The Good Gym Guide Podcast • Series 1, Episode 1

This first episode of The Good Gym Guide is with Peter Hodkinson of Body Mind Fitness. Peter produces beautiful wooden training equipment, as used in movement traditions from all across the world - clubs from India, meels, maces and sang shields from Persia, tai-chi balls from China... He has travelled widely to experience some of these methods in their place of origin, and he talks about how this has affected his approach to his own training, and to the classes and workshops he leads at home in Bradford-on-Avon.

We spent a lot of time talking about the mental side of training too, drawing on his experience studying and teaching qigong in China and with a sul ki do master in London.

Our conversation made me think a lot of things - about the ritual aspects of entering and preparing training spaces, about how many conventional gym spaces really separate mind and body - and this is something that has popped up in lots of other interviews too - and also about lineage and heritage and indigenous movement traditions… Like, what would the English or British equivalents be? Bring back cudgel play, I reckon. Backswording, not Body Pump… Catch as catch can wrestling… The Haxey Hood.... There are lots of options, ripe for rediscovery! It also made me think about training for longevity, cultural attitudes towards age, and about how important our relationships with our coaches and mentors can be, but how we tend to have to pay a premium for that over here.

• See the Body Mind Fitness website for all his beautiful training tools.

• Learn indian clubs, gada mace and meels skills with Peter at his classes.

• He will be hosting a weekend-long workshop with fellow clubs experts Paul Wolkowinski and Kelly Manzone of Indian Clubs International on 28/29th March 2020 near Bath (venue tbc).

• There is great training advice and cultural context on the blog.

• Clubs UK Facebook page

• Instagram

• History of club use for exercise

• Tom Crudgington’s fantastic Body Development gym in Bath

• The Esmaeli wrestling dynasty is currently continued by Saeed and his “infused wrestling” approach

• The UNESCO page on pahlevani as protected “intangible cultural heritage of humanity”

• The book The Last Wrestlers (reviewed by Can from Artemis BJJ in Bristol!) by Marcus Trower explores some of the traditions discussed in the episode

• Trailer for Dangal!

• Sul ki do in the U.K.

• There are some great clips on YouTube of training at the ankharas in Varanasi

• What is qigong?

• Pretty much all the ambient sound came from Peter’s own recordings

• The photographs are from Peter too

• Most other photographs on this website were taken by Paul Samuel White

• Production support by Yas Clarke

• Graphic design by Steph Weise