Beauty queens and kettlebells in Derry

There can’t be too many beauty queens entering pageants to motivate students in their bootcamp. But that’s what Aoife Grant said at the Face of Ireland competition recently … I was curious.

Turns out the former netball player studied Sport Science and runs bootcamps on the beaches around Derry in Northern Ireland. Taking a laid-back attitude to fitness, she says: “A lot of people try to do everything at the gym, they’re there first thing Monday morning, drinking wheatgrass and things. I try to help people to do what they can, be realistic.”

It’s refreshing to talk to someone in the industry who’s not completely focused on weight-loss, Aoife talks a lot about having fun and finding ways to make exercise meaningful instead of a chore to be fitted into the rest of your life. “When athletes have a drive, they think they can always be better, that’s important to have that in your life,” she says. “Whether it’s for health or vanity.”

Aoife says she works with sportspeople from GAA, body-building and even traditional Irish dancing as well as women just looking to get healthy.

I still didn’t get the beauty pageant idea until she started talking about the links between the “healthy eating” plans she makes and looks. “The bootcamps are a normal weekly class, so I try to take away any barriers (to getting healthy) by taking away the need to cheat … (we) give them a takeaway lunch, and a snack and because they’ve paid for it, they usually eat it.”

“I try to instill in them the idea that they look as healthy as they are,” she says.

More info on Aoife’s classes at Hourglass Bootcamp