Pace & Go is the soubriquet used by Jenny PACEy
and Wayne GOrdon. Do you see what they did there? With their names and some
sporty sounding words? Genius.
The pair introduce themselves as "world-class athletes,
celebrity trainers and one of the UK’s leading fitness celebrity couples".
You know leading fitness celebrity couples?
This pair are
literally one of those! Along with, erm ...
Quite frankly, you’d think that would be enough for anyone but
Jenny and Wayne are actually holding out on us. Their real claim to fame is that they are two of
television’s Gladiators. From Gladiators.
Not the original LWT series from the 1990s but the more
recent Sky 1 reboot, admittedly. But even so, who doesn’t want to be given
fitness instruction by Enigma and Doom?
If you check out the
official Gladiators website (and you should, its great), you’ll see that Enigma’s
official profile describes her as follows: “Mysterious and beautiful, contradictory
and unpredictable, Enigma is impossible to capture.” Which rather sound like it
belongs on a Japanese t-shirt.
Foamy Kitten, dwarf bravery will always shine on you.
I think we can all take something from that.
Doom’s profile hits
us with this: “Mere mortals beware,
there's a dark cloud that looms, judgment day is afoot and Doom is your worst
nightmare.”
Whoa. Heavy. So it’s
rubbish weather AND it’s Judgment Day is and this guy is still my worst nightmare. That’s some pretty doom-laden doom, right
there. Well done, sir.
I am a bit fuzzy as
to what exactly used to happen on Gladiators. I know members of the public would
come on to take on the elite forces of the in-house experts. I may have it confused with Robot Wars which had basically the same premise. The
competitor would come in, they’d face one another in the arena armed with only
a giant cotton bud, a flamethrower and a circular saw. Sometimes somebody got
turned upside down.
Gladiators. Possibly.
Enigma and Doom were joined by a whole host
of other ridiculously names and dressed Gladiators including Atlas, Oblivion,
Goliath, Spartan, Cyclone and Battleaxe. Wait, Battleaxe? Seriously?
I assume Gladiators get assigned their
names in much the same way that the gang were assigned theirs in Reservoir
Dogs:
Gladiators Producer: Here are your names... Enigma,
Doom, Inferno, Destroyer, Predator and Battleaxe.
Battleaxe: Hey, why am I Battleaxe? Battleaxe sounds
like “Old Bag”. How 'bout if I'm Vanquisher? That sounds good to me. I'll be Vanquisher.
Gladiators Producer: You're not Vanquisher. Some guy on
some other job is Vanquisher. You’re Battleaxe.
Enigma: Who cares what your name is?
Battleaxe: Yeah, that's easy for you to say, you're Enigma.
You have a cool-sounding name. Alright look, if it's no big deal to be Battleaxe,
you wanna trade?
Gladiators Producer: Hey! NOBODY'S trading with
ANYBODY. Now listen up, Battleaxe. There's two ways you can go on this job: my
way or the highway. Let's go to work.
“I’m not sure about the outfit either.”
Battleaxe really
drew the short straw on Gladiators.
The series ended in 2009. After which Jenny and Wayne hung
up their shiny PVC hotpants and concentrated on their twin careers of competitive
bobsleigh and celebrity workouts.
They’re part of a superior race of people, these celebrity
fitness couples. They know it too. “Being fit and healthy is part of who we
are. We love being fit, healthy, toned and full of energy.” Yeah, yeah we get it. You're totes amazing.
Their website tells
us that Jenny Pacey is “definition of being fit”. You hear that? She’s the
actual definition. You look up ‘fit’ in the dictionary and this is what you
see:
Twice. Once for each meaning of ‘fit’.
The workout contains three fifteen minute workouts : Sofa
Circuit, Bodyweight Blast and Buddy-Up Training, each with its own warm-up and
cool-down session. The Bodyweight Blast
is great but the other two are slightly more awkward.
The sofa session seems to assume that you have one hefty bit
of furniture of exactly the right height that will withstand any amount of
pressure and has several feet of clear space on each side. If your living room
doesn’t resemble Jenny and Wayne’s below, you may struggle a bit.
The Buddy-Up workout, on the other hand, is designed for two
people to do together. Lovely as it is to see Pace ‘n’ Go working as a
team, I can’t help feeling that they may have misjudged their audience a bit. Surely
most people do exercise DVDs on their own.
“You don’t need any equipment,” Wayne tells us. “Just a
training friend, lots of enthusiasm and a sense of humour!”
Sorry Wayne, I don’t seem to have any of those things to
hand.
Best Bit
Wayne is a source of fascinating information. “If you think
about it,” he says at one point, “Athletes are some of the fittest people in
the world.”
You know, Wayne, I hadn’t thought about it but now that you
mention it, I think you may be onto something. People should be told.
Athletes. Apparently fitter than other kinds of people. Who knew?
Worst Bit
You know that Buddy Workout is really just Pace ‘n’ Go rubbing our noses in their
privileged celebrity fitness lifestyle. Look at us! Bending and stretching
together in perfect harmony. Leaning our weight on one another in order to make
each other stronger like a tortured analogy for something-or-other.
It’s like they are looking out of the screen at every poor
sod trying to struggle through the workout alone and laughing in our sad single
faces.
You wish you were us, don't you?
Difficulty Level
Sometimes the day after I’ve done one of these workout DVDs,
bits of me feel sore and I know that it must have been doing me good.
That’s certainly the case here because following this
workout, my right thumb is absolutely killing
me. The rest of me is fine which I assume is because, despite all appearances
to the contrary, I am in tip-top physical shape. Apart from that thumb, which
was clearly weak, underworked and letting the rest of the team down.
Thankfully now that I’ve kickstarted those tardy thumb
muscles into action, I am well on my way to looking like the definition of
fitness, myself.
Work those thumbs!
Would I do this Workout Again?
I’ll keep an eye on the thumb. The moment that seems to be
slipping back into its previous flabby state, I’ll be straight on it.