Coach · he/him · at Forge since 2021
SanjayIyer
Taught PE for twenty-two years before this. Coaches the 09:30 classes and most of the open gym mornings.
Sanjay taught PE in Sheffield schools for twenty-two years, took early retirement, lasted four months, and came back to work here. He is the oldest person on the coaching staff by some distance and it is the main reason the 09:30 class looks the way it does.
The over-sixties side of this gym exists largely because of him. It started with two people a physiotherapist sent over and it is now a decent slice of the weekday mornings.
How he coaches
Loudly, cheerfully, and with a complete absence of the tone people over sixty usually get in gyms. He does not do chair exercises and he does not do “gentle”. He does deadlifts, carries, and getting up off the floor without using your hands, which is the single most predictive thing about staying independent.
He will also tell you, at length, that bone responds to load and that walking is not load. He has the research and he will send it to you.
What he is less good at
Anything fast. The Olympic lifts are not his and neither is anything measured in seconds. He sends those people to Ananya and Kabir.
On the timetable