The latest lifestyle, fashion and travel trends
The latest lifestyle, fashion and travel trends
Fail to prepare, or prepare like Bale? At Rowbots, a spanking new boutique gym opening today in Fitzrovia, Real Madrid and Wales footballer Gareth Bale is perhaps a surprise force to be found kickstarting a fitness revolution. But the superstar has his head in the game, putting mental health at the core of a public workout programme.
“People always say train your physical body, muscles, fitness, but at the end of the day your brain is the most powerful part of the body,” says Bale, an adviser to and investor in the gym. “When you’re really struggling, and you’re tired, you need that mental side to push through.”
The Rowbots team, who have built classes around state-of-the-art rowers and floor exercises, have ensured “motivational and mindful” techniques are at the heart of the programme. Classes of 45 minutes, which burn up to 800 calories at a time, involve instructors coaching participants in building elements of “mental resilience”: from power-based shorter rounds designed to induce productivity to longer stamina work for improving focus. Zoe Aston, a psychotherapist who developed the Mental Health Workout applied at Rowbots, emphasises the need for clients to feel “safe, challenged and accountable”, and therefore “able to fulfil previously blocked potential”.
Incorporating “mental health objectives” is a crucial aspect of modern sports science, Bale says — which is why Rowbots CEO Sam Green recruited him.
Take the footballer’s spectacular overhead kick in last year’s Champions’ League final against Liverpool, one of the competition’s finest ever goals, scored after he came on in the 61st minute when it was 1-1. “Do I sometimes think if I hadn’t done those extra 10 minutes on the rower I wouldn’t have been able to leap that high? Of course!”, says Bale. “And that’s why you train so hard, because come those crunch moments you want to be able to rely on the body, to know you can produce until the 119th minute of extra time.”
He’s keen to stress that the London gym is designed for mere mortals, however — accessibility is key. He also believes sport is finally putting mental wellbeing front and centre. “It’s definitely changing. Roger Federer and other tennis players use sports psychologists, we’ve had them with Wales which has benefited our players, and we had one at the Euros, which is one of the reasons we did so well.” Industry leaders lead change — and Bale points out how much work has been undertaken to reduce the stigma discussing mental health. “You’re really being more clever than anyone else by training your mind.”
The coaches, many of whom are former Team GB Olympians, have been instructed not simply to bark standard motivational epithets, but to tailor each psychological intervention to the brain’s biochemistry at different stages of exercise: encouraging you to visualise your week’s goals during power training, and reminding you of your capacity for patience and presence during cardio-focus endurance workouts. Trainers offer questions like: what’s the most significant thing that’s happened to you today? Is that a helpful way to think?
“If you can do those extra mental exercises that means in the crucial minutes you don’t crumble, you’re going to be there, you take the challenge by the scruff of its neck.”
He’s had to endure critics himself. At Tottenham Hotspur, the club he moved to from Southampton aged just 17, he was initially labelled a jinx as the Premier League side failed to register a win in his first 24 appearances.
“You go through tough periods in your career where it’s very stressful and hard, especially when you’re younger,” nods Bale. “You read a lot of articles and you don’t really understand the business and how it works, and it gets you down, it gets you mentally drained.”
More generally, he’s excited to see the landscape change in sport: he points to the success of the Women’s World Cup this summer. “I have two daughters and obviously you want them to be inspired by professional female athletes,” he says. “I think we’re in a positive moment.”
Rowing has been a surprisingly effective weapon in Bale’s arsenal. Much has been made of his cross-country prowess at school, but he credits his power and drive to the unique “proficiency” of the rower-workout.
“I use it especially in the off-season to really get fit for the next year,” he says of the Rowbots regime. “It’s not easy. It kind of works every muscle — that’s why I like it so much. It doesn’t just work out the upper or the lower body, it does both.”
Over the years he’s found “upper body weight doesn’t tend to do anything for my profession, personally, because if I’m putting too much time on big bicep curls and bench presses to get myself bigger up top, then it puts a lot of stress on my legs”, which he’s not used to. “And at the end of the day I need to be able to run fast and be as light as possible, to have legs stronger than my upper body.”
Mentally and physically, it’s all kicking off.
