I grew up in Hungary where fitness, medicine ball training and core strength were a part of everyone’s childhood.  We had at least 4 hours of strong physical education every week, helping to strengthen and tone those early muscles.  Heavy medicine balls made of leather were often used in these sessions and none of my classmates, including myself, ever seemed to have any issues with obesity or health.  Those medicine ball training sessions were always great fun and they gave us all a strong foundation of fitness and core strength that has stayed with me ever since.

I sort of forgot about the medicine ball as I grew up.  It wasn’t until I started my business in Personal Fitness that I began to think back to those early workouts and the real impact they had.  I wanted to focus my work on core strengthening, because ultimately all of our limbs and extremities hang and depend on the strength of the core.  Building personal fitness means building a strong core and I wanted to my clients to achieve their maximum fitness potential.

At first I looked into Pilates and Yoga.  I realised that although they had many benefits, they didn’t feel very functional to me.  I believe that functional exercise means strengthening our bodies in a way that replicates the way we move outside the training room.  Balancing on all fours may improve the abdomen muscles, but we don’t walk or run around on all fours most of the time!

I also found a lot of these exercises pretty dull.  I thought back to those early core fitness sessions in school and remembered how much fun they used to be.  I decided to begin incorporating medicine ball workouts into my sessions.  The feedback was incredible – people LOVED the workouts.  There was a lot of jumping with the ball, smashing it, throwing it around and it really captured that childhood feeling of excitement for others, just as it had for me.  Most of all, the exercises targeted the areas people really needed most.

After working with the medicine ball in my classes for some time, I realised that there was so much more I could do with it.  As well as the basic moves I had been using, I developed new exercises and ways of working that pushed clients even further.  And on top of improving their strength and fitness, clients had even more fun as we went along.  I had always wanted to develop a programme that was new, different, fun and above all, really WORKED.  In reaching back to the roots of my core fitness, I realised I had found an exciting way forward.

This is how 4 Core Fitness was born.

If you interested to find out more about my work, you can follow us on Instagram or visit my personal training site which is based in Bristol at the United Kingdom