I'm Stevie.
I've coached
since 2010. Ex-Army, coaching since 2010, and still on the gym floor for every session. Sanctuary Fitness is my own gym at Clydebank Business Park. I write every plan myself and measure what happens, so nobody has to guess.

Hi, I'm Stevie. Sixteen years of coaching, one gym, one coach, and a long line of people who walked in nervous and walked out stronger than they thought they could be. I'm the one you'll deal with here: at your first chat, on the gym floor, and on the other end of the WhatsApp at nine at night when you're not sure which class to book tomorrow. (Book it. You'll be glad you did.)

Before all this I was an infantry soldier in the British Army, and I served on operations overseas. I don't talk about it much and I won't here, but it made me. You learn to turn up every time, to do the hard, unglamorous work properly when nobody is watching, and to look after the people beside you no matter what. I brought all of that into coaching. It is the whole job, and I am very good at it.

How it started

It started with a wee running club in Drumchapel in 2010: a handful of folk and a lot of Scottish weather. It grew because it worked. Circuits in the park, then indoors at the Phoenix Centre, then Personal Training from a space I built beside my house on Garscadden Road. For seven years I coached sixty-odd people a month there, hundreds over the years, almost every one of them sent by a client who'd got a result and couldn't keep it to themselves.

In 2017 I took on three more instructors and we grew to about 125 clients a month. In 2021 we moved to Clydebank Business Park, into bigger units. In August 2026 I went out on my own, and the gym at Spectrum House became Sanctuary Fitness: my own place, with my own name above the door. Here's the bit that tells you everything: every single client came with me. Not most of them. All of them. New name, the same people.

The paperwork

Level 3 Personal Trainer, CIMSPA recognised. An HND in Health, Fitness and Exercise from Glasgow Clyde College, which is where the anatomy and physiology comes from: I know what your shoulder is doing when it hurts and why your knee complains on the stairs. Level 4 Sports Nutrition. Level 4 Obesity and Weight Management. A Strength and Conditioning diploma. GP Exercise Referral qualified, so if your doctor has told you to exercise, I can take that referral and work to their notes. First aid trained, in the classroom and long before that in the field with the Army. Fully insured. I'm telling you so you know the standard behind the coaching. You'll never hear me quote any of it at you mid-squat.

Who I coach

Everybody who's willing to turn up. Folk in their sixties who came in convinced they'd break and now deadlift. The 6am crew, in before the world's awake and quietly smug about it all day. Mums and dads squeezing it in round the school run. Footballers and rugby players who want to be harder to knock over. People who have paid for three gyms and used none of them. I've watched all of it walk through the door, and I know exactly what to do with it.

What people say about me

Have a read of the reviews. The words that keep coming up are "at ease", "encouragement", "family" and "life-changing". I'll take those over "intense" any day. Anyone can write you a programme; the internet is full of them. Getting a nervous person through the door, and back through it next week, and the week after, until the tape measure proves the point, is the actual job. That's the bit I'm best at and the bit I love. 4.9 on Google, 100% recommended on Facebook, 5.0 on Tripadvisor, and I know most of the folk who wrote them by name.

The awards on the shelf say the same thing: Glasgow's Personal Trainer of the Year two years running, a Scottish award for the best sport and fitness business, and a community award I'm prouder of than either. They were a few years back, under the old name. The coach is the same.

How I do it

Simply, and properly. I coach every session myself; you get me, not a rota. I write your plan for the week you've got, not the one you wish you had. We measure at the start and the end, so the result is a number you can see rather than a feeling you hope for. Nothing's banned, I'm not selling you shakes, and nobody in here is looking at you. They're too busy with their own kettlebell.

If you're nervous

Everybody is. It lasts about ten minutes, and then you're one of us. Message me, come and have a look round, ask me anything, including the daft questions. I answer every message myself. The first chat is free, ten minutes, at the gym or on WhatsApp, no pressure and no judgement. Eight weeks from now you'll be glad you sent that message.

Outside the gym I'm a bit of a geek about focus and attention, and it shows in how I coach: one thing at a time, and no noise.