Tough Mudder Fitness Classes @ Virgin Active

Time for Tough Mudder Classes with Virgin Active

Tough Mudder is a 10-12 mile mud and obstacle course designed to really test your physical strength, stamina and mental grit. An interesting point to make is that the obstacles are very team orientated so the organisers are very keen to point out that you will cross the finishing line with more friends that you started with.

This is not an event for personal glory, it is about working with others. On a lighter note Tough Mudder also boast that in addition to the 20+ world class obstacles that you will face you will also get 500,000 litres of mud and 40 tons of ice!

How Big is Tough Mudder?

The stats are certainly very impressive with 2.5m participants in 200+ events since 2010, in 6 countries. Another important aspect to note is that many participants compete for charities and in total £5m has been raised for various charities.

Why Create Mudder Classes?

So when Virgin Active won the contract to run Tough Mudder classes to help people prepare for the real thing they turned to Physical Company to help them create obstacles that would mirror the real things. But the challenge was also to ensure that wherever you were taking the course you would have the same spec and high standards of equipment. Physical Company were also chosen for their reputation for delivering on time and to budget.

“When the Tough Mudder project landed in our laps we knew it would be a great opportunity but also a great challenge,” says James Trevorrow, Virgin Active Product Innovation Manager. “We had a very tight deadline for the size of the project and knew it would need a fast thinking, problem solving team with a ‘can do’ approach.

Choosing Physical Company

Physical Company is a company we do work with on a wide range of existing products so we intuitively turned to them first to help source what we needed. They have an extensive catalogue and have been very reliable in the past.” In fact Physical Company had only 3 months to deliver and to 95 different Virgin Active sites.

The outcome was realistic kit that could really help prepare participants for the real challenge including cargo nets, floor ladders, hurdles, battle ropes, slam balls but also water canisters, electric shock balls and even a fog machine. In addition the Tough Mudder is about unpredictability and creating instability for your body. To achieve this Physical Company recommended the hydro inertia kit Kamagon Balls and Surge as the sudden shift of water takes you off balance and your body has to respond.

How Do The Classes Work?

To bring out the team element involved participants work in groups around the circuit which comprises of 11 stations. The programmes are changed to keep things fresh for participants. Large venues can take up to 30 people while smaller ones are 24.

To date the courses have become so popular that even people not going on the Tough Mudder are signing up!