up at 3am to do 100 push-ups, then lift 150kg and after that do dumbbells and more push-ups before opening the gym at 6am but that’s what I used to do.”
Keith recalls starting his gym with two benches made by his brother, a wall unit for chin-ups and other exercises front and back and a power bench, with weights connected to a lever rather than a free-standing bar.
He said two of his first athletes included Brett Lovett, who played 235 games for Melbourne before returning to coach locally and Darren Tiziani who he said never had a soft tissue injury during a lengthy football career, which he credited to superior conditioning through weights and resistance training.
A family member who attended the event said they recalled how Keith’s belief in resistance training brought him back from the brink after a series of recent operations, initially using small sandbags to increase strength and starting out with two steps, then five and ultimately a flight of stairs to boost fitness.
“The good lord alone decides when it’s our time to go but everyone can certainly get a lot more enjoyment out of the life they have through the wonderful world of weights and the importance of resistance training,” said Keith Milkins before taking questions from a packed audience, many of them helped along the way by Keith’s training methods and philosophy on life.
