I nearly missed it.

The calendar flipped, the weeks rolled by, and it suddenly hit me — last month, Project Active quietly turned twenty years old.

Two decades!

When you are involved in helping people rebuild their bodies, minds, and schedules, you don’t spend much time staring in the rearview mirror. 

You look at the next week, the next session, the next strategy map. But a milestone like this forces a moment of pause. 
It makes you clear away the noise, look back at the starting line, and take stock of the distance covered.
If you had told me in 2006 what this business would become, where it would take me, and the sheer variety of human stories I would get to be a part of... I’m not sure I would have believed you.

Back then, it was a vision built on a very simple, unshakeable foundation:
'To help clients to the absolute best of my ability, with total honesty and integrity.'

A lot has changed since those early days. The fitness industry has morphed, trends have come and gone, and the world has become infinitely louder, faster, and more digitally distracted. But that core fundamental?
It hasn't shifted an inch. It still holds entirely true today.

When I launched Project Active, I had no idea the journey would span multiple countries, cross-continental flights, and embed me within some of the most hyper-precise, high-pressure environments on the planet.

Over the last two decades, I’ve had the privilege of working inside professional sports environments, including elite Formula One teams like Williams, Scuderia AlphaTauri, and Lotus Renault F1. I’ve worked alongside professional football clubs and inside innovative, rapid-growth corporate offices.

In those worlds, everything is measured in milliseconds and marginal gains.
​The pressure is immense. The expectations are absolute. 

It was a masterclass in what human beings are truly capable of when they are backed by rigorous strategy, intelligent physical prep, and flawless execution.

​But do you want to know the most fascinating thing I learned from all my travels and coaching?

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The wind up on the ridges doesn’t care about your corporate hierarchy. It doesn’t care about department boundaries, project deadlines, or who owns which piece of the quarterly budget.
When you’re out in the hills, navigating a steep incline with the rain starting to threaten or the sun beating down on your shoulders, the corporate noise completely evaporates.

I was out there again last week with the team from Darke & Taylor.
We were out in the hills, putting the miles in, training for their big Autumn endurance event.
This wasn’t a one-off afternoon of mandatory fun. This was another deliberate step on a longer journey we’ve been taking together. And as I watched them move across the landscape, I caught myself smiling.

It is incredibly refreshing—and honestly, quite rare these days—to see a team who are sincerely, genuinely excited about a hike day. No one was dragging their heels. No one was checking their watch every twenty minutes to see when they could slip back to their car.

They were fully present. In the terrain. With each other.

But it was a comment from one of the senior leadership team during a brief pause at a viewpoint that really stood out to me. They looked back down the line of hikers, watched the groups mingling, and said:

"Ben, it’s just fantastic to hear people who don’t normally work in tandem chatting away like this. I just heard someone say, ‘Haven’t seen you since the last walk, how’s the family?’—Ben, those conversations simply do not happen in the normal, day-to-day operations of the workplace."

That single observation hits the nail squarely on the head.

​It reveals the invisible friction that is quietly draining the energy, culture, and collaborative power of almost every major business today.

There is a moment in every fitness coach’s career where you realise you aren’t just building muscle or prescribing heart rate zones anymore.

​You are building a community. Or, if you are incredibly lucky, a community finds you.

Three years ago, my running days were firmly behind me.
​Decades of throwing myself down trails on a mountain bike, countless tackles on the football pitch, and the inevitable, relentless "wear and tear"—my preferred euphemism for the creaks, groans, and structural complaints of a body well-used and broken many times—had forced me to hang up my distance shoes some years back.

I was a coach, content to stay on the sidelines of runs, program the workouts, to watch and support my guys chase the horizon. (My passion had shifted back into mountain biking, paddleboarding and hiking)

Then, I met a very rare group of people.
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They were a tight-knit squad who had trained together for many years. When their long-term coach moved on, they found themselves at a crossroads, searching for someone to take them into the next chapter.

To my absolute honour, they chose me.

What I expected was a standard coaching gig.

​What I inherited was a masterclass in the true meaning of group fitness, a renewed sense of purpose, and an annual pilgrimage to one of the most eccentric, brutal, and beautiful endurance events in the UK: The Man V Horse.

For decades, the blueprint for corporate hospitality and team bonding was written in the glow of neon signs and paid for on the company plastic. If a team hit a milestone, survived a grueling quarter, or welcomed a cohort of new starters, the solution was simple: stick a credit card behind the bar, buy a mountain of finger food, and let the good times roll.

For a long time, it worked. Or, at least, we thought it worked.

But the corporate landscape has fundamentally transformed.
The good old days of Friday afternoon pub sessions and forced happy hours are rapidly fading into history. Today’s workforce doesn’t want an open bar; they want something entirely different. They want authenticity, wellness, and genuine connection.

If you are still trying to build a cohesive company culture using outdated, alcohol-fueled social calendars, you aren’t just behind the times—you are actively missing out on the deeper, more meaningful engagement your team is craving.

The Myth of Hybrid Connection

There is no denying that the shift towards hybrid and remote working models has brought incredible benefits.
Employees enjoy greater autonomy, better work-life balance, and fewer hours wasted in gridlock traffic.

On paper, productivity is thriving.

​But beneath the surface of slick project management boards and perfectly curated video calls, a quiet crisis of disconnection is brewing.

There is a specific kind of quiet that settles over the foothills of Snowdonia (Yr Wyddfa) just before a climb begins.

It is a mix of cool mountain air, the rustle of adjusting backpack straps, and a collective, unspoken nervous energy.
This past weekend, a group of brave souls stood at the base of the mighty Snowdon ascent, looking up at a summit veiled in mist and myth.

To the uninitiated, it is a beautiful postcard image.
To those about to climb it, it is an imposing, towering giant that demands respect.

For the majority of our group, this environment was entirely alien.

They were step-out-of-the-comfort-zone, city-pavement-walking, routine-loving people who had never stood at the foot of something so vast.

For others, it had been a good few years—maybe even decades—since they last laced up a pair of hiking boots, leaving them wondering if their bodies still remembered how to move rhythmically uphill.

And then there was one teenager, taking on the mountain for the very first time.
What a weekend to spend with your dad. No screens, no distractions—just raw nature, just one big playground,  shared sweat, and memories forged in stone that will last a lifetime.

But if you think this blog post is a mere trip report about miles logged, elevation gained, or the changing Welsh weather, you are looking at the wrong map.

​Because this weekend wasn’t actually about the mountain. It was about what happened inside the people climbing it.

Most couples spend the morning of their wedding weekend managing a very specific brand of chaos.

There are seating plans to double-check. Catering hitches to smooth over. Pre-wedding jitters to manage.
Usually, this involves pacing up and down a hotel room, checking a watch every three minutes, or downing an early glass of prosecco to take the edge off the nerves.
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But not these two - These two are Project Active People.

And when they approached me in the buildup to their big day, they didn't want a standard itinerary.
They had a completely different blueprint in mind.
Their brief to me was beautifully simple: “Organise a session for the guests. Make it fun, competitive, and full of laughs.”

No traditional, rigid expectations. No stuffy pre-wedding protocol.
​Just an open field, a stunning location, and a group of people ready to trade their morning suits and high heels—if only for an hour or two—for something far more grounding.

​What followed was a powerful reminder of what happens when you stop viewing fitness as a chore to be ticked off a to-do list, and start viewing movement as a celebration of what the human body can do.