I love a good Easter egg.

And not just the chocolate kind!

When I was a kid the scene in Demolition Man where Stallone drives past the Schwarzenegger presidential library blew my brain wide open! Oh, and the moment where the Predator dusts off an Alien skull? Put a fork in me, I’m done!

So it might please you to know there are several little Easter eggs built into RussHowePTI.com which most readers never notice.

Today I’m going to show you a few of them. Have you spotted any of these before?

Greg Plitt Gold

Greg Plitt was my hero.

I learned so much from him, both in terms of how to run my fitness business and how to conduct myself.

It’s no secret that he was my inspiration when creating RussHowePTI.com.

The day I learned of his passing shook me to my core, and I don’t think the fitness world has ever been the same since.

Now I’m not into big flashy statements, but I most certainly wanted to show respect to this man in my own way, so the very next morning I altered the colour of my business logo from blue and black, to the same shade of gold used by Greg (#FFBA00), a change which remains in place all these years later!

R.I.P. legend.

Newcastle United Colour Scheme

Keeping with the colours theme, check out the background of this website.

I always use a particular shade of black (#191919), or white (#FFFFFF), or a combination of the two, because these are the colours of Newcastle United.

I’ve supported NUFC my whole life, ever since my Granda told me I pretty much had no choice in the matter!

Many of you have heard me speak of the big role he played in helping me learn how to walk again, but I don’t think I’ve ever spoken about the influence he had on me outside of that. I was an odd kid. I had no friends at all. I found socializing very difficult, and I didn’t really click with most of my family. He transformed his spare room into a bedroom for me and said I could go whenever I needed to, which was incredibly kind.

So I’d spend all week waiting for the school bell to ring on Friday afternoon, then go home, pack my bag, and head straight to my Granda’s house where I would stay until Sunday evening. It was the highlight of my week, because he would just let me be myself. It was impossible not to notice all of the NUFC memorabilia he’d collected over the years, and I found it fascinating. It didn’t take long before I was hooked. We’d spend our weekends watching all of the football scores pour in, cheering on Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle all the way, and this was the first time I felt like I really connected with someone.

Sadly he passed away when I was 16, but this is now something I do with my son.

So this colour scheme is kinda half-tribute to our family football team, and half-tribute to the man who helped me power out of that damn wheelchair all those years ago.

Cobra Kai-Style Fonts

In recent years I’ve been spending a lot of time with my eldest son, Junior.

He’s 16 now, and he reminds me so much of myself at that age but without the crippling social awkwardness (thanks to his mother). And much like when I was blown away by my Granda’s football collection, Junior’s interest was piqued at everything 1980s – the rock music, the action movies, the fashion – so I showed him all I could, but he’d often joke that there’s nothing as cool being made nowadays.

That all changed when he found Cobra Kai, which packaged everything he loves about the eighties into one show.

The time I’ve spent watching this with JR is something that’s really special to me, and something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

Warrior Quote

Check out the about page and you’ll see this quote:

“You have within you an iron will. One which will not bend, and will not break. It is waiting for your attention.”

Eagle-eyed website members will know this quote has been on my website since day one, but what’s it all about?

Well, it’s a quote from Ultimate Warrior (ex-WWE performer). It was integral to the creation of this website in 2011.

You see, back then I was an full-time personal trainer with no computer skills or coding experience, attempting to build what you now know as RussHowePTI.com, and quite frankly it was hard as fuck. I mean, I’d been surrounded by big dumbbells my whole life, and suddenly I was attending coding classes where it seemed like the only big dumbbell there was me!

One day I stumbled upon this written quote and it hit me like a brick.

I hadn’t seem him since my childhood, so I decided to look up what he was doing now – turns out he’d moved into motivational speaking after retiring from the ring, and he was great at it. I checked out some of his work, which led me to this video (below), and it lit a fire under my ass the lies of which had never been seen before!

Suddenly I was pulling 12-hour shifts at the gym, then working all night learning how to code, and going back first thing the following morning. This website has grown a lot since then, but without this quote, I might never have started!

Who Is Russ Howe PTI?

Russ has been a personal trainer in the UK since 2002, and provided both training advice and full programs on this website since 2011.

His work has been featured in Men’s Fitness magazine, and the content on this website led to him being voted one of the world’s top 50 fat loss coaches by HuffPost.

Russ spends his time coaching men and women inside the legendary Powerhouse Gym, South Shields, and writing training tips for the 114,301 members of his popular free training e-mail (join it below).