ABOUT ME / PAUL TUNSTEAD
I wasn’t built in a gym.
The gym helped rebuild me.
I don’t just talk about functional conditioning—it is how I live.
Fitness With Conviction (FWC) is not about gym vanity or performing for egos. It is about useful physical capability: moving well, working hard, recovering properly and building a body that carries you through real life.
Verifiable Credentials and Performance Benchmarks.
57
YEARS AT FULL SPEED
20
YEARS PLAYING AND
COACHING VOLLEYBALL
3
CONCEPT2 ROWING
PLATINUM CERTIFICATES
5
COACHING
AND SAFETY CERTIFICATES
It’s not where you’re from.
It’s where you’re coming from.
There is no polished origin story here. There is a real one—full of Urchin energy, wrong turns, hard lessons, laughter, survival and a mechanical mind that never stopped looking for a way forward.
01
THE BEGININNG
Plenty of energy.
No useful direction.
Children’s homes, the streets and prison were part of my life long before fitness became a profession. I was alert, restless, resourceful and always looking for the next thing. Those qualities could lift a room—or lead me straight into trouble.
02
PRISON WAS MY UNIVERSITY
I trained the body and educated the mind.
I read more than a thousand books, played football, volleyball, basketball and table tennis, and worked as a gym orderly in most prisons I landed in. The walls took time from me. I refused to let them take every lesson.
03
THE TURNING POINT
Movement gave the adrenaline a job.
Addiction buried the cheeky, energetic version of me for a long time. Functional training helped uncover him again. Hard, honest movement could expel the pressure, channel the energy and leave something useful behind.
04
NOW
The experience became the method.
Fitness With Conviction brings the whole road together: lived experience, qualified coaching, functional movement and straight talking. I do not ask anyone to walk a road I know nothing about.
WERRINGTON HOUSE
1987
Where volleyball entered the story.
Learn it. Live it.
Pass it on.
I learned volleyball from Lilleshall-trained coaches at Werrington House. It became roughly twenty years of playing and coaching, from prison sports halls to coaching in Stafford and matches against RAF teams.
Football, circuits, rowing and team games all added something different. Together they taught me that good coaching is not about showing off what the coach can do. It is about seeing the person in front of you and showing them what they can do next.
Build the chassis.
Train the engine. Rule the mind.
Functional training, purposeful intensity and no voodoo. Every movement should have a job, and every person should know why they are doing it.
01
Technique before speed.
Speed comes from technique. Learn the movement cleanly, then turn up the engine.
02
Function before decoration.
Train for energy, strength, confidence and a body that earns its place in real life.
03
Discipline before motivation.
Motivation can disappear overnight. A useful routine is still standing in the morning.
Three distances.
Three Platinum certificates.
Concept2 Platinum
1,000 metres
Concept2 Platinum
3,000 metres
Concept2 Platinum
5,000 metres
You see, they want you in their ‘Gym’—that massive, soft leisure centre down the road, where people scroll on their phones with the work ethic of a sloth.
But my ‘Jim’?
My Jim is right here: three feet by seven feet of bin shed.
No fluff. No posing. No scrolling. Just pure, minimalist simplicity—and ten times the intensity.
Tuck jumps. Squat thrusts. Burpees. Sit-ups. Press-up extensions. Squat jumps. Burpee extensions.
Super-tuning stuff.
I could make you fitter, stronger and more capable in three months inside this tiny space than you would become in twelve months spent drifting around their fitness centre.
Because they don’t get it.
The GYM isn’t a building you pay to walk into.
The GYM is in YOU!