Long term, energy breeds energy. 

If you push your physical limits in training- get hot and sweaty and out of breath- you will have more energy in day to day life. You will speed up your metabolism, you will burn fat, you will increase your aerobic threshold, you’re using your sympathetic nervous system. Basically, it’s all kinds of good for your heart and your body.

My rule is as long as half of your brain is telling you to stop because it’s horrible and hard, and you push through that, then you are getting fitter and stronger. 

If you’re not used to high intensity training, chances are, the first bit can feel a little stressful as effectively your body goes into fight or flight mode. Power through this bit and learn to move with speed and control and the endorphin release will feel amazing. 

If you do nothing else, do yoga. 

Yoga is moving with your breath. It is focusing on your breath. Yoga is strength meeting flexibility. It is getting into your body and out of your head.

You can’t be bad at yoga. If you can balance on one elbow it doesn’t make you good at yoga, if you can’t balance on one elbow it doesn’t make you bad at yoga. If you are moving and breathing and if sometimes it feels great and other times it feels hard, then you are doing yoga. 

My only aim for you is that you leave feeling better than you did when you came. 

Barre is where it all started for me, and is my favourite class to teach. 

Barre will give you a long lean body. Through repetitions of small muscle isolations, working in a turn out and stretching, you will strengthen and lengthen your muscles. But don’t pick barre because of that. 

Barre takes you back to your ballet class, immersing you in synchronised movements and music but with none of the pressure of the ballet school. Inspired by classical ballet and pilates Barre will improve your posture, your strength and your mind set.

To work towards aesthetic goals is completely legit. It’s not shallow and you don’t need to feel guilty about it. The important thing is to keep it in balance, don’t let the thigh gap consume you and remember its as much about how you feel as it is about how you look.

The things that your body is capable of is nothing short of incredible. Find the thing that you love, explore what your body can do, do the thing that makes you feel alive and focus on that. Once you start seeing results in your ability and you feel the excitement of your strength, technique, fitness improving, you won’t care so much about the thigh gap anyway.

High Intensity Training

Yoga

Barre

Strength & Conditioning

Personal Training

High Intensity Training

Yoga

Barre

Playground Practice

Strength & Conditioning

Personal Training

Something that stuck with me from my yoga training is the sanskrit word Lila, which basically means play. It is something that is so inherent in us as kids and somewhere along the way we lose it. Movement is such a great way to be a kid again. Don’t think of it as a job that needs to be ticked off a list, find the enjoyment in what you’re doing. You may not find this straight away, but your journey is a long one. And it doesn’t have to be a marathon or a sprint.

This doesn’t mean all kettlebell squats and chest presses but strength is key to balance out all of the other disciplines. Your body weighs a lot and gravity is smart and quite often that is enough, especially if you are hanging from a bar or a TRX. If you’re sat at a desk all day you need to strengthen your hip flexors as they’ll often end up weak. If you want to learn how to handstand you need to strengthen your scapula. I’m also a big believer in core strength being literally the centre of your physical universe- it will be your friend in all other areas of your training and in everyday life. You might also get yourself a banging set of abs.

The way I see it is my job as a trainer is split into several parts all leading to the same thing, making sure you feel great in your own body. Whether we are doing personal training or you’re coming to a class, I want to make sure that we find the training that is right for you, that you enjoy it and that it feels likes it’s working towards your personal goals, whatever they may be. 

Together we will work out why you are here, why you have decided to do this and what you want to achieve, and I will stand over you and make sure you do not quit. I got you, and you got this.

To complement other disciplines, in my personal training sessions I incorporate movements inspired by the practice of Calisthenic that address the fundamentals of core strength and scapula stability. It is a highly effective method to assess how the body works as a unit. For anyone working towards inversions, arm balances, handstands etc or more simply the desire to sit up straight at your desk and not walk around with collapsed shoulders scapula strength, stability and range is key.

High Intensity Training

Yoga

Barre

Playground Practice

Strength & Conditioning

Personal Training

Walking. Running. Tag. Handstands. Ballet. Jazz. Modern. Trampolining. Disco. Tap. Salsa. ‘Pure Movement’. Physical Theatre. Clowning. Sabre fight. Broad Sword fight. Steel Fan fight. Gladiator fight. Hot Yoga. Physical Comedy. HIIT. Core work. Barre. Circuits. Lifting Kettlebells. Crossfit. TRX. Calishtenics. Dynamic Vinyasa. Power Yoga. Ashtanga. Rocket Yoga. 

Ballet. LAMDA. Actor. BLOK.

I was obsessed with ballet as a kid. At the age of eleven I would find websites of different ballet schools, order the prospectuses online and study them religiously. I auditioned for ballet school and didn’t get in.

I turned my attention to acting, joined the National Youth Theatre and a wonderful ten years of life followed. I trained in theatre and acting at LAMDA where I met my best friends and learnt about who I am. Although I loved acting, I realised at drama school that acting and being an actor are two very different things, and I knew in my gut that being an actor wasn’t going to make me happy long term. 

Acting gave me some amazing experiences and taught me so many ways to move my body. Stripping movement right down I trained in ‘pure movement’, physical theatre, clowning and stage fight. This training along with my earlier days in dance, taught me skills and techniques that I still incorporate today in both my personal and professional practices.

I train other people in the way I train myself. Balance is key. It is all about strength meeting flexibility. Yin meeting yang. For every HIIT session, I’ll practice yoga and for every Barre session, I’ll do a set of Calisthenics drills. I firmly believe in challenging your body in different ways and pushing outside of my comfort zone in order to create a healthy and balanced body. It also teaches you a lot about who you are or want to be as a person. Are you the person that quits? This is also why I ran a half marathon when I hate running.  I feel very lucky that I have now reached a point with my training that it is no longer about the aesthetic. It is about one thing really- exploring what my body can do and finding the enjoyment in it. I am ambitious in my practice. Progress is the thing that keeps me motivated to get my butt into a studio when it’s the middle of winter and I’m exhausted.

This is something else that is core to my values as a trainer. Movement is something to be built into your lifestyle now. I know this doesn’t always happen, sometimes it takes that holiday to Mykonos, your upcoming wedding or the tiny human that’s now in you life to give you a kick in the right direction. This is legit to an extent but it’s also so so important to lay the foundations of things like good technique and solid core strength. These things stay with you and the amazing power of muscle memory will be your long term best friend if you get ill/busy at work/break your hip/get hit by a truck or the million other reasons that life gets in the way. Do it and and do it now.

I do not like running. I think it reminds me of being at school. I did not like sport at school. I never cared about the hockey ball I was chasing, I didn’t care enough about beating the person next to me to the finish line. I did NOT like running fast to jump into a sandpit. But what I do like is a challenge, I like pushing myself outside of my comfort zone. There were times when I was training when I had to drag myself to a treadmill to do sprints or force myself to put my trainers on to go for a gentle jog, even if the weather was beautiful. And yet finishing always, always felt great. Sometimes the start feels grim and then you just need to power through, keep putting one foot in front of the other and things just might start looking up.

“Remember this feeling, train your brain to remember this feeling, then it’ll remind you to start again…”

Things I learnt from the Hackney Half (some to do with running and some that are not):

Moving to music feels inherently better than moving in silence. 

Yoga is king of balance.

Our Knees could have been designed much much better.

A stranger shouting in a crowd can give energy to another human who is running and very tired. That energy is a real energy. It gave me so much faith in humans and it made think we’re all going to be fine and everything is going to be OK.

The two go entirely hand in hand. If you want to get the most out of your training, you need to fuel your body in the right way. It’s a whole other animal, a whole other journey and a whole other education process. 

This is a journey I’m still going on myself. What I do know is that it is probably even more of a personal journey that movement. But there are some blanket rules I think apply to everyone. Quality over quantity. Eat all the colours of the rainbow. Eat when you’re hungry. Don’t starve yourself.

If you’d like to know more on this I’d recommend my pal over at impressedhealth.co.uk.

My home from home and the place that changed it all for me. I was enjoying training there so much that I became a trainer. Then I became a head trainer and a studio manager. I teach there, admin there and train there. I have been at Blok since day one. I’ve had a hand in forming it’s ethos and it has been a big part of forming mine. It’s a great team to be a part of with a very exciting future ahead of us...