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could be part of. “While HITZone is a franchise, its ethos is very much about community and acceptance and belonging, so that’s what I’ve embedded in my studio. To me it is really important that a space is not intimidating, or a place where we don’t get acknowledged. We know all our members’ first names, many of them their children and their dogs’ names and a couple of them their neighbours’. We all need to feel connected and seen and I think we do that in our studio very well. “We are not a gym, we are an exercise studio and, more importantly, a community.
NEW BEGINNINGS
We talk to two people who have changed their own lives and set up fitness businesses, in the process working towards changing the lives of others HITZone Hove Unit 23 Hove Enterprise Centre, Hove Lagoon D www.thehitzone.co.uk
GARY VAUGHAN
) Gary Vaughan opened his franchise of a
global organisation in September 2019. The catalyst for change from a 15-year career in clinical psychology came when he and his husband moved to New York from Melbourne, Australia, and he started thinking about his career path. He wanted to transfer his skills in both psychology and a range of sporting activities – including half marathons and scuba diving – to a different space to help people make positive change. He realised there was a stereotypical perception
of fitness trainers as being in their early 20s, while there were plenty of people over the age of 40 who still wanted to stay fit and healthy. At the age of 35 he decided it wasn’t too late.
Gary’s journey “I was raised by a gay father in the north of England and as a child I experienced a lot of discrimination. I wanted, where possible, to raise my daughter in a community where she wasn’t in so much of a minority having two fathers. We visited Brighton and the deal clincher was we visited a couple of nurseries and there was a little boy aged about five who, when we walked in said: ‘Oh, two daddies.’ “We’ve all experienced, in some form, your very traditional high street gym with the egos and the attitudes and the mirrors and people wearing earpods that don’t acknowledge you. That was never going to be a facility that I
“Ninety-nine per cent of our members say ‘I hate the gym, I hate exercise’. So the first thing we say is: ‘Thank god – you’re in the right place because so do we. We hate the high street gym and the egos and the attitudes.’ And I also say to our members: ‘Hey, we have no mirrors in our gym, we are not about intimidation, we don’t have attitudes, we don’t take ourselves too seriously.’ And people are relaxing into it. We do have members who come with high levels of anxiety, so it’s about building that confidence around exercise, body image, in a place with other people. “We do exercise with a twist, a level of fun. We know a lot of people bring negative connotations around exercise so we are really working at relaxing some of that and having a bit of fun and camaraderie. “We run quite a lot of games in our studio sessions, no two sessions are exactly the same. People get bored of doing the same thing. When people come they know they are doing a session, be it HIT, pilates, core, boxing – but don’t know the format or routine. We mix that up each session so people don’t get bored and they stay on their toes. “Our members are probably 80% female and 85% over the age of 40. It’s a safe space that’s accepting and where they can be themselves. About 5% of the population is in a high street gym, so where do other the 95% belong? Where do they exercise, where can they talk about menopause and bras and sexuality in a space that is not judgy or looking down? “One of our members nominated us for a transfriendly business listing and we were one of the founding members. We are also doing some work with Across Rainbows. “Something I believe really sets us apart is that we do social events. Once a month we move outside the studio and maybe go for a walk up Devil’s Dyke, or do Sunday morning litter picking on the beach. We’ve done a couple of sports days on Wish Park – again it’s that community connection space.”
