Tiffiny Hall in full flight. Photo: Scott McNaughton
- Meet the surf world’s next big thing, Nikki van Dijk
- The good daughter: Magda Szubanski
- Miranda Kerr: the girl from Gunnedah
Juggling coffee, phone and keys, a beaming Tiffiny Hall extends a slim hand in greeting. It does not look lethal. But appearances can be very deceiving, as Australia’s nicest ninja has demonstrated since she was a little girl sweeping far bigger opponents off their feet faster than the flick of her blonde ponytail.
As a sixth-dan taekwondo black belt, the mum-to-be is one of the highest qualified female martial artists for her age in the world, but breaking boards with bare hands and flying feet is just a fraction of her repertoire.
As well as her role on Channel Ten’s The Living Room, she’s the author of nine books, has an activewear line for Fila (selling so rapidly through Harris Scarfe the company can barely keep up) and now, with the launch of her online health and fitness program, she’s a businesswoman.
But, even before she swung into the public eye as the aerial games expert Angel in the 2008 revival of Gladiators, Tiff flew against stereotype.
“When I was a kid I would go to competitions with a nice ribbon in my hair that matched my belt because I liked it and immediately people would make judgments; then I would win a medal and they would be shocked. It’s so bizarre that people would think that because of the way I look I couldn’t be doing full contact sports seriously,” says the 32-year-old.
“It’s the same with my books. I get judged within literary circles; some authors give me a little bit of snobbery because I have a reputation of being on reality television so I’m obviously not a serious writer.
“It is irritating,” Tiff admits, but, “at the end of the day – apart from what you say and do – people always remember how you make them feel, so I think it is important to just be yourself and get on with it.”
The eldest of three children of an Olympic taekwondo coach and a ballet dancer-turned-black belt, Tiff was raised in a crack coterie of taekwondo-trained kids who tended to stand out even in multicultural Essendon.
“We’d start the day in our doboks (taekwondo uniforms). Dad would take us out on the front lawn, where we would do our breathing exercises. Then we would have our green juice we called Hulk juice. Talk about embarrassing the neighbours.”
Tiff and her sister Bridget studied ballet for years, but both also had their first black belts by 11 and ultimately chose martial arts over the barre. On weekends the girls would perform demonstrations in shopping centres, at festivals and fetes to promote Hall’s martial arts schools.
“I think that was the first insight into me being a bit of a performer and liking being on camera.”
But when she wasn’t in ninja mode, Tiff was shy, felt stressed by her need to achieve and not be “the dumb blonde”, and she struggled to find her place during her early years at Lowther Hall Anglican Grammar School.
“A lot of the girls were really well-off and stuck together,” she revealed in Fiona Scott Norman’s book, Bully For Them: Outstanding Australians on Hard Lessons Learned At School. “One girl was bullied because her family rented their BMW. My mum would pick me up in the Tarago that was sign-written with ‘Get Your Kicks Here’.”
But, from a young age, Tiff had her own resources. Her fertile imagination created a friend called Sanctus, thanks to some rudimentary church Latin. “I was always creative-writing in my room. Mum would ask what I was doing; I’d say, ‘Me and Sanctus are just working on a book’.”
Tiffiny Hall. Photo: Scott McNaughton
Sanctus even made it into Tiff’s wedding speech when she married film writer, actor and radio host Ed Kavalee in 2014. The couple met when Ed, then working for Nova, went to Sydney to interview the competitors during filming of Gladiators.
“I snobbed him off because I was going out to compete and was in the zone,” she says.
“When I got back to Melbourne, he called me in for an interview and we hit it off. He called me back the next week for another interview and we hit it off once again.
“I was like, ‘dude, are you going to ask me to come back next week?’, and he said, ‘if I could’. That’s when I said to him, ‘do you want to go out to dinner with me?’, and we have been inseparable ever since.”
Ten years on from their first date, when he marched her across the road before she’d finished her meal to buy her a copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day after she admitted she hadn’t read any David Sedaris, Tiff is still smitten.
“He’s the funniest person I’ve ever met. We’re always laughing. People say, you’re so trim; I say my tummy’s flat because I laugh all the time. It’s like inner jogging.
“Well, it used to be flat anyway,” she says patting her growing baby bump.
Tiff discovered she was pregnant the day after she and Ed returned from their long-delayed Paris honeymoon.
“Due to work schuedules, we had to put off our honeymoon for two years since marrying in 2014. It was such a romantic trip and we’ll always treasure it because it gave us a little honeymoon baby.”
Mum’s the word: Tiff shows off her baby bump with husband Ed Kavalee. (Supplied)
It seems a far cry from the days the couple were living in a share house with comedians Ash Williams and the still-unknown Luke McGregor. It was around this time that Tiff first hit the headlines training Emma Duncan, the winner of Biggest Loser Australia: Families. She returned for the show’s seventh season in 2012 and again in 2015.
When The Biggest Loser returned this year, Tiff was absent, and so too were the morbidly obese people, as the show rebranded to be less about weight loss and more about people who need a lifestyle overhaul.
Ratings suffered as a result, but Tiff says the format had to change. “I loved the show, but all of the trainers were frustrated about how all the hard work, hours of training these guys were doing was undone because of a challenge or because they wanted a cliff-hanger.
“We had no control over the challenges, like if the contestants are swimming in mud or doing something that might be perceived as degrading, we didn’t know that was happening. Things like temptation, where we are trying to teach people healthy eating habits and they introduce trigger foods.”
During the last series, Tiff decided it was time to draw her own line in the sand. “I am done with extreme. I have done extreme my whole life. When I was on Gladiators, I had to be shredded and muscly and on a special bodybuilding diet. Because I’ve lived my life in the public eye in fitness gear, I have succumbed to, ‘oh my god, I need to lose weight, too’, I’ve tried every diet.
“None of that works. The answer is so simple, just eat healthy home-cooked meals and cut out the sugar.”
All the knowledge gleaned from Tiff’s many years as trainer, coach and martial arts practitioner has been distilled into her online fitness and lifestyle program.
“TIFFXO is about being happy fit. It is not about being in a brutal boot camp, not about getting a bikini body and being shredded. The idea is feel good and you will look good,” she says.
With a new martial art-inspired workout video each day, meal plans, meditation techniques and support from an online team, including a dietitian and psychologist, it’s a holistic program aimed at living well.
It very much reflects Tiff’s life. Instead of scented candles and carefully styled sets, Tiff’s “ninjas” are likely to see video posts of her folding laundry or cracking jokes with Ed.
By starting her own business, Tiff means to take control of both her brand and her future. “I didn’t want to live contract-to-contract with TV,” she says. “I wanted to have control of my life and not have to wait for the next book contract or the phone to ring.
“It is very easy to be in entertainment and end up poor-famous. People recognise you … and think you’re rolling in it, but you haven’t had a gig for two years.”
Tiff never chased television work. “People say ‘how did you get onto The Biggest Loser?’. They rang me, there was no audition. I’d never watched the show before.”
She learnt how fickle that kind of fame can be after she left The Biggest Loser in late 2012 to focus on writing children’s books. She had been offered a four-book deal by HarperCollins before joining the reality show.
“I remember trying to get publicity for my latest novel, but no one was interested. I’m like, but I am an author. I have a great book out and it’s about bullying and confidence in kids, and people are like, ‘nah, but who are you dating and when are you going back on TV?’.”
Tiffiny Hall. Photo: Scott McNaughton
Since she was a child, Tiff aspired to be a writer, an ambition encouraged by her year 6 and year 7 English teacher – who also happened to be one of Australia’s most acclaimed children’s book authors, John Marsden.
She majored in creative writing and journalism (and a diploma in French) at the University of Melbourne, and was interning at the Herald Sun when she was invited to audition for Gladiators.
Although she never made it back to the newsroom, she published four health books: How to Create Your Ultimate Body, Weightloss Warrior, Fatloss For Good and Tiffiny’s Lighten Up before White Ninja – the first of three books in her empowering Roxy Ran series for readers eight-plus – came out in 2012.
In 2015 she released her top-selling health and exercise manual, You Beauty!, as well as her first teen novel, Maxi and the Magical Money Tree.
Tiff is now working on a young adult novel titled We are Gathered, due out in May. She and Ed have also written an animated film, called Dog Paddle, about a boy who learns to surf with his pooch.
It’s clear she’d much prefer to be recognised for her writing than being on reality TV, but she also counts herself lucky she can supplement her living with fitness.
She’s an author with the spirit of a warrior and there seems little doubt she’ll kick some serious literary butt.
TIFFXO commences on May 1st to access the program for free enter code TIFFLIFE, register at tiffxo.com
