Aspiring fitness trainer takes on the 1.2m kg challenge for Movember
A fitness trainer is aiming to lift more than a million pounds a month to raise money for Movember.
Joey Jones, 30, from Murrayfield in Edinburgh, hopes to raise 1,277,125kg which he says is the combined estimated weight of all men who have committed suicide in the UK between 2021 and 2023.
He aims to raise £6,870 from the challenge, bringing his total to £10,000 for Movember, a charity which raises awareness and money for men’s mental health, suicide prevention and prostate cancer and testicular, and turns 21 in November.
Joey Jones will also take on the marathon challenge (Joey Jones/PA)
Mr Jones was inspired to take up the challenge to honor the men who died and overcome his mental health problems after he was abused 10 years ago in South Africa while playing rugby. .
“For 10 years I have struggled with mental health because of sexual abuse when I was 20 years old,” he told the PA news agency.
“I’ve always struggled with it. I’m still trying to find a way, I’m trying to find a way to change that difficult situation, a difficult thing in my life, into something good.”
Mr Jones will use five different exercises – 100kg deadlift, 80kg squat, 70kg bench press, 60kg bent over row and 40kg push press – as he attempts to complete 20,040 reps over the course of a month.
He will train every day without three days off throughout the month, and on the last day of November he will attempt three marathons of 26.2 kilometers on a ski ergometer, a machine row and cycle.
My world is in the gym, so I thought, how can I bring those statistics into my world?
Joey Jones
Mr Jones gathered data from the Office for National Statistics and 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 Statistics and Research Center for Northern Ireland for 2022.
“My world is in the gym, so I thought, how can I bring those statistics into my world? I was like, ‘What would happen if all those guys “were they standing on the scale together? How much would they weigh?” he said.
“I wanted to stop wasting my time, and the stress and the mental health issues I had and the frustration I was going to face,” she said. spend the last 10 years of my life.
Joey Jones was inspired to take on his own challenge to overcome his mental health problems (Joey Jones / PA)
“I thought, I have to act on this and not let the past define me again.”
Mr Jones said he did not talk about his experience of sexual abuse until seven years after the incident and in 2021 opened up to his then-girlfriend.
He said he encouraged her to talk to her family about the incident.
“Slowly, with Movember, it really helped my mental health because I was trying to raise money and awareness, but also naturally I’m opening up my mental health for the first time to a large audience,” he said. like that.
“My life changed a lot from the first conversation I had with my ex-girlfriend.
Joey Jones hopes to help other men living with mental health issues (Joey Jones/PA)
“The first words are always the hardest, but once you can find the courage and confidence to talk about mental health… the darkness turns to light.”
He hopes that sharing his story will help men living with mental health problems to have “the first conversation”.
“I want to be the person I knew I would be 10 years ago,” he said.
“To be a young boy and to see someone put a story about that, to come out and be open and vulnerable, would have had such an impact on me.
“For anyone struggling out there, you are not alone. I hope that if people hear my story it will inspire them to see how far they can go just by having the first conversation.”
To support Mr Jones, visit: https://uk.movember.com/mospace/14314381
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