Tim Hayes Lifestyle Fitness

Do you like to engage in exercise-​exhibitionism?
Then you’ll really like Tim Hayes Fitness, as the training takes place in the open… in fact, you can choose in which of the many beautiful London parks you can actually work out. And I take advantage of this opportunity quite a lot: living in North London I have so far had training sessions in on the Heath, at Waterlow Park, at Whittington Park… and the most unusual, but also a quite effective location was the grand staircase leading up to the Arsenal Stadium.
When I first wanted to sign up, I spoke with Tim Hayes about my goals, my motivations and my availability. He then set me up with Mustafa, one of the trainers in North London, and soon after I met up with Mustafa for a coffee/​tea to discuss my needs. I right away had a good feeling about Mustafa and signed up here and there… my first session was the following weekend.
The first and all the subsequent sessions have been spot on ever since. Mustafa is a really nice guy and he’s making you work really hard — which is good, because after all it’s winter right now and you better work up a sweat, or else you’d be freezing. Also, Mustafa was/​is a professional boxer and so he sometimes incorporates boxing into his sessions. To be honest, I’d never watched a boxing game in my life, but I’m liking this a lot. It made me realise how intense this sport actually is and how much of it is actually good technique, as opposed to strength (as with most sports!).
Aside from the occasional Kettlebells or medicine balls, the training is mostly body weight training, which is what I wanted. (So don’t sign up for this, if you want to beef up!) So, expect to do a lot of lunges, squats, press-​ups and crunches… or any kind of variations on these. In fact, I find it amazing, as to how many different exercises there are — I believe we’ve not yet done the same exercise twice!
The other thing that I really about Tim Hayes Training is that you can bring a buddy for free… which is exactly what I do. Usually, my neighbour Dan and I meet Mustafa on a Sunday morning and we let him torture us.