Pace & Go – 15 Minute Fast Fitness

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.

Doooooom

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.