About Us
Student Mental Health is at our core, in a world changed by Covid. Students are struggling to recover, depression and anxiety in society is at a high and feelings of disconnect and loneliness are far too common.
Exercise is an incredible preventative combatant for mental health - move for your mind.
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University is a time for learning, socialising, and becoming the best version of yourself to prepare for the big wide world. Why hold yourself back? Build a habit that lasts a lifetime.
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WE ARE CHANGING THE GAME!
Everyone knows they should exercise or go to the gym and everyone has tried before. Yet we all derail at some point. As students the luxury of personal training or expensive gym membership to keep on track is an unattainable dream.
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Say no more! Access the knowledge and community within your means. At The Student PT we are developing our APP to solve these problems.
Students deserve the tools to manage their mental, social and physical health.
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BELONG to a COMMUNITY that will BETTER your MENTAL HEALTH!
Our Values
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IMPACT - Positively changing students lifestyles.
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EDUCATION - Handing on the baton of health and exercise knowledge to our students.
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INCLUSION - Exercise for all, no student should go without the tools needed to manage their health.
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CONNECTION - Founding friendships, more than just a community.
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WELLBEING - Mind over performance.
Our Story
Our journey began in summer 2022, when founder McCartney participated in the Essex Start-ups two-day Summer Bootcamp. Over the weeks that followed, he built our business plan with support from the team. In October he entered the Big Pitch event and was awarded an investment of £1,000.
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Shortly after, we also secured a second round of funding of £2,500 from Active Essex, as part of their LDP projects.
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At the beginning of 2023, The Student PT participated in the Essex Start-ups evolve Accelerator Programme. Being immersed in a programme that has allowed us to learn directly from industry experts and work alongside founders at a similar stage to us was transformational in terms of skills development and mindset.
Following three-months of intensive, interactive workshops, we were awarded £1,000 of funding when pitching to a panel of business professionals.
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With the wind in our sales we launched our MVP product to prove our concept at The University of Essex, providing 100 students with FREE exercise programming and community events. Learning from their experiences, struggles and barriers. Feeding the development of our APP, to address the problems faced by our students.
Maintaining regular contact with the academic department founder McCartney studied with (Sport, Rehabilitation and Exercise Science), who have supported our progress and invited him to speak to second year students undertaking the same start-up business module that started him on this career path.
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As we care about our students and the incredible skills they have to offer we took part in a 2-week sprint workshop ran by Essex Startups, where students addressed the barrier of our business allowing us to gather more information and drive forward. We have also recruited two masters' students to guide us through our marketing strategies and campaigns.
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The benefits of exercise for the physical and mental health of the student community, regardless of level or ability, has always been the central focus of The Student PT. In May we completed a Burpee Challenge in aid of the charity Student Minds, using social media channels to raise awareness and encourage participation, during the stress of exams season. We completed the challenge of 3,560 burpees during the month to represent the 1 in 5 students at the University of Essex who suffer with mental health issues (total student population of 17,800). The challenge raised £350 for a charity with student wellbeing at its core.
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At the end of May we participated in the Essex Startups Student Showcase, sharing our journey so far with members of the University’s senior management team, academics, students, graduates, and local enterprise experts. The event culminated with a prize giving ceremony where we were awarded winner in the One to Watch category.
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In June, we on-boarded co-founder Jamie Leigh with his background in software development to assume the role of CTO. With Jamie working full-time, The Student PT became his side project. At this stage, we recruited help for the designs and development of Student PT Connect, working closely with another student start-up at The Innovation Centre based at The University of Essex.
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We are now in the stage of finalising the development and launch strategy of our app at the end of November. We are certainly reaching a crucial point as we prepare to enter the pilot phase, but we are ready to embrace the challenges and are excited to see what the future will bring for The Student PT.
McCartney's Story
The pivotal point in my life was just beginning, taking me in a new direction. Submitting my application to study BSc Sports and Exercise Science at the University of Essex, the biggest decision hundreds of thousands of young people make every year.
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Little was I to know the impact this decision would have on my life, with an unconditional offer, I set my sights on beginning my university life in September 2019, sold on the idea this would be my chance to meet new friends and become a better version of myself. Roll on September moving into South Courts accommodation, anxious on what the day would hold, a feeling I was not used to. Freshers week was a success making many new friends and enjoying many nights in Sub Zero (campus club), however the dust settled soon after.
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Nothing prepared me for the challenges ahead. Term starts and I immerse myself in a few sports clubs in the hope to fit in. I was met by the polar opposite from one of these clubs, the fear of fitting in and toxic masculinity consuming every social event, and not finding the friends I had hoped for, on top of this a workload unlike any I had experienced and no support network. I did however find an outlet in the Cycling club.
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I had my solid friendship group, but found myself seeing others excel socially becoming the social butterfly I expected to become. I reverted to my home comfort in the form of the gym, at this time I had no idea how to workout, what to do and experienced anxiety at the thought of going to the gym. Asking my small friendship group to find someone to go with, I occasionally found someone, but never regularly due to our inconsistent timetabling.
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I was not prepared for the months ahead, unconfident, and unable to exercise to manage my mental state, I took a rapid decline, withdrawing myself from the small group of friends I had and not getting out of bed until my afternoon lectures and then going back to bed straight after. My focus, nutrition and overall self-care fell off a cliff. At the time I was too proud to admit I was struggling with depression and was isolating myself. If it was not for the cycling club every Saturday, I cannot begin to imagine how different this story could have been.
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I knew what I needed to do to be a good student, to be healthy, to be social, to become successful, but I could not overcome the low self-esteem and growing personal debt. I managed to maintain my small friendship group and put on a front of the outgoing confident group member. We moved into a house share for our second year of university.
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In September 2020, after a summer break haunted by Covid-19 and the breakdown of the relationship I had been in since joining university, my mental state was tested once again. All teaching had been moved to Zoom and little to no contact with the outside world. The experience of university was looking bleak, however this was to be the turning point.
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The second-year crisis forced me closer with those I lived with, we were all going through the same things, and with lectures being on Zoom we could catch up when we wanted and make the most of our days. My house-mate became obsessed with getting out for walks together, this enabled me to clear my head and focus on my future.
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Fuelled with this motivation, I decided I wanted to join the Army, which required me to get in shape. Googling gyms in my local area I stumbled across Iceni Training - a gym just 2 minutes away from my house, a place that would play a huge role in my future.
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Signing up to the gym, I decided to sort my morning habits and get exercise out the way so I could juggle university, my housemates, and work at Tesco. Setting myself the challenge to get up and be in the gym every morning for 7am. In November 2020, lockdown 2 hit the country, this was make or break. With the gym lending me equipment and the community at Iceni being so strong, a text from Gemma (a coach at Iceni) gave me the motivation to keep my new routine going.
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Maintaining this exercise routine throughout lockdown when gyms reopened meant I had formed the habit of exercising. At this point, I received an email from a personal training course I had signed up for in my first year, but completely forgot about and decided to complete it.
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Fast forward to September 2021, my final year of university, Jan (owner of Iceni), offered me a job as a personal trainer - a golden opportunity. At the same time I was rejected from the army. Throwing myself into the world of personal training, I never looked back.
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During the writing of my dissertation, Jan asked me what was next. My close minded answer was, "work full time here", to which he questioned, "Yeah okay, but what do you know? How can you help others?". This got me thinking back to the experiences above and this is when The Student PT was born.
Jamie's Story
I’m Jamie and my experience with university was a bit different to normal. I did an apprenticeship in Software Engineering, meaning although my company paid for my tuition, I worked 4 days a week, leaving just one day a week to have 9-5 lectures. That meant I missed out a lot on student events and socials, as they were mostly during the week.
As such, the majority of my learning was on my own. I struggled with essay writing, especially as I didn’t have people to ask about the right or wrong ways of doing things, and felt excluded from the university life as I could never make their workshops, events or socials. In my second and third years, I worked more closely with other apprentices, and quickly realised how much difference that makes! Just an hour or two with people going through the same thing as you really helped me, and bouncing ideas off each other made writing assignments less difficult, and helped my grades too.
Throughout school and sixth form, I joined various gyms and the pattern was always the same - join a gym, work out intensely for 3-6 months and see a few gains, then leave again as my motivation plummeted.
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During my third year of university I joined Iceni, where McCartney happened to be working, and quickly realised how much difference a friendly environment, as well as a carefully written workout plan can really make.
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My motivation for joining the gym was (like a lot of people) to get bigger/stronger, but after 6 months or so at Iceni, my motivation changed as I realised I was getting a lot more from the gym mentally than physically. The social aspect of the gym really helped with that, especially as the workouts weren’t necessarily based on rewarding the strongest people, instead everyone was equal and as long as you put in the effort, you did a great job.