What is Chukka Wellness?

Tune into this video interview we did with Chukka Wellness to find out more about the personal training for polo services offered by India Parker-Smith.

Find out what Chukka Wellness does and how their programs work. 

What is Chukka Wellness?

Transcription:

I want to know more about you and how you go about this and what you do to help people actually get fit properly. You know, because we'll get into a little bit later, I have a question about these crunches everybody's always told to do, and you're not worrying about your whole core, you're only worrying about these abs that you can show everybody.

Exactly, those abs are completely useless, they look good but they're completely useless. But we are all told to do it. So, tell us a little bit more about you, and where you work, and how you work. And, you know, do you have international clients? Do you travel? Tell us a little bit more about you. 

Well, I founded Chukka Wellness about two years ago actually. I think I just went out to Argentina on a whim. I used to be an eventer, I used to ride and then I just gave up whilst I went to university and I just went to Argentina and I just fell in love with polo as most people do.

But I realized how much of a strenuous sport it was. And so I just kind of put Chukka Wellness together. And the aim is to help riders become twice as supple, stable and strong in the saddle. And you know, to bulletproof their body basically for action.

So, I provide online and offline services. I do lots of one-to-one zoom training. So, I've got clients all over the world, which is really cool, Australia, Canada, Pakistan, America, I've got one in Switzerland.

How do you go about doing that? Do you do that on a zoom call? Would they pay you for an hour? And then you actually talk them through the exercises and that kind of stuff, is that how you'd go about it? 

Yeah, to be honest, I'm even surprised at how effective it is. Cause I've never done online training, it's what Covid kind of pushed me into doing last year. And that just kind of, yeah, I've got more international clients doing it, but we just use whatever equipment they have.

So, I mean, we need to like bands, you know, a few weights. So, basically I work with what they have and then for the hour we go on zoom, I'm doing some stuff, I'm showing them demonstrations, they're doing it. And as long as you have good WiFi, you know, it's very, I've become very good at explaining. 

As you know, usually you can show someone if they're doing it wrong, but now I have to explain through verbal cues. And so actually it's just as effective if the client is willing to work hard and what they want to get the results is, you know, it's still as effective as in-person training. I was to book you, you were to spend, let's say an hour session and I've booked that with you.

Then I took a video of me actually doing it that you could have a look at and then you could share a screen and say, Gav, you're doing this wrong or you're doing that wrong. I'd do this differently. That's the kind of thing you'd be doing. Right. 

But it's more live, I'd be training them live. But with the first one we do is a consultation.

So, we do lots of fitness train testing, look at the bio-mechanics. So, everything is live. Yeah. Okay. And do you run, I mean would you, for example you went to Argentina, if in South Africa here, we organized the whole group for you.

Would you come in and do a clinic and do like a four or five day clinic, with maybe a few members or something like that? I'll book my flight now, Gav that all right? Yes, I do that. Do you travel? Do you do clinics around the world?

Yes, I do Polo Fitness Clinics in, we've done Argentina, was hoping to go to Munich and New York last year, but Covid stopped that. Done some stuff in Salto Grande, day and then do some throughout the UK season as well.

So, I you know, it's quite nice because you get more of a group. So, I do lots of team training as well. And then you can do like bonding exercises with the teammates and you get more of a vibe going. So, actually the clinics, I think, are a lot more enjoyable to do.