Nicola Spean

I was introduced to CrossFit in 2011 & very quickly fell in love with the methodology. Three years later, in 2014, Chase & I opened CrossFit Great Stour.

More than 15 years after discovering CrossFit, I still believe wholeheartedly that it is one of the best ways you can train. It makes you fitter, stronger & more capable, but what I love most is what that begins to give you outside the gym too.

Confidence. Independence. Resilience. The ability to trust your body & know what it can do.

I particularly love seeing men & women discover strength training, sometimes for the first time. There is something incredibly powerful about watching someone who never thought of themselves as strong realise just how capable they actually are.

For me, one of the things that makes CrossFit so valuable is the coaching. When you come to CrossFit Great Stour for an hour, you’re not simply coming in to exercise. You are coached throughout that session.

Our job as coaches is to make sure you understand what you’re doing, help you move well, adapt the session appropriately for you & give you the best possible training experience that day. Whether you’ve been training for years or it’s your first week, you deserve to feel that your hour matters.

But without question, my favourite part of owning CrossFit Great Stour is our members.

I love the people who come in first thing before heading to work. The people who walk through our doors after a long day in London. The parents who have done the school run or organised childcare just so they can have that hour to themselves. And I love seeing someone who was once nervous about joining become part of our community, build friendships & achieve things they never imagined they would.

Everyone who walks through our doors has a different life, different responsibilities & different reasons for training. They don’t all need to lift the same weight, move in the same way or have the same goals.

What matters is that they are here.

Twelve years after opening CrossFit Great Stour, I still get an enormous amount of joy from watching our members progress. Not just from seeing someone lift more weight or get their first pull up, but from watching them become fitter, stronger, more confident & more capable in everyday life.

CrossFit Great Stour has become so much more than a place to train. It is a community that Chase & I are incredibly proud to have built & one that I am still just as proud to coach in today.