About

How I fell in love with exercise – my story.

Everyone reaches a point in their life where they say to themselves “enough is enough”. We start to lose faith in ourselves and lose sight of who we are, due to a stressful job or a busy life with kids to look after and many other reasons. Whatever your reason, you’re reading this because you are at this point now, and you want to make a change.

 

My moment came when one day when I woke up late to get to my desk job. I had to run for the train, up 3 flights of stairs, and still didn’t make it in time. I was left on a suddenly desolate platform, holding onto the railings looking down at the street trying to catch my breath. Who am I these days? I asked myself. Never in my life had I struggled to run for a train or a bus and felt THIS out of breath. Alas, here I was panting over a railing, lungs heavy with the remnants of cigarette smoke, asking myself how I got this out of shape. Changes needed to be made and I knew it. Enough was enough.

 

Later that week, coming out of the train station after work, I noticed some guys handing out flyers for a kickboxing club. I took one and I signed my name up for a class the following evening. When I walked into the club the next night, I had never felt so intimidated! There were sweaty men and women on the mats, clad in protective foam equipment, beating the daylight out of each other. I was about to turn around and walk out, but then I took a closer look at the faces of these men and women and I saw that they were smiling. They were having fun! I was transfixed, just staring and watching as they sparred on the dojo mats, it was almost like a dance between each pair of fighters. Before I got another chance to rethink my decision to come, a young man came up to me and asked if I was here to try the kickboxing. I nodded, and he told me where I could change my clothes. Once I was on the mat with a couple of other slightly nervous looking individuals, I was feeling determined to give this my best shot!

 

 

After the class, I couldn’t believe how great I felt. Just like the folks I saw when I first walked in, I couldn’t stop smiling as I walked down the stairs to catch my train home. The class was hard, the warmup alone had me questioning my fitness. I could hardly breathe after running a couple of laps across the rubber-matted floor and doing a few push-ups on my knees. I remember thinking to myself “I must stop smoking” as I panted through gritted teeth. I did quit of course, that very night I threw my cigarettes in the bin. I didn’t need them anymore, I was hooked on something else now – exercise. To this day I haven’t touched a cigarette, and I have never felt better.

 

As the weeks turned into months I went to every class I could get to, I was completely hooked. After a while I found myself interested in some of the other styles of training the club had to offer, such as strength and conditioning, boxing, wrestling, and MMA (mixed martial arts). I soon became part of the furniture at the club, and the head coach had noticed how much effort I was putting into my training. He asked me what was driving me to train so hard and so often, and I told him the truth – it makes me feel good. I had stopped smoking, thrown my anti-anxiety medication in the bin, and was already starting to feel fitter, not to mention losing weight! He seemed impressed and asked me if I would ever like to fight at a competition or fight night. I said I wasn’t sure, but he eventually persuaded me to try a white-collar boxing match.

 

I accepted the challenge, but boy was I unprepared for how hard it was going to be to lose the weight needed for my boxing debut in four months’ time. At that moment, I still had to lose 15kg! I started to train twice a day six days a week, doing every boxing class, every conditioning class and running with the team. The results started to come home fast, and I was getting compliments and praise from friends, family and other members of the club who were becoming like family to me too. Finally, when fight day came around, I was there! I made the weight, bang on 62kg, down from a starting weight of 82kg. I didn’t win the fight, but I wouldn’t have traded the experience for the world. The moment I stepped into the ring, I knew I’d already won. I had gotten there, and I had achieved my goal, nothing felt more like winning than that.

 

 

I went on to continue my martial arts career, participating in many more fights and national level competitions, I even became a kickboxing instructor. Along the way I learned many things about exercise, diet and wellbeing to constantly improve my health and fitness. Even long after my marital arts career came to a natural end, I kept going to the gym, doing activities that made me happy and kept me active. I then decided to become a qualified Personal Trainer. I wanted to help other people achieve their goals too, no matter how big or small. I wanted to be a part of their transformations, inside and out. And this is what I want to do for you, with the same passion and energy as the day that I started.