Optimal Life Fitness, for health, fitness and a new lifestyle outdoors.

We started 2009 with a bang with our first ever Annual Launch Party. Many of you managed to make it to the York Hall in Bethnal Green where we had a full day of workshops, competitions and demonstrations. All who came were lucky enough to take part in some great sessions and see our team demonstrating how they 'Walk the Walk' and 'Talk the Talk'. The whole day was a great success and although an organisational nightmare we'll definitely be doing one in 2010. There'll be more to come on that later on in this review.

The launch was a big moment for BJ and I, it was our first real big event, the first time where we put everything on the line. Failure was not an option, to have a huge hall with no one in it would be a disaster! But, with a lot of effort we pulled it off and it was a proud moment to see so many trainers in one place all getting involved in 'What We Do'. Click here to see the launch video.

With a huge start to the year and the energy levels flying high the OLF team were ready to take on the world. With our next big event being the Fitpro Convention in April we had plenty of time to get stuck into the courses. With our first Extreme Kettlebell course at the end of January, closely followed by the Olympic lifting course and Performance Boxing courses, there wasn't much time for a breather. That's kind of how the rest of the year has been as well!

Before we knew it, the Fitpro Convention was upon us and this year, like the others we were going there to make some big waves! I was privileged enough to be asked to do a presentation on kettlebells, which I duly accepted! I'd prepared a presentation called 'What's the Big Deal About Kettlebells?' which was aimed at discussing why and when we should and possibly shouldn't use kettlebells. I wanted to get a completely open view of what they can do. Now obviously I could be said to be slightly biased and I'd not be upset if you thought that. After all, I've spent the last 5 years using them! However, the talk went down really well and it was very pleasing to see we'd managed to pull in such a big crowd.

Along with the presentation, we had our stand in the trade show. As ever we didn't hold back here, with a rather large open stand to help show off what we do. The show was another great success for the OLF team. We had more post show course bookings than last year and brought in more new leads. So we travelled back to London with our head held high and all the windows down in the car... BJ decided that now would be a good time to take off his 5 fingers, which after 3 days of convention, did not smell good! To see the video of 'What We Do' Click Here

The Fitpro convention is used as our launch for all of the national tour training dates. So after the show it was time to hit the phones hard and get the numbers up on our courses. This year's tour had some new locations for the courses and also the introduction of the Performance Boxing National Tour. This was our first year to head across the pond to Ireland as we visited Dublin to run EKI and Performance Boxing course. Thanks to the success of the EKI course we also put on an Advanced EKI later in the year. It seems Ireland can't get enough of their education! Because of that, we'll be back next year for more and delivering the Olympic Weightlifting course out there.

Some of the top venues of this year's national tour would have to be The Body Development Studio in Bath; Primal Fitness in Manchester and OutKlass Fitness in Nottinghamshire. Some of the highlights would have to be the journey's we made to Dublin, which were certainly a challenge and then there was the largest EKI course to date in Dublin with 35 people on it. On a personal note, the pint of Guinness I had in Dublin was amazing!! We always enjoy our national tours and we feel it's important to do, so many companies are scared of travelling. But for us it gives everyone the opportunity to take part even if they can't make it to London. We've been lucky enough to meet so many people that we probably wouldn't have done if we didn't travel length a breadth of the UK. For that reason we'll keep doing our national tour, year after year.
To see photos from all of our courses please visit our facebook page

September is always a busy month for us and 2009 was no exception. We had national tour dates to deliver and plan for our UK Kettlebell Open Competition. On top of that I was off to Leisure Industry Week to work with Escape Fitness. Over the year we have been developing a partnership with Escape and LIW solidified this nicely. It is a great honour to be working with Escape and delivering educational training for their customers. We're excited about the year ahead and the opportunities available. I believe the concepts that we're bringing to the industry will change it forever!

The UK Open Kettlebell Competition was the first official competition held in the UK (as far as we're aware!). Although we'd held a small comp earlier in the year, this one was publicised across the world and we were aim to attract a big crowd. We used the Peacock Gym as the venue and had it set up perfectly for the day. We managed to get 20 lifters down to compete in the traditional biathlon event (jerk and snatch). There were also some great lifts, ranks were achieved and PB's were hit by many. BJ had spent days organising this event and it was tribute to his passion for kettlebell lifting that we had so many people competing. We will now be holding the UK Open Kettlebell Competition annually in London every October.

As we entered the final quarter of the year, the work load stepped up a notch or two with some in house training courses to run. Firstly is it was time to head back to Germany to work with Fitness First on a 13 club kettlebell install and training week. It was my good self that had the job of driving around Germany delivering the kettlebell workshops. It was then the turn of Esporta UK as we helped out Start Trac with the gym installs. We had been recruited to deliver the training for kettlebells, TRX and Boxing for their training teams. Finally and possibly the most exciting was our work with DW Fitness, which is an ongoing project. We're working with DW to educate their training teams and deliver the Move It training course to all of the new and refurbished clubs. The Move It concept was created by Escape and we came in to help out on the Education front. This is a really exciting new era for us and Escape as we set out to change the way the industry thinks about training. All I can say is 'watch this space people, watch this space'!

As all of this was going on we welcomed Sarah Devlin to the team, she came from an education and sports background in Australia and is now working as our Sales and Operations Manager. After a few weeks training Sarah told us to leave her alone and she got on with the job (she didn't really!). Sarah is a great addition to the team and we're really pleased to have her on board.

Finally and to save the best for last! We took the big step, the step we'd wanted to do for ages. The step that we knew we needed. The step that would catapult us ahead of any of our competitors and secure our place in the educational market place. It's with this 2009 review that I'd like to introduce you to the new OLF Training Centre. The first of its kind, the only educational training centre dedicated to continuing professional development (CPD). We wanted to provide the ultimate in learning experiences and now with this move we are able to. Not only will customers come to learn new skills, they will come for the experience! We'll be taking CPD to the next level with this unique training environment. The centre will be complete with a kettlebell and Olympic lifting area; a boxing ring; boxing bags; an MMA area; a climbing wall; a TRX and rings frame along with climbing frame for Parkour; a sprint track and a free weights area with squat rack and cables.

So you can't blame us for being just a little bit excited, we will be operational at the end of January and aim to have our launch party soon after that. Keep an eye out for this as there will be an invite to all of our customers!

As I try to summarise everything that's happened in 2009 I'm finding it a little hard to keep it short. It's been such a busy year for OLF and both BJ and I are looking forward to firstly having a little break over Christmas and secondly getting stuck into 2010 and taking OLF to the next level!

Thanks To...
All of the venues that have hosted our courses over 2009 and special thanks to the Peacock Gym for giving us over 3 years of great times and brilliant courses, we will miss that place, but will be over for a cup of tea every so often!

All of our Master Trainers; Andrew Marshall; Mark Hill; Rocky Dean and Mark de Wit.

Our head trainer Andy Phillips for everything and Lisa Hayes for all your help.

And finally to all of you!

Have a great 2010!