August 2015: One of the projects I’m still particularly proud of from earlier in my career was our free community boot camp in Bracknell.
The idea was simple: create somewhere local families could come together, exercise and enjoy being active without cost being a barrier.
We launched the Sunday morning sessions through JW Training and they quickly grew into something much bigger than we initially expected.
Hundreds of people took part across the time we ran them, with adults, children and entire families turning up to exercise together.
Bracknell News came down to one of the sessions to see what was happening and featured the project under the headline “Sunday morning boot camp is fit for all ages.”
Fitness that was genuinely open to everyone
One of the things that mattered to us was making the sessions accessible.
This wasn’t designed for experienced gym-goers or people who already considered themselves particularly fit.
It was for everybody.
The newspaper reported that more than 150 people had already signed up to the programme, with around 50 people turning up for the first session alone.
As I explained at the time:
“If many cases, people just need a little motivation and encouragement to get started.”
That was really the thinking behind the whole project.
Sometimes the hardest part of becoming more active isn’t knowing another exercise or owning another piece of equipment. It’s having somewhere welcoming to go and other people around you doing the same thing.
Families getting active together
Seeing children exercising alongside parents was one of the nicest parts of the sessions.
Fitness can sometimes become something adults feel they need to disappear off and do separately from family life.
We wanted to create the opposite.
The sessions were designed so that people of different ages and abilities could take part together, have fun and hopefully leave feeling better than when they arrived.
There was a real community atmosphere around them.
People came back week after week, brought friends and family, met other local people and became part of something that went beyond simply completing a workout.
Part of something bigger
The boot camps also fitted into a wider period where we were trying to use fitness to contribute to the local community in different ways.
Alongside the sessions, we organised family 5K events and other projects that raised money for local charities.
At the time I told Bracknell News:
“Our goal is to help thousands of people in different communities to get into exercise and get involved in their community.”
Looking back, I think that sentence captures what we were trying to achieve pretty well.
There was obviously a fitness element to everything we did, but the bigger aim was participation.
Get people outside.
Get families moving.
Give people somewhere to meet.
Make exercise feel enjoyable rather than intimidating.
One of the most rewarding parts of my career
My coaching looks very different today, but these community projects remain an important part of my 20-year career.
Hundreds of local people eventually came through the boot camps, and for some it was their first step back into regular exercise.
That’s something I’m proud of.
Not every meaningful achievement in fitness needs to involve elite performance, dramatic transformations or complicated programming.
Sometimes it’s a field full of local families on a Sunday morning, exercising together for free.
And looking back at this Bracknell News feature brings back some very good memories of that period.
Joseph Webb.
