From a young age I’ve always struggled to stay still, when I was child I’d be doing a different activity every night of the week whether it was football, swimming, rugby it didn’t matter I just wanted to run around. So getting into a profession where i could be around people and teach people how to stay active was an obvious career choice for me. Over the years I’ve experimented with many different training systems and as well as learning a lot I’ve had some great times along the way!

My passion now lies within Human Biomechanics, in simple terms, re-training elasticity back into muscles and the myofascial web. Connecting fascial lines together, improving neutral standing postures and gait cycles, getting the best out of athletes and most importantly, getting people out of chronic pain.

I practice and teach a training system called functional patterns. This system is completely orientated around movements that make humans, humans. We were put on this earth to walk and run on two legs, and our shoulder girdle has evolved to swing and throw. So it would make sense to priorities these movements ahead of any other. Going back to our roots we spent thousands of years as hunter gathers, walking long distances (20-30miles a day) in search of food. Then, once the food was found, being skilful enough to catch it was imperative for survival. Now, fast forward a few thousand years, due to major advances, humans are further away than ever from this evolutionary blueprint. It’s no wonder the amount of people suffering from back pain, knee pain and shoulder pain is at its highest in history. The majority of people drive to work, sit in an office all day, buy their dinner from the shop, then go home and sit on the sofa. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the human body isn’t being used to its full potential, therefore it is no wonder it’s failing us.

It is important to know I haven’t always thought like this and not many trainers and coaches think this way. Going back to the start of my personal training career I was only 18 years old and like many others I was focusing on body composition. Most people have this narrow minded goal when it comes to fitness. They want to look good, and they want to be as lean and as strong as possible in a short amount of time. I hold my hands up, I was one of these people, and it lead to aches and pains. It was the pain that made me start researching biomechanics and in doing so i stumbled across functional patterns (FP), but before I found FP I showed an interest in a vast amount of different training methods, in hope of finding something that made sense.

I’m qualified in teaching, Traditional Lifting, Powerlifting, Olympic Lifting and Calisthenics and I have dabbled in every training system from Yoga to Strong Man. It took me nearly 5 years training this way to realise that all these systems of ‘body building’ are floored. None of them respect human evolution, they all look at how muscles move in isolation and prioritise the muscles moving up and down in the sagittal plane. Humans are rotators, we move in many planes of motion. I believe it is vital to incorporate these laws when it comes to training. Over the years I’ve realised a lot of traditional lifts take us further away from how we should move and only enhance the aches and pains of the sedentary lifestyles we now lead.

My ambition as a coach is to teach people how to train functionally, respecting our evolutionary blueprint. Connecting muscles together and relieving people of pain. Once this is a achieved, body composition and athleticism, speed and agility are all boxes that can be ticked with this training protocol, so not only do clients move and feel great they also look the part as well… All the gains without the pain!