Aspiring fitness coach takes on million-kilo challenge for Movember

An aspiring fitness coach wants to lift more than a million pounds in a month to raise money for Movember.

Joey Jones, 30, from Murrayfield in Edinburgh, hopes to lift 1,277,125kg, which he believes is the estimated combined weight of all the men who committed suicide in Britain between 2021 and 2023.

He aims to raise £6,870 from this challenge, to take his grand total to £10,000 for Movember, a charity that raises awareness and money for men’s mental health, suicide prevention and prostate and testicular cancer, which will launch in November 21 years old.

Mr Jones was inspired to take on the challenge of honoring the men who died and overcoming his mental health problems after he was sexually assaulted a decade ago in South Africa, where he was pursuing a rugby career.

“I struggled with my mental health for ten years after being sexually abused when I was 20,” he told the PA news agency.

“I’ve always had trouble with it. I tried to find a way out, to find a way to turn that difficult situation, the difficult thing in my life, into something positive.

Mr Jones will use five different exercises – the 100kg deadlift, the 80kg squat, the 70kg bench press, the 60kg bent over row and the 40kg push press – as he completes 20,040 reps over the month. trying to complete.

He will train every day, apart from three rest days during the month, and on the last day of November he will attempt a triple marathon of 42.2 kilometers each on a ski ergometer, a rowing machine and a bicycle.

Mr Jones collected data from the Office for National Statistics and the National Records of Scotland to find out how many men died by suicide between 2021 and 2023.

He combined these figures with statistics from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency for 2022.

“My world takes place in the gym, so I thought: how can I bring those statistics into my world? I had the idea: ‘What if all those men were on the scale together? How much would they weigh?’” he said.

“I wanted to stop wasting my time, and the depression and mental health issues I’ve had and the trauma I would have to deal with has consumed the last decade of my life,” he said.

“I thought: I have to do something about this and stop letting the past define me.”

Mr Jones said he did not speak about his experiences of sexual assault until seven years after the incident and opened up to his then girlfriend in 2021.

He said she encouraged him to talk to his family about the incident.

“Slowly but surely, through Movember, it has really helped my own mental health as I tried to raise money and awareness, but also naturally open up about my own mental health to a wider audience for the first time,” he said.

“My life has changed significantly since that first conversation I had with my ex-girlfriend.

“The first words are always the hardest, but once you find the courage and confidence to talk about your mental health… the darkness only gets lighter.”

He hopes sharing his story will help men with mental health issues have their ‘first conversation’.

“I want to become the person I knew I would need to be 10 years ago,” he said.

“Being a young boy and seeing someone post a story about that, coming out and being so open and vulnerable would have had such an impact on me.

“For anyone who is having a hard time out there: you are not alone. I hope that when people hear my story, they will get some encouragement about where they can go just by having that first conversation.