Urban Gym Presents: UR Podcast

What happens when you finally hit your target weight, goal, life or achieve that 'impossible' PB, but still feel like something is missing? In this season finale of UR Podcast, we're exploring the essential philosophy of going beyond results. Ever feel like you're being held to ransom by data, where a single number on a scale or graph can instantly wipe away weeks of positive momentum and feeling...

It's the penultimate episode of Season 3, and this week Andy and Ken dive deep into the heart of what makes a gym more than just a place to sweat: the social dimension of fitness. Are you tired of feeling like just another anonymous number in a commercial gym or struggling to find the motivation to train alone?  This week's chats explore how, over the past few years, we've cultivated a 'tribe...

What happens to your fitness journey when your body stops playing by the rules? In this week's episode of UR Podcast, we're diving into the often invisible world of training with chronic conditions. The gym floor over the years has opened up discussions on everything from heart health and diabetes to MS and Lyme, with many athletes and some of our own community fighting battles that no one else ca...

Life is a constant flow of transitions, but how do you maintain your momentum when your identity or routine shifts? In this week's episode of the UR Podcast, we're exploring the vital role of training through major life transitions. Whether you are navigating a career change, parenthood, injury, or the "halftime" milestone of turning 40, discover why fitness serves as an essential anchor that prov...

On this week's episode of UR Podcast, we're exploring the vital role of recovery, shifting the focus from how hard we can train to how effectively we can recover from the stress we put on our bodies. Discussions this week challenge the 'hustle' mentality, looking at why downtime and protected time are crucial for both physical performance and long-term well-being. We'll touch on the benefits of ac...

In this edition of UR Podcast, we're diving into the world of nutrition (or rather dipping our toes into it), exploring nutrition for life and how fuelling your body can impact daily performance and long-term well-being. Much like UR fitness journey, nutrition is highly individual and must be sustainable for the long haul.  From keeping things simple to habit-stacking, focusing on 'low-hangin...

Whether you've taken a break from fitness due to injury, parenthood, career changes, or simply life overwhelming you, this episode is your roadmap back.  On this week's edition of UR Podcast, Andy and Ken dive deep into the psychology and practicality of restarting your fitness journey, exploring why February becomes the "now or never" moment for so many people. Andy shares the powerful "fitn...

UR Podcast is back, and the first of eight new episodes, dropping weekly, is available to listen to right now! It's been a few months since Andy and Ken took to the couch for season 2, and with our seventh birthday upon us, now's the perfect time to kick off a brand new season.  In this first episode, we're taking a quick look back over the past seven years, but more importantly, the developm...

Juggling training as a parent can be a tough call for some, so what do you do? It’s hard to believe it, but it’s the final episode of the current season of UR Podcast! See how we said ‘current’ season? You know we’ll be back for more after this one.   For our last stint behind the microphones, we’re diving into the challenges and strategies of maintaining a fitness routine as a parent. It’s n...

If there's one thing that is deemed to go hand in hand with sport, with training, with gym work or gym life, it's injury. For some, it's major - broken bones here, dislocations there, a trip to A&E here, surgery there. For others, it can be minor - a bump, a bruise, a scrape, a sprain, an ache, all of which you try and ensure don't develop into something more. But no matter how big or small, o...

On this edition of UR Podcast, we're talking all about training through pregnancy. For some, it's the most wonderful of times, for others, it can be far from rainbows and butterflies, and anything but enjoyable. So when it comes to pregnancy, however, how and where does training fit in? Should you train? Why should you train? Are you training to prepare your body for a pregnancy journey, are you t...

Everyone's talking about HYROX and everyone seemingly wants a HYROX. But what's it all about? As a veteran of a few foreign HYROX events, this episode puts Andy under questioning as both a coach and participant to get into the nitty-gritty of the fitness world's obsession with all things HYROX. What's involved in an event? Do you need to be fit and strong to take part? Just how do you train for a...

Grief. It's something we'll all experience at some point in our lives, no matter how big or small. Whether through human connection, business, sport or beyond, grief can take many forms, and for each of us, the journey is personal, unique. We'll stress too that we're not grief experts, but through learned experience, we know how grief can deeply impact someone's fitness journey. It's a missed goal...

Hands up if you’re reading this and think you need to get fit and get in shape *before* you go to a gym or take up a new sport or class. When you think about it, does that seem a little backwards to you? For many people engaging with a gym, class, training group or sport of any size, the first step can often be the most difficult. How do you cross that white line? What does it take to get through...

Where our first episode of this season brought us on a whistle-stop tour of where Urban Gym has been over the past five or six years, this episode explores the theme of training for life. Meeting people where they're at is a core philosophy of the gym and business, and with this conversation, it's about meeting people where they're at in life and training for just that - living. Why do we train th...

A lot's happened in the past few years, hasn't it? When we (as in Andy and Ken) first got together for UR Podcast, we were sat in a relatively newly-opened Urban Gym, complete with a viewing area for grappling and MMA. Remember those days? We shared the couch with an Olympic swimmer, a former Irish rugby international, a local business owner, had a few rolls and chats with Pat Divilly and more. Th...

Guess who's back? UR Podcast, from Urban Gym, returns to your ears in March 2025 with the first of eight brand-new episodes. It's been a few years since we shared the couch with business owners, Olympic swimmers, musicians, fighters, grapplers, chefs and more, but in 2025, UR Podcast returns with a brand new format, tackling topics and questions from the gym floor that are designed to help meet yo...

We've long said it as part of the podcast series - everyone has a story. This edition is our story. It's a journey that's taken four years, countless doctors, specialists, consultants, neurologists, chiropractors, pharmacists, friends, family and more to get from the summer of 2017 to 2021 where we started with a possible case of vertigo for Andy that transpired to be Chronic Lyme Disease and in t...

Hailing from Cork, Richard Shanahan is a Dublin/Meath based sport psychology practitioner. By the age of 21, 'Rich' was a 2nd dan tae kwon-do black belt, eventually running his own club in Cork (now run by his cousin). He's had a nine-year stint in army life, has completed over 800 jumps as a skydiver but more importantly - as it relates to this edition of UR Podcast - he's an extremely qualified...

"I'm gonna be the baddest dude on the planet". An interesting choice of words for our February guest whose infectious smile may have you believe otherwise. But for Urijah Faber, it's a belief he held from a very early age and sustained throughout near 20-year MMA career - that's still active. The UFC Hall of Famer joins UR Podcast to talk candidly about his early fight days, becoming the best vers...

UR special guest for the podcast this month is chef, author and broadcaster Edward Hayden. Some will know Edward from his books, from his TV appearances weekly with Virgin Media (and TV3 before that), from his radio show or you may have passed through his Culinary Arts course in WIT. "Yet to hit the big time" as he says himself, Edward started life after school on one path and very quickly discove...

Everybody's got a story and Maverick Sabre has a great one to tell. We know that over the course of 45 minutes or so, we're only getting the tip of the iceberg. Born Michael Stafford, Maverick Sabre moved to and was raised in New Ross, Wexford from an early age. By 15 he was hanging with some of the biggest names in the rap game, on stage too, before turning up for class the following morning. Wit...

Our guest for this month's podcast began their professional playing career in the early noughties by signing a youth contract with Luton Town.  While his time at The Hatters was tough to digest, it taught him lessons that were carried back to Waterford United and would set him a course that would cross the Premier League, Championship, League One, Champions League and embark on a senior internatio...

Nathalie Lennon is a health coach on a mission to deliver long term, rewarding, life-changing solutions for her clients or ‘coachees’. It’s all about empowerment, you see. Under her NLF brand - that’s Nathalie Lennon Fitness - Nathalie empowers her clients with education, tools, support and a positive environment to thrive, grow and succeed. Or, in her words, to ‘essentially rise to a place which...

Nicky Whelan has overcome adversity and life threatening injury, driven by obsession from a young age, to compete in and win strongman events. He's also the guest for this edition of UR Podcast as we reach double figures with another super story. Having discovered gym life in his late teens, Nicky Whelan stumbled into the world of strongman competition by watching Trish Porter lift a car in New Ro...