South London Fitness: From Punishment to Empowerment
Growing up in South London, my exposure to physical activity was pretty typical for my area and generation.
During my teenage years, it looked like this:
Though not clued up on exercise or nutrition, my mum was quite good at skipping rope. She'd spend 30 minutes at a time in our narrow corridor, doing countless skips in an attempt to burn calories.
I'd sometimes watch her, both impressed and confused.
Was this what exercise was supposed to look like? For her, it was just something she did to stay fit, but to me, it planted the idea that exercise was something you had to endure.
I also went to cadets in the borough of Lambeth, where we sometimes did military-style workouts—star jumps, push-ups, jump rope—while being shouted at by instructors trying to mimic tough military personnel. It was about discipline, and they made sure we knew it.
Those workouts were not for enjoying ourselves but to follow orders.
Dunraven school provided a more structured environment for exercise through PE classes. Here, we had a community, playing sports like tennis, basketball, and primarily football. This was probably the most enjoyable form of exercise I had, but even then, it felt like something we had to do because it was part of the curriculum, not because we chose it.
And then there was cage football—a regular activity, whether casually with friends in Norbury's abandoned Power League, which I loved, or more formally at the Lusitanos football club.
The coach at Lusitanos once made the entire team "run" unlimited laps for an hour as punishment for some teammates' misbehaviour during a weekend game. A game I didn't even go to.
In hindsight, that planted the seed of questioning how exercise was used. Even though I wasn't involved in the misbehaviour, I was still made to run those endless laps, which bugged me.
Whether I was watching my mum skip rope to burn off calories, cadets instilling discipline through gruelling circuits, my PE teacher assigning push-ups as punishment, or my football coach demanding endless laps to correct behaviour, their intentions were likely good. They wanted to teach us discipline, perseverance, and hard work.
However, I now firmly believe that using exercise as punishment, especially for young people, isn't beneficial. It teaches us to associate physical activity with pain and negativity, which can have lasting effects and can lead many of us to develop a skewed relationship with fitness.
I remember when I was about 17 years old, so a few years after all of the prior stories, I started to distance myself from exercise, both physically and emotionally. No matter how hard I tried, it began to feel like something I couldn't get right.
Maybe you've felt this way too—like no matter what you do, exercise starts to feel more like a battle than something that brings you joy.
When exercise is used as punishment or treated as a necessary evil, it's hard to see it any other way. It feels like a constant effort to fix something that was never broken in the first place.
But what if it didn't have to be that way? What if exercise was about empowerment and celebrating your body, not punishing it? What if it became something you get to do rather than something you have to do?
This shift in perspective helped me when I started getting back into fitness—not out of obligation, but through curiosity and a desire to improve my well-being.
When I first signed up for the gym, a decision based exclusively on the fact my best mate did it, I began to see exercise as a tool for self-care and empowerment, which changed everything for me.
And it's not just me.
Take my 1-2-1 online fitness member, Katerina, for instance.
She's from South London, loves collecting old coins, and, funnily enough, went to the same secondary school as me. We never really talked much back then, but she reached out to me on Instagram, feeling stuck, sick of all the UberEats and ready for a change.
Katerina had always felt like exercise was something she had to force herself to do, but through us working together, she began to see it differently. Gradually, she started to view exercise, particularly strength training, as something she got to do, not something she had to do.
It wasn't an overnight transformation, but she developed a healthier, more positive relationship with fitness over time.
And that's what I want for you, too.
Whether you're just starting your fitness journey or looking to rebuild a healthier relationship with it, know that it's possible. You can move away from seeing exercise as a burden and start to find joy in it again.
If this sounds like you, sign up to become a 1-2-1 online member. So, I can:
Keep you accountable on days you don't feel like showing up so you can be more consistent than ever.
Help you develop a healthier relationship with food, reducing your stress and anxiety around it.
Take away all the guesswork so you know exactly what to do next.
If you're ready to commit for at least three months and make a real change, click here to inquire about becoming a 1-2-1 online fitness member.
Speak soon,
Leo
P.S. The pictures below are of Kat and what she has to say, a picture of me from my Dunraven secondary school days, and then once I'd finished school and started understanding exercise a little more.
