The Strength RoomPrivate strength coaching · PenarthPenarth

The team

Two coaches, one room.

Mari built the place to be the "what next" after physiotherapy; Ioan came from rugby and stayed for the fifty-five-year-olds. Between them they run every session, write every programme and read every letter from every physio. The qualifications are below because you should ask any coach for them.

Mari Thomas, a woman coach in her mid-forties with short dark curly hair in a plain black training top, standing in front of a squat rack in a small brick-walled studio

Mari Thomas

Founder and coach. Assessments, return from injury, strength after fifty

A sports rehabilitation graduate who spent ten years in physiotherapy clinics watching people get discharged with a sheet of exercises and no idea what next. Opened the mews in 2018 to be the "what next". Coaches most of the assessments and the return-from-injury programmes, writes the reviews that go to the physios, and holds the oldest-client record with a seventy-eight-year-old who deadlifts sixty kilos.

Ioan Reynolds, a strength coach in his early thirties with a shaved head in a plain grey T-shirt, holding a kettlebell beside a wooden bench in a bright brick-walled studio

Ioan Reynolds

Coach. Semi-private, the programmes, nutrition

A strength and conditioning master's and five years coaching rugby players before deciding that fifty-five-year-olds were more interesting and more grateful. Runs the semi-private slots, writes most of the programmes, holds the nutrition qualification, and loads the bars quietly while people rest. Will add half a kilo rather than two and a half, every time.

  • 53average age of the people training here
  • 41 kgadded to a deadlift, on average, in a first twelve weeks
  • 1rack, one coach, one client or group at a time
  • 4.9average rating

The paperwork

What to ask any coach for, and ours.

Degrees in the subject

Mari: BSc Sports Rehabilitation. Ioan: MSc Strength and Conditioning. Both hold Level 3 personal training and the older-adult and pre- and post-natal certificates; Ioan holds a nutrition qualification; Mari a cancer-rehabilitation certificate.

First aid and insurance

Emergency first aid at work and a defibrillator in the room; £5 million public liability and professional indemnity, renewed every January; enhanced DBS checks because some clients are vulnerable adults.

Physios who send people here

Nine physiotherapists and two consultants in Penarth, Cardiff and Llandough refer to us and receive our reviews. Ask them. Ask us for their names.

What we are not

Not physiotherapists, not dietitians, not doctors, and we say so at the assessment and send you to the right person when it is one of those. The best coaches we know are the ones who know where their job ends.

The exterior of a small private training studio in a converted mews on a quiet side street: a dark green door, a window showing a rack and plants, a bicycle

The mews

A coach house that was a joiner's shop, a print room and a store, before it was this.

Mari found it in 2017 with a leaking roof and a hundred years of sawdust in the beams, and spent a year and most of a mortgage turning it into one room with a rack in it. The brick is original, the floor is forty millimetres of rubber over the old flagstones, the window is new, and the plant by it has outlived three programmes of neglect. It is the only gym in Penarth with a kettle and no treadmill.

What is in the room

Start with the assessment. Ninety minutes, and an honest answer.

Your story, the letters, how you move under a light bar, four baseline measures in a book you keep, and ten minutes on what it will take and whether we are the right people. £60, credited against a programme, and refunded if we say we are not.

Book an assessmentThe programmes