David Baum

Firstly I am a public speaker, so what I am about to write is well known and forms part of my current talks. I would like to point out that I’m 59 and definitely not a ripped gym user. From the age of 14 until I left school, I was bullied, kicked and punched every day and I still carry the scars of these attacks. The bullies discovered I was Jewish, which was odd as some had been at my Bar mitzvah (apparently I killed Jesus!). I compounded this by switching from having a paper round and hada Saturday job as a shampoo boy, which obviously made me GAY!
I thought, when I left school the pain would go away, but it didn’t. For years if I ever saw one of the bullies, I would cross the road to avoid them. Eventually I quit hairdressing, and went to work for my family as a sales rep and ended up having a series of car smashes. While the physical scars healed, the mental ones didn’t, and I would get flash backs whenever I saw anything about bullying or heard a car smash, but like most people I bottled it up, (not cool or British to admit you have a weakness). After Melanie & I got married, we suffered a myriad of events including both of our sons requiring major surgery and both at times close to death. The final straw for me was when Mel was diagnosed with Breast Cancer and I began carrying the guilt of telling her not to see the doctor, fortunately she didn’t listen to me as she had a grade 5 cancer. I was finally ordered to get some help as I wanted to kill myself fortunately, counselling saved my life.
I then got on with living and put the experience to the back of my mind, until that is when I started to take part in last year’s 22 x 22 press up challenge. I worked out that in the US 22 ex-service men and women took their lives everyday due to PTSD, this equated to 8030 men and women a year. I then began to think of my experience and that of Mel surviving cancer and the trauma she went through, our sons & I realised that it wasn’t just 8030 but 100,000’s of men, women & children who can and are suffering. This can be someone who like Mel survived cancer, or a parent whose child has died or been kidnapped or harmed, someone who is GAY but frightened to be open, been made redundant, survived an atrocity such as Westminster Bridge, witnessed it first hand or just seeing it on tv, a child whose parent is killed all this and more, the list is endless, can be the cause of developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It has been worked out that last year 4,600 men took their own lives in the UK. Recently it was disclosed that 25% of all deaths can be attributed to Mental Health.
So I decided to do something about it and created The 365 Challenge. I spoke to Mind, who once they realised it wasn’t the usual charity campaign, gave us permission to add their logo to our marketing material. I also realised that as it was a fitness based challenge (but not solely), then it should also be linked to a gym. I approached Brigid Mansfield of The Gym Watford, who without any hesitation said yes bring it to Watford. Since then The 365 Challenge has been adopted by all of the gyms within The Gym Group and approved of by John Treharne. During the last 6 months Metro Bank, 4 Networking, WCR, StickyCut Prints, Gerald Edelman and Banana Apps have recognised the need of The 365 Challenge and are supporting our efforts.
I’m very proud that I’ve been told that The 365 Challenge is beginning to have an effect, as 30 people have now sought out help and contacting counsellors. Just as important is that those involved in fitness and health recognise the benefit of what we are trying to achieve & have people across the globe taking part, each has their own reason.
This is obviously a potted history of The 365 Challenge. So how does someone take up the challenge? Well it is relatively simple. The first thing to understand that unlike any other charity, people taking part are not expect to raise a penny or nominate anyone to take part. All they need to do is commit to undertake 365 sessions. Each session consists of a number of “reps” (repetitions) that can be anything from traditional sit-ups or press ups or similar to walking 22 paces or even making 22 coconut pyramids (as my wife did during Passover). The 365 sessions are split in to 4 sets.
1 – 99 = 22 reps
100 – 199 = 30 reps
200 – 299 = 40 reps
300 – 365 = 50 reps.
The only other thing that someone has to do is film themselves doing the set. They do need to announce that “Today is my day? of The 365 Challenge and were raising awareness of the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in association with The Gym Group and supporting the ethos of MIND” The participant can then either up load to Facebook, Instagram etc or they can send it to me & I’ll up load to social media.
I’m delighted that something I started now have people taking part and being followed around the World, the latest country being Canada. The result is that more people seeking help, however I would love more people taking up the Challenge, as it not only helps raise awareness it is a great way of getting regular exercise.