I joined BMF in 2007, after a friend suggested it, I’d been going to the gym for years and thought my first session would be a breeze, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. I got through the first hour of hard, muddy, grueling fun and never looked back, starting off as a red and quickly progressing to green.

Most people meet in bars or clubs but, Heather and I met doing burpees on a muddy common in Southampton during the winter. I first noticed Heather during the session warm down, after she had tried to race me during a sprint. Meanwhile Heather noticed me because of his actual burping during the session. As the session continued, I remember casually standing near her when asked to pair up for exercises. They soon got talking and I found out that Heather had also been introduced to BMF by a persistent friend. Coming to BMF had massively helped her energy and motivation all round.

I volunteered to help Heather in the research for her doctoral thesis and later we started seeing each other regularly whether it was coffee, cinema, restaurants or burpees on Southampton Common.

In April 2010, we re-located to Royal Tunbridge Wells and were sad to leave the many memories of Southampton BMF behind. We worried we wouldn’t be able to continue with the one thing that bought them together but thanks to BMF’s nationwide sessions we were able to join the Tunbridge Wells group.

In August 2012, I finally got to put my leg lunging into action and got down on one knee and asked Heather to marry me, she said yes and we may honour BMF with a ‘burpee-style’ first dance at our wedding next year.