Now that its January and we are in lockdown 3.0, I thought it would be a good time to sit down and share some content on or blog.
Although, we are still running live online sessions for our members and challenges, I have spoken to a number of people who are interested in getting fit but only once this all blows over...
And that's totally cool, I understand why people might be thinking about sitting things out until a better time comes but it got me thinking back to how Best Body Bootcamp started out...I wont go into the whole back story today as that's another story for another time but essentially it was started with "imperfect action"
I had only been living in Cannock for around 6 months. My wife who was my girlfriend at the time, got a new job up here and I had been living, working in a gym and studying in Worcester.
I'd returned to college and then Uni as a mature(er) student between ages 24-28 because I knew I wanted to work in fitness. At college I qualified as a gym instructor and Personal trainer and started working in gyms and doing personal training to help me get through uni as I didn't have the option to move back home.
Shortly after moving to Cannock, I got a job with a local council delivering specialist fitness programmes and weight management programmes to kids and adults in the gym and community.
It was a great experience and good fun BUT I knew it wasn't what I wanted to do long term.
While working in a gym, I had started to get into group training...Well I was kinda thrown into it as part of the job without any experience and quickly realised that i actually LOVED coaching people in groups. Something about the buzz, the music and the social aspect of seeing people workout together really inspired me.
After a while, I was offering to cover any sessions I could around my gym shifts or during them. I spent hours coming up with new workout plans and trying to throw something new into the mx for variety.
So when moving to Cannock eventually where my wife had recently started a new job, it got me thinking about running a group training programme of my own.
Problem was I was still green, didn't know anyone in town and didn't really know anything about running a business. Just before starting out though, I spoke to a friend of mine who was running his own bootcamp about my concerns saying...
"Im not sure if i should start it yet and wait for next year"
"Im not sure if its the right time of year"
"I dont have a lot of equipment"
"I dont know anyone so it will be hard to get started"
"Will it work outdoors?"
etc
My pal then gave me the best bit of advice EVER...His advice was...
"Stop worrying and JUST START...Take imperfect action and improve things as you go..."
Feeling inspired I did just that. I reached out to a bunch of places eventually securing a venue, thought of a name and planned how it would run. Now we had a venue, a name, set times for workouts 3 x per week and some sample workouts planned etc
I started posting on social media etc offering a trial at first and I was literally doing this in the evenings after my day job.
The only equipment I had was a stopwatch, one battle rope, one kettlebell, one medicine ball, a couple of bands and 4 pairs of gloves and pads - That's it! Definitely NOT enough kit to run a bootcamp but we focused on body weight workouts initially.
I loved it...but it was mega slow to start with! However, I had a handful (4-6) of ladies training with us and one of those was my wife who was helping to support me, bless her..
A number of times I turned up to find noone there:( and yes I did have moments thinking about throwing it in as it would have been easy to do but I kept persevering with it.
6 years on, we have now trained 100's of local people, some for only a few weeks, others for 6 years and still going strong!
I guess the moral of the story is If you are thinking about improving your fitness, losing weight, becoming a healthier version of yourself or anything else in life that you're putting off right now....
Just start NOW - it doesn't need to be perfect or be the perfect time.
Imperfect action ALWAYS beats perfect inaction...
Sure, its a weird time at the moment but there are lots of people making the most of a bad situation.
Don't wait for the stars to align to make a start
