The Underdog Gym

Our 90 min Hyrox sessions this weekend was fire! 🔥

At Underdog, we are the only official Hyrox “Performance Coach” qualified in East London that’s been accredited by the affiliated Hyrox 365 Academy to coach clients for Hyrox races 🏁

If you’re curious and have never tried a Hyrox session, our Saturday morning 1030am has a couple of spots up for grabs. You don’t have to be able to run, we start where you are. You don’t have to feel you can’t keep up, the sessions are time-based so you can manage your own pace 🏃🏻🏃🏽‍♀️🏃🏾‍♂️💨

All the exercises in these sessions are “functional fitness” based: push, pull, hinge, lunge, squat, throw, run, jump… these are all the things our bodies were designed to do 🙌🏽

Don’t believe the algorithms that show you only super fit athletes doing Hyrox! At the heart of us, this is a super-inclusive community where movements are scaled up or down based on your current ability, limitations, and disabilities 🫶🏽

This is the story of a diverse group of women coming together to lift each other up…

Yesterday was the 98th anniversary of women winning their equal right to vote in 1928. Almost a century later, now more than ever, female bodily autonomy is coming under threat. From termination to transition to tackling income inequality and policing how women should look and behave, it feels like the pendulum of equality has swung back.

Last night we threw our first women’s deadlift party to remind ourselves of how much strength and resilience women carry. 💪🏽

Whatever barbell weight they pulled, collectively they deadlifted over 760kg. Talk about girl power! 🙌🏽

Congrats to mama Jo who took home the Strong Woman of the Year trophy 🏆 with Clare snatching the Most Improved Lifter medal! 🥈

After, when all the Prosecco glasses were put away, the music switched off and I tidied up the yard, it dawned on me how damn lucky I am to do this incredible job. As a trainer and coach, observing people transforming from reserved and insecure, to empowered and kickass, with the courage to take up space. Apart from being a panda cub babysitter, I’m not sure there’s any other job out there that hits the sweet spot of community, growth and joy.

Thank you all of those who took part last night. What seemed like a crazy idea turned into something utterly powerful.

Messages are already coming in that we need to do another one for those who missed out… so here we go… our next Underdog Deadlift Party will be in celebration of Pride month.

All LGBTQ newbies and allies are most welcome.
Together we will slay the house down. 🌈

We don’t use AI.
And we’re proud of that.

Keep using your skills or you’ll lose them.

People are often surprised that I’m a Personal Trainer who also paints and loves to garden. The different endeavours seemingly appear polar opposite and these passions may have nothing in common.

That’s probably why I do it. In between my busy triathlon, marathon and Hyrox scheduling, I use painting as a means to recover from my over-stimulated central nervous system and gardening to keep me grounded.

The quiet ritual of mixing paint, mark making, stepping back to ponder, stepping away to sleep on it - it’s the antidote to the intense and overwhelming noise that comes with taking part in race after race after race…

Meanwhile the innocuous act of digging, cutting back, watering and waiting for nature to do its thing, it’s a reminder there’s more to life than collecting medals and Hyrox velcro patches.

So while training and fitness builds up the body and challenges the mindset, painting nourishes the soul, while gardening with my muddy hands restores and reminds me to keep everything in perspective.

Yes, once again I’m taking part in this year’s showing my abstract paintings inspired by life next to the wetlands and marshes.

I’m coinciding this during the same time as the weekend on Saturday 13th June and Sunday 14th June. Open from 1pm to 6pm.

Fitness,
Art,
Gardening.

Body,
Mind,
Soul.

Pop in and say hi 👋🏽

10 years ago I was getting ready for some work dinner black tie thing. I remember that day because no shirt fit me properly and I was so uncomfortable with what I saw in the mirror. This was some industry award ceremony with clients. I also recall that evening someone asking me to take their drinks order because I obviously looked like a Chinese waiter. (This was the casual racism I sometimes encountered in the very white world of luxury branding).

But if you had said one day I’d leave it all behind, retrain to start my own PT business that even produces its own merchandise, wearing my own branding to race my 21st Hyrox after having run Paris marathon and London marathon 19 days before…

The 49 year old today thanks the 39 year old a decade ago. All those things had to happen to make me a better human, to make me a better coach, a better husband, a better personal trainer.

1% better each day.
That’s all we need to do.
The compound effect 10 years later.
Becomes an evolution unrecognisable.

What a week it’s been eh, Walthamstow.

Well done to our weekend groups who survived a pretty brutal strength and engine session! 😂🫣

Also, congrats to our borough making history 💚

It’s been an incredible 19 days:

🇫🇷 Paris marathon 12th April
🇬🇧 London marathon 26th April
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Hyrox Cardiff open men’s 29th April
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Hyrox Cardiff men’s doubles 30th April

These comedy socks kinda sum it up.

But when I say I was disabled in 2009 and I’m now almost 50 making up for lost time, I’m not joking.

I’ll take “everything hurts” because this,
this is a choice I’m making.

The cards I was dealt tried to break me.
The cards I now hold make me feel unstoppable.

As we age, our choices are this:
You can be weak and in pain.
Or you can be strong and in pain.

It’s never too late.
And I’m proof we can rewrite our stories.

This is for those who walk their marathons.
I have nothing but respect for you 🫡

Previously I could run marathons between 3:45 and 3:59 but after the Paris Marathon two weeks ago, my left knee blew up 10km into my London Marathon yesterday. I found myself needing to walk intermittently for more than 30km. It turns out 13 days isn’t enough rest time between marathons when you’re 50.

My usual 5.1 min/km race pace fell off a cliff and I was averaging 8.4 min/km limping across the finish line, taking 5:17 hours. My slowest and my toughest experience ever.

I had no choice but to settle into my pain and keep one foot in front of the other while my mind started to think about all the people who willingly chose to do a marathon knowing that walking was going to be part of their plan.

Marathon elitism still exists and we saw it in Nike’s spectacular fail last week with a poster that proclaimed “WALKERS TOLERATED”. The running community came good and was having none of it. Nike had to pull their BS message.

There are all types of people doing the marathon, from the mum who has to stop to breast-feed her baby, to guys on crutches willing their bodies to keep going, to folk with stoma bags needing to change bags halfway, we don’t see the invisible heroes because our algorithm only feeds us the incredible sub-2 or 3 hour human feats.

The truth is, none of us take on this endeavour alone, and all of us do it to lift ourselves and each other up. This is why all pace deserve to be in the race.

So this one is dedicated to you, the incredible Ana and Liam, who knew the task ahead was going to be hard, but they chose to do it regardless. And the tens of thousands yesterday whose resilience was put to the test… If you finished your marathon in 6 hours or more because you had to walk it, oh my god, the determination to keep going, it’s a whole other level of courage. I’ve never experienced 42.2km that took so damn long. It’s another kind of hell!

Well done all of you,
you’re my definition of STRONG.
👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

“Instead of aiming for our best performance, something that we can only accomplish rarely,
shoot for improving your best average.
The aim is first to be consistent”
- Brian Zuleger, Sports Psychologist

Usually in marathons I run a reverse split - “start like a turtle, pull like a dog, finish like a hare” - as we say.

But this one was all about seeing how consistent I could hold a 5.1 pace from start to the end. Turns out by 34km in, things went pear shape. Cobblestones, gradient inclines, route narrowing, congestion, slowing down caused the knee pain to kick in.

Nonetheless, I’m proud of this one.
A sub 4hr for someone nearly 50 years old with double knee keyhole surgeries. I’ll take that even if it is no longer the 3h45 I used to manage.

Because confidence is doing difficult things, sometimes failing, seeing where we are, and then going back to quietly do the work.