Why did you start going to the gym?

As a kid, I wasn’t the strongest.

I didn’t have a huge amount of confidence and found myself hiding behind food and inactivity.

I suffered from being a chubby wee thing, with a propensity to put weight on at the merest glimpse of food.

Growing up, my parents were adamant that my brothers and I would learn to swim, given there was any number of water hazards near our house, which I guess made sense given we lived on an island!

I came to both love and hate swimming.

I loved the freedom being in the water offered, and the confidence I got from being able to swim well.

On the flip side, my chubbiness made it quite uncomfortable to be strutting around in speedos (I’m not sure anyone feels that comfortable strutting around in speedos…)!

Swimming also wasn’t the most fashionable sport when I was young. There were few people in my peer group aspiring to be elite swimmers.

So as a teenager, I slowly but surely found myself gravitating towards playing rugby.

The only problem was rugby demanded that I get rid of the chubbiness and get strong.

My younger brother had recently bought a bench and some weights, so it was time to get started.

I found a book at the library (pre-internet days meant analogue research) and started pumping.

A few years later, I found myself captaining my university side on Wednesday afternoons and playing for a local senior men’s side on Saturday’s.

This was mainly made possible by having a work ethic at the gym most days (and being young!) as I’ve never been the most talented of rugby players.

Nowadays, I incorporate resistance training into my life for the same reasons many of our members do.

– I want to be as physically independent in forty years as I am now.

– I want to be able to get up off the couch without help

– I want to be able to take my dog for a walk without needing a rest halfway around.

Doing so has helped me mature in my outlook on strength and conditioning, so much so now

– I don’t lift to failure, or break myself every 3 or 4 months.

– I don’t worry about chopping and changing my workouts every 5 minutes to keep up with what I see on the ‘gram

– I get coached by our great staff, get to workout with our great clients, and enjoy the benefits of being able