Aussie PT Luke Zocchi shares his personal-training adventures after leaving Australia and never looking back

Six years ago, Luke Zocchi left his Melbourne home and never returned.

He didn’t go missing, he didn’t die. In fact, what happened was a lot weirder than either of those two things. He became the personal trainer for Chris Hemsworth.

“I literally haven’t been home for six years,” the trainer-turned-cookbook author tells whimn.com.au, “Chris has been working so much and I do most of my work with him prior to shooting. I’ve kinda been on a roll with him for six years. This year was the first time where I’ve had four or five months to myself. I just came back from Men In Black on Friday, and then on Sunday I go to India.”

Zocchi, who also goes by the Instagram handle @zocobodypro explains this with the nonchalance of someone describing how they prefer their eggs. Because when you train some of the most famous people on Earth, you’re not just a “personal trainer”. He’s the kind of personal trainer that follows Hemsworth to film sets around the world, ensuring the movie star always has that glorious washboard six-pack we’ve come to admire.

Think private jets, meeting people like Matt Damon on the regular and a constant stream of experiences that rival the lives of actual celebrities and you’ve basically got an idea of Zocchi’s reality. Obviously, it’s a distorted reality that if you immerse yourself in it for long enough, it’ll be hard to separate weird from normal.

Meeting him, though in a Sydney cafe, you’d never guess it. Down to earth, he’s exactly the person you’ll already be familiar with if you’re one of his 187k Instagram followers who watch him literally throw various ingredients together to make a meal. He’s become so well-known for it he now counts himself a cookbook author after writing his first book, The A-list Diet & Fitness Plan.

But you don’t get to write a book with the phrase “A-list” on it without actually having trained proper A-listers. Zocchi has more than earned that right by training not only Thor himself, but also Cate Blanchett, who apparently makes even Hemsworth sweat.

“He was nervous around her, he looked up to her so much, he’s got such respect for her,” Zocchi says.

But back to his weird life, because it really is weird

We need to talk more about the lives of people who live on the periphery of fame — they’re able to escape the intense repercussions while enjoying many of the perks. And the sheer oddity of this lifestyle comes out most when you ask Zocchi to pinpoint the most bizarre thing he’s seen on a film set.

“People always ask me to tell them a story and I don’t really say anything but will just be talking and then they’ll be like, ‘Are you kidding me? What? Did that really happen?’ And I’m like … ‘yeah’. Hang on, let me think, bizarre stories, films. Bizarre. What’s bizarre? I’m really thinking now.”

It’s a solid two minutes before he can pinpoint something weird to talk about and even when he does, it’s still not as weird as what he follows it up with.

The 36-year-old begins by explaining that Robert Downey Jr has a pretty big influence on sets. Such is his power that he has an entire mini village to himself on the lot and sets the schedule at his own discretion, whenever he feels like it.

“So on Avengers you got your hair and makeup trailers all lined up like here,” Zocchi begins explaining, ”And there’s this compound with a big fence around it, so all the actors come here and get ready. And then Robert Downey Jr has his own section. And there’s like a security guard on the fence.

“He’s got all these requirements so there’s all fake grass down, all the pot plants have to be army colour, he has his own hair and makeup trailer, he has his trailer in there, he has his chef’s trailer in there, he has this big bench, and all the video games and every lunch he has a banquet lunch for people, and then every Friday he’ll get a band in and then they’ll be like a Mexican band, maybe.

“He pretty much does what he wants. Nice guy, though. Nothing bad about it,” he clarifies.

But even the outlandish demands of Robert Downey Jr are a match for a man named Moses.

Holy Moses

If you’ve watched one of Zocchi’s Instagram videos, you’ll know he’s a pretty expressive person. Over the course of our 30-minute chat, it’s while talking about Moses, the “natural healer”, that Zocchi becomes most animated.

“I dunno if I should be saying this,” he begins before launching into the following story. “He was a health guy or something. No, I don’t even know if, this is bizarre, actually. So Moses, right. I don’t know if I should be saying, because Moses is dead now. He died of cancer. But Moses thought he could beat cancer. He’s a natural healer.

“Chris had some back problems, so Moses had a session with Chris, and I sat in on that. He had like this stick, I think naturopaths use it, I don’t know what it’s called. But he puts his stick on you. Chris was like, ‘I’ve been taking these tablets, are they good for me?’ And Moses was like ‘well let’s ask the machine’.

“Now, this is what I find interesting, because he’s all about human contact, he reckons we should walk bare feet and touch the earth. So Chris asks him about these tablets and Moses got Chris to put the container of these tablets, which are in capsules, under his armpit and put the stick on him, and he’s like, ‘yeah they’re fine’. Meanwhile, I’m just like, ‘what is going on?’”

It’s at this point that I’m surprised Zocchi even let someone as high-profile (and worth a hell of a lot of money) as Hemsworth go to some Hollywood mumbo jumbo healer, who Zocchi also adds was “pretty pricey” (Robert handled the bills, though “so that’s all right”). I can’t help but ask.

Do you actually believe that stuff?

“Between you and me and the recorder, I thought it was a load of s**t. I think the only reason Chris did it was because Moses was Robert Downey Jr’s guy and he’s like, ‘he must know something’.

“I remember Moses printed out this form that Chris had to sign before he saw him, and it basically said he had no qualifications, and that he couldn’t be held liable. I was like, ‘Chris, the answer is right there, mate! Moses is a phoney!’ But I think he might’ve helped Robert get off drugs and that’s why he was part of his crew.”

And that’s just one of the wild anecdotes Zocchi shares during our sit down.

Throughout, his body language (relaxed, unfazed) remained exactly the same, with the only hint that anything he was saying was odd being my own incredulation.

In fact, our chat is punctuated by moments where I got so engrossed that I lost my train of thought and audibly asked to no-one in particular, “what was I going to say?”

It was embarrassing as f**k but a testament to the fact that when you’re a mere mortal like me, you get flustered at the mere mention of juicy celebrity stories, while for people like Luke Zocchi, it’s just another day-in-the-life.

This article originally appeared on Whimn and is republished with permission.

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