THIS week Tom glover talks to former Royal Marine CHRIS HORSFIELD about his career in the Marines and as a physical training instructor.
FROM his teenage years, as part of Exeter City Football Club, to jungle training in Borneo, and from team building with the World Cup winning England Rugby squad, to putting 130 people a week through their paces in his spinning classes, Chris Horsfield has always had a passion for training and for being part of a team.
Chris left the Royal Marines last month after 22-years service. He may not have had the football career he dreamed of as a teenager, but he did at least have a career of two halves serving 11-years on the front line before taking up a role as a Physical Training Instructor in 1998.
Influenced by his grandfather, who rose through the ranks to Major in the Army, Chris decided on his career path early on.
He said: “I thought if I couldn’t be a professional footballer I would go and join the Royal Marines, which would give me that team ethic and a challenging physical way of life. I joined up when I was 17-years-old. I wasn’t particularly big or strong but I think what drove me through was my mental attitude, I was quite determined.”
Chris attended a three-day Potential Royal Marines Course with school friend Lee Taylor and both passed with flying colours.
“Out of our batch of 27 we came first and second. We were very proud to do that when we were so young,” he said.
Despite suffering a blood infection, Chris got through the arduous 32-week training in one hit.
After passing out he went straight into soldiering, serving in the most difficult conditions and in some highly dangerous situations.
He operated and trained in Norway, Borneo, Northern Ireland and South Africa at times in the most severe arctic, desert and jungle conditions. It was during his time in Belfast that Chris received a special commendation after leading a re-supply operation, a highlight of his early career.
After marrying Miranda in 1996, Chris began to look for a new challenge that would bring him closer to home. This was to be the second half of his career.
He said: “When I got married I started to think, hang on a minute, I can pass on some of my experience by training recruits. I was a corporal by now and showing leadership potential, so I was selected to go to Lympstone and went onto a training team.
“Once I sampled getting on a training team my sporting attributes and physical ability started to come to the surface and thought actually this is really appealing and positive.”
Due to the competition to be a Royal Marine PTI Chris missed out on his first attempt to land the job. He wasn’t deterred and went straight back in at the next opportunity, this time landing the role. Chris later took the opportunity to specialise as a Remedial Instructor, this rehabilitation role entailed helping injured recruits and Marines get back to duties. A role in which he remained until his retirement.
“At the moment with the amount of injured servicemen and women coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, remedial instructors often end up spending many hours with personnel with life changing injuries that include, amputees, double amputees or even triple amputees,” said Chris.
“It’s incredibly rewarding. I like helping people to achieve what they want or need to achieve, whether it’s training for their green beret and improving fitness, or whether its getting someone back walking with an injured limb. There are some very brave young men and women, doing a difficult job.”
A highlight of Chris’ PTI career was working with the World Cup England rugby team of 2007.
Manager at the time, Brian Ashton brought his squad of 50 down to the Royal Marines base in Poole where Chris was one of ten staff chosen to organise the “Champions Challenge”, a team building exercise to aid squad selection.
Chris said: “The aim was to get his squad of 50 down to 35 before they went out to Portugal to do strength and conditioning training.
“I had four days with all the England players and they were all top boys, it was great fun. As far as my career goes as a physical training instructor that was one of the best things without a doubt.
“Danny Cipriani impressed me the most. He was the one always looking at his watch asking what he could and couldn’t do to win. He was very inquisitive and stood out massively.
“Lewis Moody was an absolutely top bloke as well. He wears his heart on his sleeve with a happy go lucky attitude. He’s been plagued with a lot of injury recently but he is back to his best now.
“They didn’t retain the title that summer but they got to the final, which was a relief.”
Chris’s first encounter with spinning came after he used it as a rehabilitation tool while working as a remedial instructor.
For those not familiar with spinning, it is a form of cycling invented by a South African triathlete to allow him to train during the winter. The phenomenon came to England at the turn of the millennium and now classes up and down the country spin to music.
“A spinning bike is very basic and there are no kind of bells, whistles or lights. It needs to be that way so people who spin can work to their own level without looking at someone else’s monitor and realising how fast or hard they’re going. It’s a group activity where everyone is having a good time and working out together and that’s the beauty of it.
“People come for different reasons, so people can tick along and lose weight and work next to a athlete who is completely fit. I like to break down the barriers to exercise, which can allow people to exercise together; I have several families who come together,” he said.
Chris began to run spinning classes at work but after he was re-located he no longer had the space to run the lessons.
Chris decided to buy an MPV and 20 spinning bikes so that he could run the classes outside of work. He said: “I just invited a few friends round initially and said I’ll hire a hall and you can join me, see what you think because I was going to do it regardless.
“I started with three classes a week and more and more people started to come, so I started to charge £5 to cover the cost of the bikes and the hall.”
Interest in Chris’ classes continues to grow. So what had initially started off as a hobby, quickly turned into a business.
“I’m a mobile spinning unit now and I’m running seven classes a week between Charmouth and Seaton and we are getting sometimes over 130 people,” he said.
“I think its popularity grew through word of mouth. People who have done it before recognise how motivational, enjoyable and fun it is and they tell their friends,” he added.
Now Chris has more free time on his hands he is looking to the future and expanding his business.
He said: “More and more I’m getting calls from people with special clinical conditions which I am hoping to address in the New Year maybe with a class called ‘huffers and puffers’. That’s not meant in a derogatory manner, you can be a huffer and puffer at any age. Wth the increase of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, controlled exercise needs to be readily available to the local community. It’s someone who requires a lower exercise intensity and higher level of management.”
Chris makes a point of using local community halls for his classes and hopes that his mobile spinning unit will keep some rural communities together.
“Post offices are closing, pubs are closing and there is not much left in communities mostly they have halls,” he said. “If I hire them and provide an exercise class it will enable people to socialise and promote a healthy lifestyle.
“Cycling is thought of as a solo event but a lot of the visualisation and imagery that I use in the classes can be like the Tour de France. That’s a team event and its interesting that if you take people’s minds away from a village hall on a rainy November night and take them into the Alps as a cycling team it can be really enjoyable.”
A major part of any spinning class is the music. The music dictates the tempo of the class and can make or break a session.
“The music is a big part of it because people can lose themselves in the music,” he said. “You try and pick your music to suit all customers, but music is quite a personal thing. Often when I do the music for my classes I know one or two tunes I can really put my heart and soul into. I’m quite passionate as an instructor and I’m passionate about wanting people to have a really good workout and to enjoy themselves and get what they want from the class.”
Despite retiring from the Royal Marines Chris is still working on his own personal development and is halfway through a masters degree at Exeter University.
He said: “My quest for research and doing my job isn’t over. I’m not the finished article and I’m still learning but I just love training people. I’ve still got loads of enthusiasm for what I do.”
If you are interested in finding out more about Chris’ spinning classes then visit www.spinfit
mobile.co.uk.
www.viewfrompublishing.co.uk
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