Thirteen years of outdoor fitness at Stave Hill
Bootcamp SE16 started in 2013 with a handful of people in a park in Rotherhithe. It now has a few hundred members across Canada Water and Bromley, and the idea hasn’t changed: book in, get coached properly, go home better than you arrived.
Steph
Bootcamp SE16 is run by Steph Jannati, who founded it in 2013 and still coaches.
She started it for a straightforward reason. Plenty of people around Canada Water and Rotherhithe wanted to be fitter and were never going to get there in a gym, because it bored or intimidated them and nothing about it kept them going.
What she built instead was a fixed time, in a park, with a coach who knows your name and a group who notice when you’re missing. Thirteen years later that’s still the whole model, and it’s still why it works.
Steph is a mum of two and runs the business alongside a team of local coaches. If you ring the number on this site, there’s a good chance she is the one who answers.
The coaches
Sessions are taken by a team of local coaches, and each one brings something slightly different, which is why the week never feels repetitive.
They watch what you’re doing
Technique gets corrected as you go. It’s the single thing members mention most in reviews, and it’s the difference between training for years and getting injured in month two.
They adapt on the spot
Bad knee, healing shoulder, first session in a decade, six months post-partum. Tell the coach at the start and you’ll get a version of the session that works for you.
They learn your name
Even in a busy session. It sounds like a small thing and it’s the reason people who never stuck at anything are still here three years later.
The community bit, which we didn’t plan
Birthdays, Pride sessions, park clean-ups, and a lot of standing about talking afterwards in the cold.
“A proper link to the local community. It is weirdly hard to meet your neighbours in London even when you are literally surrounded by them. Bootcamp somehow solves this.”
Where we train
Canada Water, SE16
Stave Hill Ecological ParkDock Hill Avenue, London SE16 6AX
The original location, running since 2013. Ten minutes from Canada Water and Surrey Quays stations.
Bromley, BR2
Park House Rugby ClubBarnet Wood Road, Bromley BR2 7AA
Bootcamp BR2, running the same sessions with the same coaching. Parking on site. Wednesday evening and Sunday morning sessions are at Beccehamians Rugby Club in West Wickham.
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See what it’s actually like
Thirteen years of people saying they weren’t the sort of person who does this.
From £9 a session once you join