The gym helping to Elevate members with a Tough Mudder obstacle race

Obstacle course racing brings people together. When you’ve got as tight-knit a community as Elevate Fitness, special things happen when you add the secret ingredient: mud.

Founded in 2020 by Darren “Foxy” Fox and Dan Cumberworth, Elevate has been growing strong and looking outside its four walls for even more of an impact.

Read on to hear from Foxy and Elevate trainer, Josh Lilley, about the motivation and heart rate training plan to get through a Tough Mudder as a team.

What's the Elevate Fitness gym community all about?

Foxy: We’re based in Peterborough and we’ve been going about three and a half years. Me and my business partner, Dan, we were running our own businesses and decided to come together to create Elevate with the help of some investors.

Josh: The community here is absolutely awesome. We’ve got a great team and it’s a family unit. We’re all here to help support each other, push each other forward, and let go of a lot of whatever’s going on in the outside world.

We look after each other. We train hard, we get after it, and we go full send… Most of the time.

What made you want to take your gym members to do a Tough Mudder?

Foxy: We decided to do a Tough Mudder as a team. I’d done a few of them in the past when I was running my own business. It really brought all our members together as it’s the sort of race that you can’t do on your own.

It really takes a team effort to get round it. That community feel and relying on each other to get through was a big part of choosing Tough Mudder.

Josh: As the community’s grown over the past few years and we’ve brought more people in, it was a great chance for us all to experience and achieve something together.

That’s why Tough Mudder is so great. You’ve got groups of people there all supporting each other. It was an awesome day. Everyone got through it and had a good time.

How did Myzone help you prepare for the obstacle course race?

Foxy: Myzone always plays a massive part in our classes here at Elevate. A lot of our customers have got Myzone belts. When you’ve got a day of busy classes and a board full of people wearing Myzone, we can track how hard people are working and it gives us some really good feedback.

It’s something I’ve been using now for eight or nine years. It always plays a big part in our training and we were able to tailor that a little bit more for the Tough Mudder.

Josh: Leading into the event, there was a great energy in the gym. Everyone was really looking forward to going and tackling it together.

Obviously there were a few feelings in the community wondering what it was going to be like or if someone was going to be able to do it, but the team really pulled together and looked after one another.

When people had those thoughts, they were quite open with them and we’re all here to support each other. On the start line, everyone was pumped and ready to go.

We tackled the event together, we didn’t leave anyone behind, and we made sure that everyone got through it.

The mind can play a few games with you, but that’s part of everything we do here. Just try and control those thoughts, move yourself forward, and keep going.

What was the obstacle course race like for your gym members?

Foxy: Some of the obstacles really took people out of their comfort zone. Some of the cold water stuff or a bit more enclosed – that definitely got you thinking a little bit. But that’s part of why we did it.

For some of the people doing it with us it was a really big block of work. Learning to put yourself in those situations and overcome them is something that we feel you can really benefit from, and it’s what we’re all about in the gym. Some obstacles tested our egos, too. It’s something that we’ll be looking to do every year now.

Josh: Coming to the end of the event, it was quite a big day for everyone. We were all at the finish line together and coming through the last obstacle with the electric shocks was quite an awesome way to finish. It certainly put a few volts through me! We started together and we finished together. It was a great feeling.

Foxy: I’d definitely recommend other people or other gyms taking on a Tough Mudder and using Myzone to track what they’re doing work-wise.

That was a big thing that we came away with – there was about 25 of us and the whole group stayed together for the whole race.

It really built that camaraderie and accountability with one another to help each other get through the course. It’s definitely something we’ll carry on with.

For more info about the community, visit Elevate Fitness.