Tony Nicholson

Beginnings in China

At 19, Nicholson enrolled in Chaozhou college, located in provincial Guangzhou. At Chaozhou, Nicholson was the only foreign student out of a student body of nearly 13,000. After obtaining his degree, Nicholson took a job teaching basic English to workers at a cup factory. In 2007, he moved to Beijing to enroll in the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Study at Tsinghua University. After three years of Chinese Language Studies, Nicholson went to the University of International Business and Economics to study Chinese Business.^[12][13]

Transition into Fitness

In 2009, Nicholson’s family came under severe hardship when his father suffered a heart attack and later passed away.^[14][15] He began working long hour jobs to cope with the grief, which negatively impacted his health and left him suffering from depression. Feeling overwhelmed, Nicholson entered the Beijing 12-Week Body Transformation Challenge to make a change.^[16] At the end of the 12 weeks, Nicholson was picked out of 50 contestants and won the Grand Prize of 100,000 Chinese Renmenbi, which empowered Nicholson to launch a career in fitness.^[17] His inspiration came from educators such as Tony Robbins and Stedman Graham.^[18][19][20]

After earning American and British Personal Trainer certifications, Nicholson started his own fitness company in China called 4 Point Fitness. Among his fitness achievements, Nicholson has been a certified official for the world record attempt at the plank for 9 hours, 11 minutes & 1 second.^[21][22][23]