A Day In The Life: James Griffiths

James Griffiths is the founder of Wild Training and is a gym owner and personal trainer. He talks us through a typical day in his busy life!

I tend to get up at around 4:30 am each day. I wouldn’t be the same guy without my morning smoothie: 2 scoops of protein powder, 100g of frozen fruit, a teaspoon of peanut butter, and then I top it with water, almond milk or hemp milk.

The only way I can get the project work done is by getting up early so I can nail some time on my laptop and write up resources to do with Wild Training programming, the new franchise launch or any of the other ideas I have. The gym opens at 6 am so that gives me a good bit of time before any members come in. 

I don’t train as many clients as I used to but the ones I do train are consistent and hit regular days and times. Kirstie here is actually our new gym manager. She’s an amazing character and adds so much to the Wild Training gym. We are working on some proper strength training mixing up landmine training, strongman training, and some more explosive stuff as her cardio is epic but I want to get her body firing a bit harder with more intensity. The Wild Combat system is something she loves and still sticks to the power side of what we are trying to work on and gets her aerobic system pumped. 

Then a little bit of admin smashing out emails and making magic happen with #MuscleTunnel which is a new outdoor strength setup we are building at the Wild Training Gym to launch in September that will rival Muscle Beach in Miami! 

My second personal training session of the day is working with Alex who has had a long-term problem with a herniated disc. He’s gone through all kinds of therapy and really hasn’t seen much improvement in his pain. We have recently started working on mobility in his hip flexors, lats, quads, hamstrings, calves and adductors and he has felt a lot better. The plan is to get him feeling more comfortable and then strengthening his back while avoiding any sharing forces. 

I then have a cheeky snack of fruit salad and a snack bar before grappling with the legend Phil Else. Phil is an ex-pro fighter and has trained a lot of professional fighters; he's by far the best grappling coach I’ve ever had. This session was working on some more varied ways of using a Kimura lock and we sessioned some fun flows working on getting out of a side control pin and getting your opponent in to an arm bar. 

The middle of the day sees some staff training. The Wild Trainers train weekly with either me or Hannah Camden, the other Wild Training director. Today was focused on tri planar movement and how to build tri planar programs with any bit of kit. This is one of the concepts that makes the results we deliver through Wild Training systems transfer in to every day life and sport more than traditional sagittal plane focused programs. 

Then after a lot more admin I hit the gym and whilst I was training working on some explosive movement with the Tornado whip and a 5kg slam ball I started helping out Josh one of our younger members who was keen to understand how to get started on the rings. Basic supports and dead hangs but he did great for his first time.

I finish my day with my Wild Woman and Wild Man small group PT sessions. These are really important to me because I can deliver more detailed training and support to more members with less of my time. They are super popular and I try to keep it really specific to women or men with the Wild Man or Wild Woman PT systems working through specific shaping concepts. The girls saw Josh playing on the rings so wanted to have a go soon. Ash and Nas came to the Wild Man and have been killing it on the parallettes. Then Ash wanted to hit his level 3 #EarnYourClaws assessment. #EarnYourClaws is a kind of lifestyle grading system for fitness. Every level tests stamina, strength, power, speed, flexibility, skill and knowledge. Level 1 gives members a white #EarnYourClaws t shirt that can not be bought. Each time they pass a new level, they get a new T shirt so they get a real sense of achievement out of it and get a proper structure to their training to make sure they achieve fitness in balance. Ash passed his level 3 so will now get his blue Level 3 #EarnYourClaws T shirt. He’s the first Wild Training member to get it. It’s a tough challenge and our minimum standard of fitness for a personal trainer to work with Wild Training. You’ll see a lot more about the Wild Training #EarnYourClaws system from September.