Katy at Play Fitness and Coaching

Katy at Play Fitness and Coaching Helping women unleash their inner twenty-something and say hello to a more confident, energetic self

We ask every new member one question: who supports you in your health and training?Half of our newest members said nobod...
28/09/2026

We ask every new member one question: who supports you in your health and training?

Half of our newest members said nobody, or just themselves. Five out of ten, straight off the form. Not "a few of them." Half.

No partner asking how the session went. No friend to report back to. You'd think that puts her on the back foot before she's even started. It doesn't. Because external support, as lovely as it is when you've got it, is a nice-to-have rather than a need-to-have. What actually moves the needle is someone checking whether she turned up, whether this week felt harder than last. That's accountability, and it's exactly where we come in, whether or not there's anyone at home cheering.

We know her numbers. We notice if she misses a week and we ask why, properly, not as a telling-off. We remember the ni**le from three sessions ago and check on it before she's even mentioned it. That's not friendship exactly, although it often turns into that too. It's a structure built to notice her, which is a different thing to a family who loves her but has a hundred other things going on.

So the women with the emptiest column on that form are not the ones we worry about. If anything, they arrive with something the well-supported ones don't always have: a reason to be here that belongs entirely to them. She's just coming, on her own steam, week after week. That kind of motivation doesn't run dry the way borrowed motivation can.

DM us START and we'll book you a free consultation.

Katy x

Before we bring in a new coach, our squad always gets a say.Right now we're trialling for a few coaches, and we're in no...
26/09/2026

Before we bring in a new coach, our squad always gets a say.

Right now we're trialling for a few coaches, and we're in no rush about it. We'd rather take a long time and get the right person than fill a gap quickly and hope for the best.

Candidates shadow real sessions first, in the actual room, with the actual squad, so they see exactly what they'd be walking into before anyone commits to anything. If that goes well, they come back and run a trial session themselves.

And the squad's opinion genuinely counts. They fill in forms on each coach and their experience and thoughts. If someone's a good fit, they'll go on to design their own sessions and come back to run those too.

We never fill a coaching role as fast as possible. We are finding someone who's about to become part of a room full of women who trust us with their consistency, their confidence, and quite often the one hour a week that's entirely theirs. That's not a decision we're prepared to rush.

And it is certainly not a decision we take without the input of the women we coach.

Katy x

You get to the point where you realise it was never going to slot in easily. So you stop waiting for that, and just star...
25/09/2026

You get to the point where you realise it was never going to slot in easily. So you stop waiting for that, and just start.
That line came almost word for word from a consultation call a few weeks ago and they started this week.

A woman told us she'd known about strength training for years, had seen us on social media for a while, just hadn't found the moment.

And then she said she got to a point where she realised there was never going to be a version of her life with a gap conveniently sitting there, waiting to be filled. Work would always be busy. Someone would always need something. The diary would never politely clear itself out of respect for her goals.

So many of us spend so long waiting for the right time. The quieter month. The calmer season. The point where everything else settles down enough to make space for ourselves.

That moment doesn't arrive. Not because you're doing something wrong, but because life doesn't tend to work that way for most women in the thick of it, holding together jobs and homes and parents and children and everyone else's diary alongside their own.

At some point, the only real option is choosing to take the next step anyway, mid-chaos, imperfectly, without waiting for permission from your own calendar.
She took it. Started with us this week.

If you've been waiting for the right moment for longer than feels comfortable to admit, this is your sign that it isn't coming. Might as well be now.

DM us START and we will help get you going in amongst the chaos.

Katy x

We ask everyone who calls us the same question. What made you get in touch?The answers fall into two camps, and we've st...
24/09/2026

We ask everyone who calls us the same question. What made you get in touch?

The answers fall into two camps, and we've stopped being surprised by how different they are from each other.

Some are enormous. A parent's health taking a turn that makes you suddenly, urgently aware of your own. A diagnosis that puts strength training from "nice idea" to "genuinely non-negotiable" overnight. A milestone birthday that lands harder than expected.

And some are not seismic to anyone else. But they are to the person carrying them. A gym membership sat there unused for months, judging you from your bank statement. A bag of cat litter that had to go up three flights of stairs and turned into a full body event, for reasons that made absolutely no sense to the person doing the carrying.

We don't care which one it was for you. We care that it mattered enough to bring you here.

Whatever finally tipped it, big or small, dramatic or silly (your words, not ours), the next part is the same.

A bespoke programme, a small group, and coaches who are living the exact same chapter of life as you.

So if your reason feels too small to justify getting in touch... it isn't. If it feels too big to know where to start... we've got you there too.

Whatever it was, we're glad you are here.

DM us START.

Katy x

Every consultation call starts roughly the same way. Someone tells us what they want to change, and somewhere in there, ...
23/09/2026

Every consultation call starts roughly the same way. Someone tells us what they want to change, and somewhere in there, they admit what they're actually nervous about.

It's almost never the training itself 9although there are a few nerves about that). It's wondering what on earth is going to happen when they actually turn up.

Not knowing where to put your bag. Not knowing what the room looks like. Not knowing how the app works. All of it adds up into a proper bit of pre-session anxiety, long before anyone's picked up a weight. it is the whole 'First day of...' syndrome coming home to roost.

So before anyone's first proper session, we do something about that.

We run a face to face onboarding, no PE kit needed, no workout involved. Just an hour or so of showing people exactly what to expect: the space, the app, how to fuel before and after, what everyone else in the room is actually like.

For a lot of people, it's also the first time they've met us in person, after weeks of getting to know each other over video calls.

In the past, the barrier to strength training was understanding why it mattered. That's not the barrier anymore. Most women who come to us already know they should be lifting weights. What they didn't have was an environment that felt like it was actually built for them to walk into.

By the time that first session starts, we want there to be nothing left to be nervous about. Just turning up for the training, which, honestly, is the easy bit once you're actually in the room.

If nerves have been the thing holding you back, that's exactly why we exist and take care so that 'First day of...' syndrome is as small as it can be.

Katy x

Nobody's ever been told by a physio to stop living their life. Plenty of people tell themselves to stop anyway.We hear a...
22/09/2026

Nobody's ever been told by a physio to stop living their life. Plenty of people tell themselves to stop anyway.

We hear a version of this most weeks. A shoulder that's been niggling since some point in the last decade. A knee that "doesn't love" certain movements. A sport someone's played for twenty years that occasionally puts them out of action for a fortnight.

And underneath it, almost every time, is a decision nobody actually made out loud: I should probably stop doing the thing I love, just in case.

Except no physio has ever actually said that. What they usually say is the opposite.

Strengthen the muscles around whatever's niggling, so you can keep doing the thing that made you ni**le it in the first place. Nobody qualified is telling anyone to give up badminton, or running, or carrying their own grandchildren up the stairs.

They're telling you to build the support around the bit that's complaining.

We see it constantly. Someone comes back to the sport they thought they'd lost because their hip stability improved. Someone's knees stop objecting to stairs because their quads finally started doing their share of the work.

The thing that felt like retirement from an activity they loved was never actually mandatory. It was just what happens when nobody strengthens the muscles that were supposed to be protecting the joint in the first place.

You don't have to give up the sport, the hobby, the thing that makes you feel like yourself.

You just might need a bit of help building the strength that lets you keep doing it, for a lot longer than you currently think you've got left in you.

Nobody in a white coat told you to stop. That story was yours. We can help you write a different one.

DM us if that sounds familiar.

Katy x

Ten new women start with us this week. It also happens to be testing week. We planned it that way.There's something we g...
21/09/2026

Ten new women start with us this week. It also happens to be testing week. We planned it that way.

There's something we genuinely love about new starters walking in on the one week a quarter where everyone else in the room is finding out exactly how far they've come.

Here's the bit people get wrong about testing week, though, including quite a few of our own squad the first time they do it: it was never just about the numbers on the bar.

Yes, someone will lift heavier than they did thirteen weeks ago.
Someone else will manage a rep range that would have finished them off back in June.

But testing week is really about everything underneath that.

The height of the box getting taller for step ups, because the knees have stopped negotiating.
The squat that used to stop at quarter depth and now goes properly low, no drama, like it was never a big deal.
The woman who's stopped counting how many reps she's got left in the tank because she's too busy actually doing them.

Confidence. Competence. Movement that used to feel like a negotiation and now just feels like moving.

All of that is testing week too, and frankly it's the part we get more excited about than the numbers.

The room gets properly loud on testing week. And into that walks ten women who've never set foot in the place before. Nobody has to give them a speech about what's possible. They'll just watch a woman twice their training age add another 5 kilos to the bar and go, quietly, "right, well, apparently that's on the table then."

That's the best welcome we know how to give. They get to see possibility of what lies ahead.

If you've been sat on the fence about strength training, wondering whether a space like this is for you, it is.

DM us START and we'll tell you when the next five-week intake opens.

Katy x

We ask everyone the same question at four months working together. What's the moment, the habit, the small thing that ac...
20/09/2026

We ask everyone the same question at four months working together.

What's the moment, the habit, the small thing that actually mattered?

We get a lot of different answers. Stronger. Better posture. Sleeping properly for the first time in years.

I personally love hearing all the responses but this one made me smile.

"I think just having the confidence to attend and forming a new habit."

Not a personal best. Not a number on anything. Just the fact of turning up, on a day she didn't feel like it, on a week that was too busy, and doing it anyway until it stopped being a decision and started being a habit.

She's 57, always been fairly active, always done a lot of sport in one form or another. She told us early on she felt "clapped out but not quite fit for the knackers yet."

Four months later, the thing she's proudest of isn't the strength, or even the confidence in her clothes, though she mentioned both.

It's that she just... comes. And somewhere in the last four months, she showed up enough times that showing up stopped being the hard part.

That's the whole game, most weeks. Not the deadlift. The turning up.

Because once that happens and happens regularly, that is when the beginning of everything else begins.

Katy x

Her shoulder was the reason she nearly didn't sign up. Two months later, it's the reason she did.She came to us already ...
19/09/2026

Her shoulder was the reason she nearly didn't sign up. Two months later, it's the reason she did.

She came to us already active, already loving her classes, already fairly confident in her body. But her shoulder had been niggling for a while, and starting something new felt like exactly the wrong moment to do it in.

Most people would have waited. That's a completely reasonable instinct. Nobody wants to make an injury worse in the name of getting stronger.

But waiting doesn't fix a shoulder. It just teaches it to stay quiet and hope nobody notices.

So instead of working around her shoulder by avoiding it altogether, we built movement in that actually helped it. Exercises that, done properly, gave it a kind of mobility it hadn't had in a long time. Nothing dramatic about any of it. Just consistent, considered, and never ignored.

Two months in, she told us: "I'm seeing real progress, feeling like my coaches absolutely have my back and will help me get the best out of my body and the session."

The shoulder's still there. We're not going to pretend otherwise. But it's better than it was, and it's stopped being the thing deciding what she can and can't do in a session.

It's just quieter now. That's not nothing. That's the whole point.

DM us and tell us what you've been waiting to feel "fixed" before you'll let yourself start. And we will have a natter with you about what you could be doing to help it - no strings attached.

Katy x

Sore back. Sore knees. Sore hips. Sore shoulder. We hear some version of this in almost every consultation.And almost ev...
18/09/2026

Sore back. Sore knees. Sore hips. Sore shoulder.

We hear some version of this in almost every consultation.

And almost every woman who says it means it as a disqualifier. As in, I'd love to, but. As in, once this settles down, then I'll start.

The ni**le isn't a reason to wait. It's exactly the reason to start.

One woman told us her back and her knee were "dodgy," on and off for years. A flare-up after one class doing kettlebell swings left her barely able to walk, six weeks to get back to normal.

Understandably, she got cautious. But "dodgy" wasn't actually stopping her doing anything day to day. It just needed to be worked around instead of waited on.

Waiting for a ni**le to disappear before you build the muscle around it means you never build the muscle. It just gets weaker, and the ni**le gets louder. Working around it, sensibly, with someone who's actually looking, is how the ni**le starts to matter less.

We're not being reckless with anyone's back, hips, shoulders or knees. We're building the plan around what's actually going on with it.

That's a completely different thing to ignoring it, and a completely different thing to waiting for permission from a body that was never going to volunteer it.

If you've been waiting for the ni**le to go away first, that's the bit we'd like to change your mind about.

DM us and we'll tell you how we'd actually approach things with you.

Katy x

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Brighton And Hove

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+447956004966

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