About
Owen Pettiford
Founder of Strive4, certified personal trainer, and someone who spent most of his life getting this wrong before getting it right.
The short version
I found health and fitness relatively late in life, at 49. Before that I was on a dangerous path with food and alcohol, and I was not exercising at all. It was affecting my mental health as much as my physical health.
After a drinking binge on 31 August 2017, I decided enough was enough, and the journey to being mentally and physically fitter began.
I lost four stone. Along the way I became a certified personal trainer and a fairly relentless consumer of everything fitness-related — the good research, the bad research and a great deal of marketing pretending to be both.
Since then I have helped more than fifty people with their own fitness journeys, one to one and in groups. That work is where the structure of the Forever Fitness Management course came from, and it is why the course spends as much time on motivation and habits as it does on calories.
What I believe
That most people already know roughly what to do, and the gap is in doing it consistently — which is a problem about motivation and habits, not about information.
That the fitness industry sells the last five per cent because the ninety-five per cent is unglamorous and cannot be packaged. And that being sold to repeatedly is one of the main reasons people give up.
That the honest position on weight and health is more complicated than either side of the argument would like. The evidence mostly says size matters for health; there is also credible work suggesting you can improve fitness and gain health benefits without losing weight. I present both, because pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
And that self-compassion is a practical tool, not a soft one. People who treat themselves the way they would treat a struggling friend tend to get back on track faster than people who punish themselves.
Credentials and scope
- Certified personal trainer
- Works within the scope of that competence, and refers on when appropriate
- Founder of Strive4 Limited
Strive4 is education and coaching, not medical care. If you have a health condition, are on medication, or have a difficult relationship with food, please involve your GP — and I will happily work alongside them.
Match your healthspan to your lifespan.
Lifespan is how long you live. Healthspan is how long you stay healthy. Closing the gap between them is the whole point.No pressure, no sales pitch
Start with a conversation
Tell me where you are and what you want to change. If I can help, I will say how. If someone else would serve you better, I will say that too.