Boot camp champion a force for good
In the past I’ve rolled my eyes as we’re bombarded with advertising promoting a new year/new body/ new attitude.
No doubt this is how the gyms make most of their money, pumping up their prices to capture people gripped by a new year resolution to get in shape.
Well, now it’s happened to me and my family – and I’m absolutely loving it.
It all started when my wife got rid of her gym membership late last year, because it wasn’t working for us.
Childcare was difficult and I was working late every night.
So she signed up to Dave Letele’s free Buttabean Motivation Group boot camps.
If you haven’t heard of Letele, he’s the boxer known as the ‘‘Brown Buttabean’’.
In just the first week my wife dropped three kilos.
She kept telling me to join her new regime. I found a fresh excuse every day for three weeks before I agreed to give it a go.
I needed to. I’d packed on the pounds over winter – I’d put work first and myself third. I was paying the price.
My first session was at 6.30am on a Saturday morning in November in the car park at Auckland’ s Onehunga Mall. I was instantly hooked.
Letele’s an inspiration. His back story is real, raw and authentic. His successes and failures slap you in the face.
For a few years now he’s fought on the Joseph Parker undercard.
He has a rags-to-riches story then rags again.
He lost everything; his family, his health, his kids and his businesses through bad decisions and poor judgments.
He was living on the wrong side of the tracks.
He was also morbidly obese and dying, if he didn’t do something drastic about his lifestyle. So he set out to lose some weight.
He was 210kg in March 2014. He now tips the scales at 117kg. Through sheer hard work and exercise he’s shed 93kg.
He’s saved his life. Now he’s saving others. I see people who have lost up to 40kg.
These daily boot camps aren’t flashy but they’re bloody effective.
Letele’s first boot camp attracted just two people in March 2014.
On Thursday night I attended his session in South Auckland’s Papatoetoe. Almost 100 people turned up. Social media keeps them informed, connected – and motivated.
There are no weights, no need for designer gym gear. It’s all about using your body weight to move. Simple. But bloody hard. It’s called Zuu.
I’ve been going as often as I can since November. On holiday I’d do his course, just my wife and I. We’re both hooked.
I met George on Thursday night in Papatoetoe. He told me he’s 225kg – and I was shocked when he told me he was just 29.
He’d played senior rugby 12 years earlier for Ponsonby and won the Gallaher Shield twice, but through a bad lifestyle, including smoking and massively overeating, he’d become morbidly obese. He’s now changing that. Letele won’t let him fail.
That’s the thing about the ‘‘Brown Buttabean’’, he’s reaching hundreds of people who government agencies fail to connect with.
Most of them are Pacific Islanders, then Maori and the odd Pakeha.
Letele has some funding from Counties-Manukau Sport but he’s largely doing it on the smell of his own sweaty towel.
He’s becoming the poster boy for changing lives in tough communities that are always overrepresented in the negative statistics.
The Ministry of Health and other taxpayer agencies should be funding him. He’s saving taxpayers money in the long-run in our already stretched health system.
My wife has lost 10kg. I’ve dropped 7kg. Mentally I feel like a new bloke. And I needed it.
From Monday my alarm will go off daily at 2.55am for The AM Show on Three, RadioLIVE and online.
Thanks, Dave, for all your help – you’re an inspiration. And a damn good guy.
You’re a force for the public good.