Hidden in a small business centre in Ormskirk, West Lancashire, sits a gym by the name of NXG Fitness.
Working in that gym is a woman called Rachel Issit, a white-collar fighter and personal trainer.
From a young age, Rachel had a passion for combat, starting in kickboxing and then moving to taekwondo but was forced to put her fighting career on hold for a while.
“I had some time off while I grew up and had children and things like that and then when I was 30 I was diagnosed with cancer and decided I needed my body to be in the best shape to fight it.”
Rachel began to train with colleague Lee Sayers before being asked by a friend to train her daughter which led to Rachel getting her coaching qualifications.
“Lee said to me, ‘why don’t you get your qualifications? You’re good enough and you’ve got experience under your belt’ so it kind of went from there.
“For the past 10 years now, it’s gone from strength to strength and I’ve been really lucky that I’ve gotten so busy and such a good reputation in what I do.”
Total Body Conditioning tonight at NXG in #Ormskirk pic.twitter.com/kQneryxLTN
— NXG Fitness (@nxg_fitness) February 7, 2017
Rachel’s daughter followed in her footsteps by learning how to fight and is almost as (if not more) fierce than Rachel.
“She is the current British and Irish muay thai champion, she’s got another British title coming up in about 6 weeks, so yeah, she’s doing really well.”
Rachel believes NXG Fitness is more than a gym and offers clients a form of therapy that proves hard to come by.
“A lot of people come here when they’ve got something going on in their lives or some sort of worry or trouble.
It’s an hour where you can come in and not have to think about anything else, you go out and feel uplifted, I feel it’s immensely important to the community, I really do.
Despite coaching competitive fighters, Rachel also believes that training to fight can have a great impact for those not fighting competitively.
“It’s a full-body workout and it’s a mental workout. You can come in and literally punch away whatever’s in your head at that moment. You can have no experience at all or you could have been fighting for 10 or more years, we’re all the same at the bottom of it, if you have a bad day it’s the best thing for it.”
Featured image (c) Rachel Issit
