Can a beach boot camp cure my fitness phobia?
Hate exercising? HANNAH BETTS did ... so we sent her to the trainers in the sun who claim they can whip ANYONE into shape
AT 48, I do no exercise, detest hot weather and have a phobia about being told what to do.
And so it is with no little surprise that I find myself on a Spanish beach in the blazing sun executing star jumps while being shouted at to: ‘Dig deep’.
The only digging I would like to do is to claw my way out of this situation — and fast. And yet the beach boot camp appears to have become a contemporary rite of passage, even for fitness no-hopers such as myself.
Where once we were exhorted to ‘drop a few pounds’ ahead of the summer months, now we are told we must get ‘mean and lean’ via strenuous exercise; hitting the beach in order to acquire a beach body, as it were.
Personally, my bikini-fit strategy has long been not to own a bikini. No one’s forcing us to strip off, after all.
Still, I may soon be a lone refusenik. The Global Wellness Institute’s 2019 report puts wellness tourism at a $639 billion (£488 billion) global market, growing more than twice as fast as traditional tourism.
And, if you are going to sign up to a camp, then my hosts, 38 Degrees North, are the most respected squadron about. The original beach fit company — just awarded Most Innovative Tour Operator 2019 at the Travel & Hospitality Awards — is run by James and Claire Davis.
Since 2012, the husband-and-wife team have trained thousands of clients including famously fit types such as TOWIE’s Lucy Mecklenburgh, Made In Chelsea’s Ashley James, singer Ashley Roberts and TV presenter Melanie Sykes.
Claire is a lifestyle coach and personal trainer; James a psychology-led health coach. The company’s name is based on the latitude of its original venue, Ibiza, and the pair’s invitation to ‘ reset your coordinates’.
Each retreat — summer camps are in Ibiza, winter ones in Marbella — averages about five clients, which means that everything can be tailored to specific individual needs. Once clients have graduated from the programme, the couple’s Academy has seen many renounce costly gym memberships to train with them online for £1 a day. CLAIRE
and James inspire great loyalty in their tribe of super-fit glamazons: a fifth come back for more, while the Academy boasts a 96 per cent retention rate. All in, the pair have about 1,800 virtual clients — not so much customers as disciples.
It looks unlikely I will become one of these acolytes, given my horror of sun, exercise and anything resembling discipline. I arrive at Marbella’s five-star Puente Romano Beach Resort on a Thursday lunchtime full of doom.
Despite not having exercised in years, I always used to have a degree of what one might call ‘residual fitness’, I explain to my cheery new mentors. If ( really) pushed, I could turn out a 20-minute jog on a running machine. However, I’ve been under the weather since last October and, therefore, have barely moved. I have also been eating my feelings: my feelings tasting like chips, ice cream, and mac ’n’ cheese.
‘Please don’t worry,’ reassures James. ‘ We cater for all abilities and hate the drill- sergeant approach.’
‘Recently, we had a professional rugby player and a 20st woman,’ notes Claire brightly. It is clear I am not in the rugby player category.
‘We don’t do faddy diets, we don’t do faddy anything,’ she enthuses. ‘Think of this as a way of becoming excited about exercise.’
38 Degree’s gender ratio tends to be 75 per cent female, largely in the 40-plus age group. For, despite the young reality television starlets who live for their retreats, the pair specialise in the horrors of middle age, offering their own midlife mentoring programme.
‘ We’re midlifers ourselves,’ explains Claire (she is about to turn 40, James is 46), ‘so can relate to the lifestyle pressures and physiological changes. Crucially, we also believe we’re the generation most in need of support. Generation X — that is, Generation Squeezed — is juggling work alongside caring for children and ageing parents.
‘There’s pressure to be at the top of our game, meaning the potential to feel as if we’ve failed is enormous. Well- being can slump and anxiety rise.
‘We offer practical solutions to regain control, not only of our physical, but mental health. This doesn’t have to be a time of crisis. It can be an opportunity to redefine who we are and what we want.’
My fellow classmates and I certainly conform to this rubric. Penny, 53, who is married with her own business, is a super- fit Yorkshire triathlete, but feels she has plateaued and is losing confidence due to the menopause.
Leia, 40, a single London charity manager, is carrying more weight than she’d like, and is determined to beat years of boom and bust dieting. As for me, I want a reset to remind myself who I am, eating- wise, and spur myself finally to start moving.
All of us are hoping to avoid the health issues our parents fell into. Penny’s father had Parkinson’s disease, Leia’s mother suffered from breast cancer, while both my parents faced mobility difficulties in their 60s.
If I wanted an example of how one must use it or lose it, I wouldn’t have to look far.
James takes me aside for a body composition analysis. Comfort eating has rendered me a few pounds heavier than usual, but I’m still within my BMI.
My visceral fat ( blubber surrounding the abdominal organs) is low at 6, as it should be. (Between 1 and 12 qualifies as healthy, 13 to 59 excessive).
However, my metabolic age (or calorie- burning efficiency) is revealed to be 49 — a whole year older than my actual age! Moreover, my body fat is at 34 per cent, towards the upper limit of the healthy range for my age.
According to James, I should be aiming at about 27 per cent, even accounting for my E-cup.
I am then forced to race this decrepit form up and down a tennis court for a fitness assessment. Unsurprisingly, I emerge as the least athletic.
The pair analyse my gait and find I run pigeon-toed until I pick up speed.
Mortifyingly, I’ve simply forgotten how it’s done. On being asked to do a burpee, I confess that I don’t know what this is, and am strong enough merely for a push up against a low wall.
‘You’ve got this!’ encourages Claire, when I patently haven’t.
We end with a coastal run, or, in my case, stagger. Only in the field of swearing, do I excel.
Next morning, I wake up in the world’s most apocalyptic mood, not helped by being required to be on the beach for fasted Highintensity Interval Training (HIIT), in which intense cardio is interspersed with brief recovery periods. Doing this without breakfast, on a night’s empty stomach, taps into one’s body fat,
‘I wake in an apocalyptic mood. Claire and James treat me like an unexploded bomb . . .’
while the hIIT creates an oxygen debt, raising all-day calorie-burn. The team’s goal is to provide us with an eight-minute routine we can use at home, or while travelling — no excuses permitted.
not even milky tea is allowed to have passed our lips before our squats and jumping jacks.
‘ Failure is not an option!’ commands James. ‘It really is,’ I think, scorning everyone else’s gasps about: ‘how wonderful it is to be outside,’ what with the sea and swaying palm trees.
I can’t face the talk of building ‘hot botties’ over breakfast, so sit my non-hot botty at another table to knock back eggs in the manner of mr Strong.
my mood is not helped by our nutrition workshop, which brings out the rebellious schoolgirl in me. Think: calories in versus calories out, the uselessness of diets, the role of cortisol in weight gain and the brilliance of a spoonful of peanut butter in times of emergency (as it’s a protein plus healthy fat).
I sulk my way through this, functional fitness (beach circuit training) and cardio boxing, the latter providing an occasion to vent my rage.
The day closes with spinning, a core work-out of strenuous situps, scissor kicks and stomach crunches, and a stretch session.
‘Go hard! Burn that lactic acid!’ cries Claire from her saddle, promising a 700-calorie bike burn. The only burn I can feel is in my private parts, which then go alarmingly numb.
meanwhile, my most strenuous exertions have been storming around the resort’s undersignposted meeting rooms and exercise areas while shouting the F-word.
Saturday is so scorchio that James greets us with: ‘Welcome to a beautiful day on planet earth.’ I decide not to punch him because we’re back on fasted hIIT rather than boxing.
my bra flies off mid-lunge a la Barbara Windsor in Carry On Camping. Braless, I am also brainless as I keep forgetting where I am, which Claire informs me is thanks to oxygen leaving my brain for my muscles.
I’m also extremely emotional: upbeat one minute, suicidal the next. This is typical, apparently. not only are we exercising like loons, we’re asking ourselves: ‘Who am I?’ ‘What have I become?’ and ‘Who do I want to be?’ type questions, which come to a head in our afternoon goalsetting workshop.
my boyfriend had predicted that this will be when I lose my rag, goals not being part of the Betts vocabulary. In fact, it’s almost enjoyable, with Claire and James treating me like the unexploded bomb I clearly am.
We look at specific rather than woolly aims (such as ‘Get up at 7.30am and do hIIT’); what might hold us back (say, my lumpen depression); and finding our ‘ why’, or our emotional motivation.
I resolve that this will involve not harnessing my positivity — I don’t have any — but harnessing my negativity, or inner f*** you.
more exercise follows: something called Insanity — which it is — four 30- second blocks of moves such as squat punches, tyre runs and side lunges, done three times, then again another four, followed by yoga.
I look like hell: straggly-haired, slimy with sunblock, lurching about like the aged crone I am. however, I am yet to Google: ‘Where’s my nearest Zara?’, which I usually do in moments of high angst.
Sunday brings more hIIT, followed by our choice of exercise. Leia demands another gym session, Penny longs to box, while I decide to walk next to the waves. We discuss what we have loved most, or, in my case, disliked least.
I joke with my classmates that it is obvious to me what they need to do, in the way that it’s always clear the changes other people need to make. The
already fit-as-aflea Penny should set herself a couple of big goals a year to motivate herself and build confidence. meanwhile, Leia should cut out booze for three months for immediate weight loss, give herself time to exercise and because one great change makes way for others.
‘And I guess you both think I should just get off my a**e and move,’ I add. ‘Yup, exactly that,’ beams Leia.
I will miss our unlikely posse. Small wonder that so many of James and Claire’s customers come back for more, some as many as five or six times.
I hated the experience, obviously. however, I would do it again. my weekend was the proof I needed that I can bestir myself, even at 8am, even when not terribly well; then do it all again a couple of hours later, and a couple of hours after that. I have started eating properly again, my waist feels smaller, my stomach tighter to the touch.
I wasn’t re- measured, but those who have been have shed 2 to 3 per cent body fat, dropping their metabolic age by two to three years.
most importantly, I feel capable of something, at least — and something is where this stuff starts. On the drive back to the airport, I purchase new trainers, locate my local gym and sign up to a yoga class; reset underway.