January Fitness: Leeds gym Bad Company moves to Bramley

National World - LocalTV

Fitness is not just for January! We met Muay Thai Boxing Champions and Coaches Richard Smith, Lisa Houghton-Smith and Liam Harrison at Bad Company Gym which has recently moved to Bramley.

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Richard Smith, I'm the owner and head coach of Bad Company Gym, which is now in

00:07Bramley in our new location, Bad Company 2.0 as we're calling it.

00:11The hardest thing about Thai boxing, in fact the hardest thing about any sport, is walking

00:17through the doors and starting, especially if it's something new, it takes a lot of confidence

00:21to walk in somewhere where everyone seems to know what they're doing.

00:25I think all you need to realise is that everyone's been in your position so most people are sympathetic

00:29Muay Thai is the science of eight limbs and it's punch, kicks, knees and elbows.

00:35For juniors it's no head contact up to 16 and then for adults it is.

00:39We run both amateur and the professional side of it.

00:42We have plenty of people, plenty of fighters, but we also have plenty of people who just

00:47come down to train and keep fit and have a bit of community really.

00:50I was 13 years old when I walked into the old Bad Company Gym and I was just addicted

00:54to it, I fell in love straight away.

00:56The first time I had a professional fight I was 14 and honestly it was like a drug that

01:02nothing else on earth could compare to.

01:04I was addicted to it straight away and I knew that was what I wanted to do with my life

01:07and 25 years later I've had an amazing career, I've won eight world titles, I've fought all

01:13over the world, I've had 120 professional fights.

01:16So yeah, I'm very, very grateful for the life that Muay Thai has given me.

01:20Surely it's new year, new me, everybody thinks you're going to run a marathon every day and

01:23do 500 press-ups and 5,000 burpees and all the rest of it, whereas really if you can

01:28just work at your own pace, work around your injuries and stuff like that, you're going

01:33to be a lot more long-standing with it than you are if you go at it hell for leather.

01:39If you go down to the gym you can still think about stuff that's going on in your life.

01:43If you go down to a structured session and you have to focus, particularly in a martial

01:48art where you have things coming back at you, you just forget.

01:53You can just park whatever's worrying you, you can park whatever's on your mind and you

01:58can just focus entirely on that and that's like a really big release.

02:03Every world-class fighter has had to walk through them gym doors for the first time.

02:06When I walked into the gym when I was 13 and I looked at all the British and European champions

02:09all training and kicking the pads, it was terrifying to look at them like, whoa, what's

02:13going on here?

02:14But honestly, 75-80% of this gym are fighters.

02:20People come down for the fitness, the social, just to train hard, to meet new people, to

02:23make new friends and it's just a really good family environment here as well as having

02:29some really high-level elite A-class fighters as well, so we've got the best of both worlds.

02:33We've also added BJJ, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, we've added MMA classes, we've added some

02:39strength training classes and we also have now a permanently open actual strength training

02:45gym.

02:46We have so many people who say, well, I'm going to get fit before I go to the gym and

02:49you're like, why don't you come to the gym to get fit?

02:53You don't need to prepare to do something new, you just need to step out and do it.

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