From an early age Simon Smith loved sport, from tennis in the back garden, dreaming of a Wimbledon final, to football on a patch of grass in front of his house, dreaming of playing for Arsenal.
He ‘saw the light’ aged 11 after starting rugby at Gowerton Grammar School in Wales. He wanted to play at Cardiff Arms Park, though not for Wales – for England! His English father had watched his national team lose to Wales throughout the 70’s when Wales were invincible.
Starting as a scrum half and moving through all the back line positions, Simon settled on the wing and was fortunate to play in 2 winning Cambridge University sides at Twickenham in the early 80’s.
His big break was playing for the Barbarians as the uncapped player in 1984 against the touring Australian team who had beaten all the home nations. He played against David Campese, and scored a try in a thrilling game resulting in a 37-31 win to Australia.
Playing club rugby for Wasps with other English internationals, a first cap was won against Romania, a try scoring debut, followed by 8 consecutive games and another 2 tries.
Going to New Zealand on tour, he admits the Haka was a daunting spectacle to face before playing! He was lucky to stop playing before Jonah Lomu came onto the scene.
Playing in the amateur era, he went on rugby tours all over the world including Australia, New Zealand, Japan, US and Romania.
He came to Cranleigh in 1995 with his family as an Economics teacher and rugby coach. Needless to say, he has more passion for sport than economics!
He retrained as a personal trainer in 2003. His work ranges from training teenagers, keen to improve their sprinting speed, to adults recovering from illness or injury. He also caters to those of us that simply want to get a bit fitter! He finds the variety of fitness issues fascinating. Group coaching is done in the form of circuit training in Cranleigh Baptist Church Back Hall on Tuesday evenings at 7.30pm.
He concentrates on 1:1 personal training with some sessions consisting of 2-4 people undertaken either in his gym or in client homes. Another side to Simons life is modelling. He started with Boden clothes, moved onto comfortable cardigans for Farah Classics before making a spectacle of himself for Specsavers! A highlight was a trip to Cana- da to do a commercial for a drug company.
Please contact Simon
on: 07793 221017 if you are thinking of personal training in 2016
