Stress-Less: Building minds and muscles together…

“It’s easier to build strong children than repair broken men”- Fredrick Douglass

I have a dream. My dream is what I live for, it is what wakes me up every day and keeps me going in the low times. It is the reason why I am here today setting up my company.

Being a young man living in urban London, we struggle to look for young role models to follow. Someone to show us a way and an alternative from the life we see around us. We are surrounded by crime and violence.

One thing that is very rarely focused on was holistic health. There was a focus on physical health but on physiological strength and nutritional health, there was not, if any, an emphasis on these aspects of health. We are told about gyms where we can strengthen our physical body but without strengthening the mind and nutritional body, it is the equivalent as having a big strong tree with weak roots.

Statistics show that:

• 10% of boys in the UK eat the recommended 5 fruit and vegetables per day
• 7% of girls in the UK eat the recommended 5 fruit and vegetables per day
• About 10% of children have a mental health problem at any one time
• Low income individuals exercise less than high income individuals- 21% less in men and 16% in women
• There is a clear association between meeting the UK exercise guidelines and being overweight or obese.
• 21% of boys and 16% of girls meet their recommended exercise guidelines of one hour a day.

My organisation Stress-Less FC has this slogan: Building minds and muscles together. We want to bring a holistic view on health to the youth.  We want to introduce a new way of thinking. To inspire to excite and that to energise and to ignite the body and the mind.

We have created programmes to raise awareness and promote a holistic view of health:

• Juicing workshops- This is where we will engage the youth into a fun and exciting juicing workshop. They will learn about essential fruit and vegetables needed in the body, have a chance to create the juice themselves and drink their own creations.
• Physical exercise workouts- This is where the youth will take part in physical exercise. We will predominately be focusing on increasing the cardiovascular system and strengthening the major muscles in the body. This will be done through a high intensity circuit workout.
• Mental/Physiological workshop- This is where the youth will have mental strengthening sessions. The mind and how you interpret things has a huge effect on how we live our lives. It effects the decisions we make and ability to see the best in a bad situation. In these sessions, we will work out emotional intelligence, metacognition (the contemplation of what we are thinking) and how the rewire the brain from previous negative patterns. We will also working on breathing techniques to help control and manage their mind and control stress levels.

These workshops will be run in schools, community centres and youth clubs.

The trainers in my organisation are all young people themselves. We have chosen this as we can relate to the youth and become positive role models within the community. We want to help inspire them to make positive changes in their lives. The younger generation struggle to engage with people who they cannot connect with. They feel like they cannot be understood. I myself felt the same. I felt my problems were not understood by the older generation so I would become disengaged, and even started to rebel.

I want my company to be the voice. The place to come to be heard and understood. The place to work on yourself internally so you can achieve great things. The place to learn that we are in full control of our internal state and therefore in full control of our destiny.