We are a team of scientists, financial traders, and business managers who all stumbled upon a high intensity type fitness programme, called CrossFit, a few years ago and it has changed our lives. We realised at that point the key benefits that having a regular fitness regimen and eating healthy can have on the mind and the body.

We decided we wanted to give back to the world what has been bestowed upon us, so we took the plunge and opened a fitness business, Red Sun CrossFit, in January 2018 in Bethnal Green. The original plan was to help the people in our community get healthier and live better through CrossFit classes, having seen the benefits ourselves. Moreover, we wanted to create a social space where people from the neighbourhood can use to meet, connect and make friends with others in the community. We realised early on that in order for the benefits of our fitness classes to work we needed to incentive people to attend regularly, and we knew we could do that by adding a social element to our programme. And it worked. In no time, our fitness studio was buzzing with people who all shared the same goal of wanting a healthier life.

A year into our business opening, a head nurse from the NHS Learning Disability group stopped by our studio. She had access to some funding and was very keen in using that to help her patients who were suffering from learning disability manage their weight and get healthier. But she wanted a programme that worked, and that actually changed her patients’ lives. She had considered a few other weight management programmes in the area, however none seemed to be providing positive results or the adaptability she was looking for. Many of her patients were morbidly obese and at risk of chronic diseases, so it was crucial she find an effective programme and one her patients would enjoy attending. So, with the help of the nurse, we developed a bespoke adaptive fitness plan that took the core elements of the CrossFit methodology and scaled it to the specific needs of the patients. We also had a dietician supplement their training with a nutrition plan in order to maximise the results. And of course, we maintained the social element through the programme.

Needless to say the programme was a success. Several of the patients managed to control their weight and improve their health and lifestyles. One of the patients even got over his diabetes without the help of any medication.

Following this experience, we realised the market was missing a truly effective wellness and weight management programme, especially one that could easily be adapted to virtually anyone. We saw first hand the benefits our programmes were having, and decided that we should scale it up and offer it to more people in our community. So we created a new business, redsun Health, which is not for profit and with the sole aim of helping as many people as possible manage their weight, get fitter, improve their mental wellbeing, and simply live a better life. But more importantly we want to instil in them healthy habits so that even when they are not in our studio they are still striving to make healthy choices.