Joe Chapple

Hi – I’m Joe,

I’ve worked in fitness for around 13 years and have been involved with grappling for 16 years. Here’s an insight into my fitness and combat sports journey.

Growing up I was a short and skinny kid and was terrible at any sport I tried. I was often picked on due to my lack of size. After years of dealing with this I decided to start weight training in my school gym in 2007 at the age of 16. It was at this point I fell in love with fitness. Although I didn’t know exactly what I was doing, I trained every weekday during my lunch break and started doing my own research to learn how best to improve. Before long I was bigger, stronger and more confident and naturally found myself helping the younger kids in the gym and felt that they all looked up to me, which was an amazing feeling.

So after I finished my A-Levels I decided to pursue this as a career and did my level two fitness instructor course at college in 2009. I finished this top of my class and immediately began searching for a job in a gym, which didn’t take me long. I worked in a leisure centre for eight years and in that time learnt so much working and training with people from a variety of different training backgrounds, from bodybuilders to calisthenics athletes, powerlifters to martial artists, all bringing different training methods, which I tried and tested to see what worked best for me.

I did my PT course in my spare time in 2016 and as soon as I’d qualified I immediately built my client base and became self employed. After two years as a personal trainer in the public gym I decided it was time to move on and started working in a private PT studio instead, where I stayed for four years whilst researching different training methods and continually expanding my knowledge of different areas of fitness. I love to combine elements of the more basic barbell or dumbbell exercises, with bodyweight or Calisthenics movements, along with Kettlebells or ViPRs (Vitality, Performance, and Re-conditioning) to improve my functional strength and mobility, and implement these methods in my clients programmes to help them to reach their strength/fitness goals