Spence Timson · fitness coach
I did not take a straight route into coaching.
It began in a prison gym in 2003, at a point in my life when very little looked like the beginning of anything good.
Where it started
Training has always been about more than numbers for me.
I started helping people with their fitness in 2003 while working as a gym orderly in prison. I was there because I caused a car crash that killed my best friend. That's still hard to say. I carry it, and I will always be sorry for what I did and for the damage it caused to so many people.
I don't tell that as a redemption story. Training didn't make any of it okay. Nothing will.
But looking back, it became a kind of first aid for my mental health before I had any idea that's what it was. It gave me structure, something difficult to work at and somewhere useful to put my energy when my head often wanted to go in a very different direction.
I couldn't change the fact that I was in prison or what had put me there. What I could choose was how I dealt with it. I trained, worked, kept my head down, learned, helped other people and kept giving myself things to work towards. I didn't understand the significance of that at the time. I do now.
That experience is a big part of why I believe difficult physical things can matter well beyond fitness. Having something hard in front of you, working through it and finding out that you can cope with more than you thought can change how you see yourself. For me at least, being out of my comfort zone is where a lot of growth has happened.
Since then I’ve run residential fitness and weight-loss holidays, worked in community health, owned and run my own gym, and coached people one-to-one.
Different settings, same underlying belief: fitness should make you more capable and more confident in what you can do. Doing difficult physical things can change what you believe you can handle.
What I learned slowly
Sometimes you have to do something hard before you can believe something different about yourself.
I have never found “just be more confident” especially useful. A completed session, a first mountain or a difficult day gives you evidence, not just well-meaning words.
It does not solve everything and it is not therapy, but it can change the argument you are having with yourself. I've found it can be a great foundation for much more.
What the name means
It is not an instruction to make yourself miserable.
Your comfort zone is not bad. It is where you recover. The problem is when it quietly becomes the boundary of your life.
For one person, stepping outside it is a twenty-minute circuit after years of inactivity. For another, it is asking for help, entering a testing room or carrying a pack through bad weather.
The task should fit the person. If it is hard only because somebody made it unpleasant, we have probably missed the point.
I dealt with that.
Not an affirmation you were told to repeat. Something you now know because you did it.