Barry is a Trailblazers success story.  After many years of struggling with addiction he has successfully completed a year in Rehab, and is now involved in mentoring addicts in early recovery.  He has established his own Personal Training business, BOSSFIT ACADEMY, offering personal training, nutrition plans and online coaching.  As a Life Coach, he is using his own life experiences to help others as part of the BOSSFIT ACADEMY brand.  He is developing a team of trainers in different locations, and has a personalised fitness clothing brand.

John has been a Trailblazers’ Mentor since 2014.   He runs his own Artist Management Company working with classical musicians.  It is a demanding and all-encompassing job and he joined Trailblazers because he had reached a point when he felt he needed a different focus.  He wanted to do something that would help young people, and realised that it was possible to help young offenders turn their lives around with guidance, encouragement and support.

My relationship with Barry began in 2016 and together we have been on a 5-year journey of self-discovery and acceptance.  A major part has been about conquering demons – how to come to terms with the events in childhood that led him down a destructive path.  Over the years there have been a number of false starts and times when we seemed to be making little or no progress, but we have now reached a place where we are able to look back on what has been learned and what has been achieved. We now appreciate how every step along the way had purpose and meaning.  The key elements are perseverance and trust.

At our first meeting I realised that Barry was desperate to share his story with someone who would understand.  It was a learning curve for us both.  I had to learn about the constant struggle that an addict faces each day, and Barry had to understand that I was not going to judge him.   There were two important stages early on.  First to identify that he wanted to pursue a career as a Personal Trainer.  Second to encourage his gift as a writer.  Barry is a great raconteur and would tell me stories about his life.  I inspired him to write these down and this was the beginning of him writing the story of his life.  It was also a way of opening up to me. Little by little he revealed more about himself through his writings – about his life and the reasons behind his actions.

Everything started well.  When, after 3 months of working together, he was released from HMP Wandsworth, he immediately began an intensive six-week personal training course.  We had realised that it was essential he had something to immerse himself in as a distraction from temptation.  When Barry applies himself he can achieve great things and he passed the course becoming a fully qualified Personal Trainer.  He secured a job with a major gym and was soon one their most successful trainers.   His natural charm easily wins people over enabling him to get the best out of his clients.

This could have been the moment when we said goodbye and job well done, but there were still underlying situations that had not yet been resolved.  He had returned to his local area and his peer group.  There were those who were determined to bring him back down, and with his addiction they knew exactly how to achieve this.  This was the constant struggle.  Barry wanting to move on but family problems, peer pressure and ultimately temptation were holding him back.  Over the next few years this became a repetitive cycle.  Barry loosing his job, stealing money for drugs and then ending back inside.  Prison discipline suited him, but in the community, even though he had the best of intentions, the self-destructive cycle would continue.

There were times when we really believed that we had turned a corner and that he was already a finished success story, such as when we both appeared on the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire Show to highlight the work of Trailblazers.  On air, we explained that we met weekly so that Barry could talk to me about what he had been doing.  I had never been to Nandos so it was a new experience for me, but it was somewhere that he felt comfortable.  The more he trusted me the more honest he became.  There was another time when I encouraged Barry to go back to the gym to apologise for disappearing and owing clients for sessions they had paid for; the manager said he wasn’t the first person to leave in this manner but he was the first to ever come back and offer an explanation!

There has been a pattern of him offending, serving time and then on release making a great effort to secure work.  He has the ability to make a success of anything that he sets his mind to, but with money in his pocket and the negative influence of his peers his default was to return to the safe haven of drugs.  Here he was able to avoid painful memories.  Back in prison it felt as though we were starting from scratch, however, these periods gave us the opportunity to reassess his goals, to revisit some of the tasks and to appreciate the progress that we had made.

Our biggest challenge was to find a way to break the cycle, and the key was to disassociate himself from negative people and influences.  This is where my continued support proved to be essential, and Barry made every effort to keep in contact with me, perhaps realising that I would always be there for him no matter what.  The positivity and faith in him that I was able to offer helped to bring him closer to achieving his goals.

We discussed on a number of occasions that the answer might be for him to spend time in Rehab, which would give him the opportunity to distance himself from the area where he had a history, and the people who are a negative influence on him.  It was during his last period inside when he turned a corner, realizing that enough is enough and the only way to achieve his goals was to tackle the root of his addiction problem.

I have invested a lot of time and energy in this relationship, and the fact that Barry has continued to seek my support and guidance proves that he maintained the desire to sort his life out.  I will continue to support him for as long as it takes because I strongly believe that he has the ability to make something of his future.  Our next goal is to publish his autobiography, which is a page turner!

For information about Barry’s work visit www.bossfitacademy.com