This has been written straight from memory/ thought to laptop, whilst I have tried to keep to a timeline my thoughts might be anywhere and everywhere in this blog.

I could take you back even further but let’s start the story from 14 year ago. I was on the gym floor just doing my routine morning checks ensuring the gym floor was tidy, equipment was away, staff were where they were supposed to be, members were being engaged with and so on.

I loved my job, by the age of 23 I was one of the youngest Fitness Managers in the company. I would run intro session, studio classes, Personal Training, Inductions the whole lot. I was responsible for the whole gym facility and everything under its umbrella. I loved helping people, I feel for a long time that has been my calling.

Just like everyone else I started at the bottom and climbed the ranks. I held a senior position in a very prestige organisation. As my career grew and I dived further into my role I started to discover (in my opinion) that these big organisations didn’t care about people, publicly they did but they didn’t. It was a numbers game and that’s what members were. They were numbers.

I would like to mention in the process of realising this, one of my colleagues was working out one day and asked me if I wanted to join them. I asked them what they were training and he said, ‘I’m doing Fran’.. You can imagine my response ‘you’re doing who/ what’ . He explained that it was a CrossFit benchmark and it involved 21-15-9 of thrusters and pull ups,, and I was like well how hard can that be… Now if you’re a true CrossFit OG than you know 1, how hard this is and 2, that it should be done sub 5 minutes.. 12 minutes later I’m laying on my back on the gym floor profusely sweating and actually a little bit disoriented.  One work. Hooked. I couldn’t believe a workout could do that. I never ever got that feeling from a workout before.

From then on, I was visiting crossfit.com every day looking at the workouts, watching the day in the life of Rich Froning Jr and buying every CrossFit thing you could buy. I loved the training, I loved the feeling, it gave me more in 12 minutes than training had given me in the 5-6 years before that.

I loved everything CrossFit stood for. The YouTube videos CrossFit uploaded of what is fitness There are 4 parts to it and every part makes sense and defines fitness. I watched Greg Glassman give lectures on the methodology of what CrossFit was and he has the science to prove it. He articulates so well, that when he talks everyone listens. I dived more and more in and I was a believer that this had just turned the fitness industry upside down. It was the first time that fitness was properly defined.

Then, although I had free access to one of the best kitted out gyms in London, I loved what CrossFit stood for and I used to pay to go to a CrossFit affiliate. I wanted to learn and I wanted to get better.

Something I found that my employer wasn’t doing for their members. Fine, it ran group classes but that was all funky jazz hands stuff. Pumped up instructors who were great in their own fitness, played loud music, fluorescent colours,the funky headbands and shouted instructions over a microphone with Sally and Doris in the back using 2kg weights and looking lost jumping around to the music. They would finish class, sweat buckets and come back for more every week with no improvement because there was no structure or plan to develop them. There was no understanding of lifestyle, stress management, injuries, training background or even what their last name was and what they done for a living.

It was just taking their money and wanting them to spend time in the restaurant with fancy overpriced meals and use the spa section of the building. I also learned that at one point in my time there,  don’t quote me on this but there was something like 4000 members but only 400 active memberships. Again don’t quote me on that but it was huge.

One day I was in our weekly senior leadership team meeting and was told to hire more Personal Trainers to increase the Personal Training Revenue. I think when I took over, the figure was at £8k and I had managed to increase that to £12k with half the team because I believed in quality. I believed in passionate, empathetic coaches. I believed in people who wanted to make an impact and I believed in people who cared.

I had held numerous recruitment days but the applications weren’t up to the standard of what we were offering as a business.  I interviewed, ran trial sessions for teaching and I just knew in my gut they weren’t the right fit of which I expressed my concern. Most wanted the title of Personal Trainer at XXX and they wanted the use of the facilities for themselves. In my opinion, not because they genuinely wanted to improve people’s lives through fitness. We were one of the top 10 clubs in our region. Could I have upskilled them, yes most probably, but it was not what I wanted as I was in development myself and it wouldn’t have been fair on them.  I was told to recruit them anyway (red flag number 1), because for every 1 trainer, within 3 months they were expected to have 15 clients and if they didn’t I had to performance manage them. 15 clients meant x amount of money.

This proved to me even more that members were seen as numbers and not people who had a problem and we could help them solve it. I knew there was a problem here and it unsettled me, because that’s not who I am. If I have the chance to help someone, and if you’re reading this you probably know this about me, as long as it doesn’t jeopardise my values, morals or health I am going to help. So this was a big problem for me.

Shortly after a member approached me and asked to help them with a ‘core’ workout on the gym floor, and of course I jumped at the chance. I offered a couple of variations to their workout and demonstrated how and was shot with ‘ I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to sweat’. Red flag number 2.. straight upstairs I went typed out my resignation and served my notice. Done deal. I wasn’t going to wait for red flag number 3.

I don’t know why this individual didn’t want to sweat, but that paired with the company viewing people as a number I knew I would never have the impact I wanted to have. I knew  it wasn’t the right place for me and I knew I wanted to help people the way I wanted to help people, through honest work and the chance to educate people through fitness so their health could last them a lifetime.. I knew I wanted to help people that wanted to be helped and weren’t there for overpriced meals, for a sauna, jacuzzi and soft cushioned towel at their disposal…

… and this is how the gym was born.

I originally set up my Personal Training studio because that’s what I knew. It’s what I was really f**king good at. It’s how I could positively impact people. It is how I can help solve their fitness problem. I served individuals, couples, football teams, Gaelic teams, I even set up sessions for my mates from school for £5 to get them away from the pub on a Friday night. Although I was a fantastic personal trainer with an excellent reputation, I had to spend time learning CrossFit as a coach which is why the studio gave me time to learn the trade with CrossFit, this was where I got to learn how to coach and not just to instruct. I now got to improve the way people moved, not just how they looked. This is hard to explain but for me back in the early 90’s and even 2000s Personal Training was very much about changing the way you looked through diet and instruction only. Not coaching. No lifestyle management.

CrossFit came along and blew everyone out the park. It was the first time you could get fitter by learning how the body could move better and look good at the same time. Why.. because people like myself learned how to coach fitness and not just instruct it. More of us genuinely cared and shared the same passion.

We wanted to improve our coaching so you could get better at CrossFit. So people like yourselves could lead a more fulfilling life as fitness was now a tool. It sounds obvious but we wanted to improve our coaching because we wanted to become better coaches. We wanted to provide you with the best hour of your day, get you results and have fun again training.

1 year later CrossFit Harrow was born.

What does it mean to me…CrossFit is empowering, truly humbling, and incredibly rewarding when done the right way.

What is the right way I hear you ask..

You’ll have to read my next blog.