“Everybody is able to achieve with the right direction and support,” personal trainer Alan Oak tells me. “I remember working with someone who had had asphyxia. He had trouble with his co-ordination and was adamant that he couldn’t jump.
“I worked with him for a few weeks on different ways to engage him and after about a month, he was able to jump.”
A small thing that many of us take for granted proved to be a huge achievement for Oak’s client. “His wife rang me to say how happy they both were, and how she had come downstairs to find him jumping around the kitchen in delight,” he recalls.
“I feel very passionate about things like that because he achieved what felt like the impossible for him. People often underestimate what they are capable of in later life.”
Inspiring people to reach their goals as a personal trainer at the age of 70 was never on Oak’s bingo card. Most of his professional life was spent in a demanding senior role as a chartered structural engineer in the oil and gas industry, designing and managing offshore facilities.
