The Secret Of How We Got Our Name

We all love a good behind-the-scenes story, right?

That’s why we thought we’d share a little insight into how we ended up being one of the top personal trainers in Guildford, and where it all began.

So, there's a cool story behind this one, and it all started on a holiday trip.

Nat and I were on holiday to Cyprus, and we were lounging on our deck chairs. I remember it like it was yesterday...

More Than Muscle is almost seven years old now, and it still makes us laugh at how it all came together. We were sipping cocktails and waiting for our sushi to arrive at Lush bar in Larnaca. Natalie was about to qualify as a PT, and I'm overloaded with clients back in London. I'm pretty sure I was maxing around 40 hours a week, which by the way is madness!

Any PT will tell you that's a lot of client management and plenty of unsociable hours.

Now, naturally, we'd talked about the prospect of working together before the holiday. But, we were so busy with work, it meant we never had any time free to plan for the future!

That's why holidays are always great for ideas. Because whenever Nat and I were away, we seemed to find those illusive 'lightbulb' moments. Space, sun and a relaxed state of mind always seemed to bring clarity to our creativity. So you can imagine these days how we’ve come to expect it whenever we go away.

Let’s get back to the story...

Nat was pending her PT qualification and I wanted her to join forces with me. We'd talked about it so many times before, we just needed to make it happen. Combining our personal training work made total sense! Two diaries instead of one!

At this point, we had been together for quite a while. With Nat about to embark on her PT career, we wanted to get things going together work wise. You see, it’s funny, because at that time we had no clue about business. No business plan. In fact, all we cared about was the name, the logo and our Instagram handles!

So there we were, sitting there on our deck chairs. Throwing names at each other. Back and forth for a few hours. I remember we were coming up with all sorts, and then I shouted “More Than Muscle… That’s it, More Than Muscle!” I remember saying to Nat, it’s exactly what we do...

We offer more than muscle!

At the time, I was helping people through my personal coaching work. For me, mirroring what I learned there on a larger scale together would be perfect! I said, seeing us is about so much more than standard PT and muscle.

The point is that we bridge the gap between fitness, lifestyle/nutrition and therapy. Even more, we teach you about your body. How it moves. And, what you need to be the best version of yourself when it comes to all thing’s health and fitness.

Tangible results.

Realistic time frames.

Using data & metrics to track progress and help us fine tune the workouts.

I could go on and on, but helping our clients understand what we're trying to achieve is so important to progress. More Than Muscle resonated with that. To us, it signified something that the industry was missing – Excellence.

That holistic approach has served us well.

We look back at that moment, and it makes us super proud. Seven years later and we've got a superstar team of exceptional trainers. We lived up to that mantra and stuck by it throughout. Now we're excited for it to grow even further and help even more clients to achieve their goals. Thinking back, I still remember picking up the phone to my accountant. Telling him, there and then, we'd made the decision to unify as a company (whilst still sitting on that deck chair).

More Than Muscle was the name! I remember him saying back to me “Andy aren’t you on holiday?” We got back to the UK and the rest is history!

Long Live More Than Muscle.