About Dean
Dean Mawby’s love affair with strength training began in 1984, after his father encouraged him to join a gym as a fourteen-year-old playing under 18 Australian Rules football. He soon realised that he had a natural affinity with getting stronger, and began competing in the sport of powerlifting, where he won national titles and set long standing records in the sport.
In 1987 he commenced a 5-year chiropractic degree in Melbourne, which set the course for his greatest passion of helping people live healthier, more vibrant lives. He operated his own private practice for 23 years, serving tens of thousands of his patients. He studied, presented seminars, and mentored chiropractors in Australasia and Europe and USA during that time.
During his years in practice, he noticed that those patients who were taking more active roles in improving their lifestyle were the ones who got better, quicker. He was also well aware of startling research into one particular lifestyle change, strength training, that was helping people enhance their lives from improved mental and emotional wellbeing, increased mobility and balance, greater bone density, higher immunity and improved outcomes for disease and illness recovery.
In 2016, he combined his two passions when he and his wife Peta created and opened Real Strength studio in Castlemaine, Victoria. In the early days Dean coached people to World and National powerlifting records that still stand unbroken today. As time went on, he attracted many people who saw the need to improve their strength for general wellbeing. He noticed that many women and people over 50 were searching for a place where they could safely and effectively receive the benefits of getting stronger. Many had never entered a gym prior.
With Dean’s deep understanding of how the body heals and functions, he developed programs that suited people from any starting point in relation to their level of health or current physical state. He also realised the need for creating supportive groups where people who trained together shared common needs and goals for getting stronger. His method was the subject of a research paper that was published in the Journal of Women and Ageing. Read research paper here.
Dean then created the ground-breaking ‘Never Too Late’ program, a twelve-week introduction to strength training, where he coached people who want to feel strong and vibrant again but who thought for one reason or another that gym was out of the question. This program was the subject of a research paper that was published in the Austin publishing group in gerontology. https://austinpublishinggroup.com/gerontology/fulltext/ggr-v6-id1046.pdf
This also featured in an extensive report on the ABC (which you can read on our Media page).
In 2021, Dean and his family moved to Daylesford, the town of his Swiss Italian and Irish ancestry. A place he fondly remembers visiting to see his grandparents on a regular basis as a child. His memories are also filled with stories of his parents childhood, as they too grew up, married, and birthed three of their seven children in Daylesford (Deans older siblings). He is inspired by the country life, relationships with locals, natural produce, fresh air, clean water and of course, mineral water spas. Wanting to satisfy the deep need to serve people and to provide another excellent amenity for the region, Dean and Peta opened Stronger Longer at the end of 2022.