TEAM QUEEN

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 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 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. “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.”

Team Queen

D www.teamqueen.co.uk ) Christina Saunders is a queer woman who has been doing martial arts since the age of six, training with men most of her life. She was in recruitment, “doing mundane sales, soul destroying stuff” and dreaming of setting up a female-only martial arts club, but the 9-5 of her job made it difficult to concentrate on how she could achieve that.

Then lockdown came and her job went, providing her with the space she needed to think about how she could set up her own full-time business – and Team Queen was born. Keen to give back, for the first three months of running her business, Christina gave all the money she received to charity, and aims to continue to raise funds in the future. Christina’s journey

“Team Queen is the first female-only martial arts club in Brighton. It’s for female-identifying and non-binary kickboxers. There are female-only martial arts classes available elsewhere run by mixed gender clubs, but this is the first female identifying/non-binary club in Brighton, and almost certainly Sussex. Perhaps the UK even! “It’s for people who are comfortable in a space that centres around the experience of women and is a queer-friendly, ‘no hate space’. As it says on the Team Queen website, ‘the space was created after experiencing many years of training in gyms radiating toxic masculinity and acknowledging the need for a safe space for minorities’.

“Personally I’m amazed that something like this wasn’t set up in Brighton years ago, and it’s really taking off. Classes are fully booked on a weekly basis. “I work with a community gym called Nam Yang. They do a lot of work with people with disabilities and asylum seekers and a lot of the way I run the gym is similar to Nam Yang. If people struggled to afford the classes I would give them discount and if some people couldn’t afford to come to classes I’d let them come anyway, which is the same mentality my gym had for me when I couldn’t afford to come.

“Someone said to me once ‘you’re not going to get a lot of clients, you’re basically splitting [your potential base] in half’, but my classes are fully booked and I think the reason is women and the trans and queer community want to come because it’s not a male-dominated, intimidating space. “The abuse around women is something I’m really passionate about and want to help [combat] as much as I can. Me teaching kickboxing isn’t going to stop the actual issue, [which is why I want to do] fundraising for charities, getting more education around misogyny”

“I think the attraction is especially because of so much that’s been going on lately with Sarah Everard and stuff like that. A lot of people want to feel a little bit safer, so they want to learn a sport that’s quite empowering. I don’t want to label it as self-defence because self-defence is saying ‘if you knew those skills then what happened to you wouldn’t have happened to you’ – and that’s not the case. No matter how skilled you are in any martial art there’s always going to be a risk involved whenever you’re walking down the street. “I’ve had so many clients come to me and say ‘after everything that’s been going on lately I really wanted to feel like I was doing something to help me feel better about everything’. It’s quite sad in a way, but I completely get it because walking down the street at night as a woman, it feels like you have to brace yourself for some kind of danger. I always have my keys in my hand. You don’t hear guys saying that. “Even when I walk down the street and know I’m not 100% safe there is a certain way I’m holding myself from training, there is a confidence it brings. “We shouldn’t really be promoting self-defence, we should be promoting education for the men to not do it in the first place. “Martial arts trained me to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations. Having to deal with confrontation on a daily basis has not only made me physically stronger but has also helped my mental health so much. “Especially in the queer community it’s more difficult for us in society, so having that community and learning a sport that’s so empowering is quite uplifting, and I found it’s helped a lot of people with their mental health. I’m also studying counselling part-time, so I’m incorporating a mental health element too. “Kickboxing is definitely becoming more popular. I did martial arts as a kid and I never really saw any women role models, but now they are all over the TV, women are headlining main stage fights, which is amazing. “I got my British Championship title a couple years ago in Savate, French-style kickboxing – that was quite an achievement for me. “I’d like to do more for the queer community. Team Queen has raised money for local charities RISE and the Anti-Harassment Club, and is going to raise more money in the future. “The abuse around women is something I’m really passionate about and want to help [combat] as much as I can. Me teaching kickboxing isn’t going to stop the actual issue, [which is why I want to do] fundraising for charities, getting more education around misogyny.”