Every Friday morning at 7am, we get together for our regular walk. Nothing complicated, just getting outside, moving and having a chat, if you can breathe lol Who’s joining us tomorrow? And if you’re not local, or can’t make it, why not join in virtually? Find yourself a 5km route wherever you live and get out for a walk. Ideally at 7am so we’re all out doing it together, but if another time works better, that’s fine too. This isn’t a one-off challenge. We’ll be doing this every Friday, so wherever you are, you’re welcome to make it part of your week. Doesn’t matter how fast you go or how fit you are. Just get out and do it. Stick a photo in the comments, tell us where you’ve walked, or just let us know you’ve done it. Different places, same challenge. Who’s in tomorrow? 👊

New route today finishing with 40m ascent repeats! It is a nice shorter circuit for those new to this. All welcome, Fridays at Hunts Hill, Bradgate Park

Anyone come along this Friday? 7am from Hunts Hill carpark Be warned, there's a bit of a spicy finish from this week

I'd like to try and see if my 20 plus years of working in and around fitness can be of any help to others, it's one of the reasons I started this community back up tbh. I've seen a few others offer video call style sessions where participants can ask the host anything, ideally around coaching and fitness but happy to answer other suff as well 🙈 The challenge will be trying to get a time and day that people are free? If it's of any use can you suggest some days and times and we can hopefully get something going regularly.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what Not The Comfort Zone is actually trying to do. For a while I think I got too caught up in the individual bits of fitness. VO₂ max, strength, power, recovery, mobility. They all matter, and they’re all useful things to measure and improve, but none of them are really the point. The point is what your body can actually do. Can you walk or ruck for hours, carry something heavy, get down on the floor and back up easily? Can you climb, jump, move quickly when you need to and work hard for 15 or 20 minutes without completely falling apart? More importantly, can you keep doing those things as you get older? Which brings me to the Hilux. 😂 I’ve wanted the black Toyota pickup from Back to the Future for about as long as I can remember, and the old Top Gear Hilux episodes probably explain why. I’m not interested in building hypercars. They’re incredibly fast and impressive, but they’re also highly specialised. I want to build Hiluxes. Strong, fit, useful, adaptable and hard to kill 🙈😂. Maybe not exceptional at one single thing, but capable of dealing with a lot. That’s what I want NTCZ to do for people. We’ll still use strength training. We’ll still build the aerobic engine with walking, rucking, bikes, cross trainers and whatever else is useful. We’ll still pay attention to recovery. But we’ll also spend more time putting those qualities together. Circuits, carries, getting up and down, moving your own body, working hard and gradually doing things that once felt beyond you. Not random punishment. Not trying to look hardcore. Just becoming more capable than you are now. And that’s why the challenge side of NTCZ matters too. There’s no point building the Hilux and leaving it polished on the drive. Build it. Check it. Use it. Training builds the vehicle. The Benchmark helps us see what’s under the bonnet and where something might need attention. Then the walks, rucks, Challenge Days and bigger adventures are where we actually take it off-road.