Behind The Gram: PAUSE Meets Terroll Lewis

How old were you when you started this?

When I was nineteen. I never had money in my bank account to go to the gym.

So you didn’t have money to go to the gym, but you managed to build a gym?

2009 I came out of prison, and when I came out of prison I went to one of the commercial gyms in Brixton, can’t say their name, but went there and I tried to get a gym pass for the day, and they said I had to pay direct debit. Bear in mind I’m from the road, I’m from the streets I don’t know what direct debit is, I don’t know what a bank account is, I used to keep money under my bed.

Me, hearing that I was like “cool I can’t get in this gym, I’m just going to go on the estate and train.” So I remember I went Argos and bought a little couple of dumbbells, but that wasn’t really doing it for me so I went to this kind of abandoned playground and I just used the swings and all the apparatus around me just to do pull-ups and dips. I did a YouTube video and it got thousands of views and I was just thinking sh*t, people are actually interested in me just trying to get muscles.

This was all in 2009?

2009. It became my temple, my place of meditation, my place of getting to know myself. I felt like I was in prison again and it was me, the bar and no worry. But when I left that I went back to the estate, I went back to the craziness on the estate and what not.

I used that place as meditation and it grew and grew, we started the name Block Workout because we were training on the block and using the environment. Made a Facebook Page, started to get a bit structured with it, started doing little classes which are like a pound donation to get involved, and we used to do this in the parks all around Lambeth like Clapham, we used to do Kennington Park and Brockwell Park in Herne Hill.

So we used to do it in all these parks and people just used to come and get involved and my whole aim of this was that, not everyone can get a direct debit like I couldn’t get when I came out of prison, so that’s what I had in mind – if I can’t get into a commercial gym, there must be loads of other people who are struggling and they need this meditation to keep them focused. I said it was my meditation time to stay focused and work on myself, and I was working more than just the physical side of me but I was building my mindset and I’m here today. I’m interviewing with you guys.

Do you mind me asking why you went to prison?

Just some miscommunication, something crazy but I’m innocent that’s why I’m here today, so I’m glad I sorted out the case.

How has Brixton or South London in general shaped you as a person?

Brixton, South London we’re coming from the rubble man. We come from a very broken place, broken home, and every single step is a building block. As long as we’re not taking backwards steps into where we’re coming from, then that’s progress. They say don’t mistake movement for progress, the progress is in your mind.

That’s the progress you need first and Brixton has been the foundation of me, the foundation of everything I built, to be honest, and the streets, the trouble, all of the negative stuff, it moulded me. I’m the same exact person as who I was before but with different values of life. I left the streets because I wanted a future, not because I was under pressure or scared of anyone. I was active in a lot of bullsh*t growing up, obviously as a child of gangs and all that type of stuff, but I wanted a future, I wanted to do some normal sh*t. I wanted to go and ride horses on a Tuesday afternoon, I wanted to have tea and crumpets, you know what I mean, I wanted to do some normal stuff like that and now I’m doing it. I’m a Brixton boy riding horses that’s mad, but we’re doing this stuff so, slow progress better than no progress. It starts in the mind.

So you obviously founded a gym, and then you also have your own YouTube channel as well, tell me about your career and how that’s shaped your growth in life and in general?

To be honest, everything is in line with what I do, it’s not out of my way. I’m not going to say yeah I own a trainer company, that’s not really my thing, but fitness, cool I got the gym, and I got a beard so I started beard products. Then I started to open a juice bar in Brixton, a vegan juice bar.

Are you vegan?

No, but I just love vegan food. Everything I do stems from the fitness side of things, from working out in the playground to owning a gym, then me growing a beard and starting my own beard products.

How do you stay motivated to go to the gym? I think that’s a big question for most people, where do you get the motivation from?

Life throws different things at you, from my training at that kid’s playground with no worry to having to pay bills and pay rent and sign leases and stuff like that, it’s a big change. I can’t just do pull-ups and dips now, I’ve got to find a balance between the marketing, the PR, looking after the brand, nurturing the brand – this is a baby. I’ve got to look after all of these babies and feed them, and change them and have to grow them. You’ve just got to do it, just go for it.

How often do you train?

Pretty much every day.

Do you think everyone has to train every day?

No, a lot of people mistake training for running up and down, sweating. It’s not just about running up and down and sweating but, it’s about training your mind, that’s the place. Before anything physically, you have to first acknowledge a strong mind is going to help you in the long run, an open mind. I used to hate waking up in the morning early, but I knew that I was missing out on so much in the morning, I used to complain that there weren’t enough hours in the day, but I was getting up at like 1/2pm.

So what I started doing is I started going to the shop, which was like half a mile down the road, every single morning at 7 am to go and get a paper. On my life, I never used to read a paper. Seriously, so that kind of set in my mind, I used to go down and get a paper every morning and then just grab a juice.

Then that turned from me walking up and down to get that in the morning, to me walking up and down drinking a coffee in the morning, to me starting my day in the morning. To me actually jogging to that shop and jogging back in the morning. It became a normal routine, like brushing my teeth, it never became a chore, this was something I needed to do on a day to day basis. And like I said I wasn’t a fan of going to the gym and going “alright I’m going to do four sets of this, four sets of that”, that’s not life, you have to be a bird, you got to be free, I hate when I feel like there’s pressure, or anything controlled.

Looking at your journey, you’ve moulded yourself into an entrepreneur basically from when you were 19, going to the gym and finding out how it works and figuring out how to do it yourself, that’s grown you into an entrepreneur now.

I like the word jobless.

Jobless? You’ve got a job though!

I’m jobless in terms of society, I like the word entrepreneur but I think it gets thrown around too much. I want to start a program called Jobless where we nurture these entrepreneurial minds, especially young boys coming from the streets and transfer that energy into projects or dreams they may have.

I just started a new company called The Mantle, and it’s a safe space for young men and men to come and speak about different things, like us as men we brush things under the carpet and we tend to do that all the time because “I’m a warrior, I’m going to move forward I’m going to push through it” mentality and we push things under the carpet and we don’t heal. Life becomes a stumbling block because we’re dealing with these issues and these problems.

You’ve spoken about depression publicly online, a lot of men don’t open up about this. What made you be so open about it?

For me, I just have to say I’ve got a platform for a reason, and I think if I can open up to speak about certain things, I can encourage others to speak more as well and not hold in these thoughts. I’ve been on the verge of even committing suicide, and the only thing that changed my mindset about that was the news about my daughter coming, that changed me as a person.

That’s where the idea coming up with an event to talk about the struggles men go through or the conversations we don’t have, and I thought we really need to have more meaningful conversations as men, and if I have this platform, it’s not just to look good and stroke my beard, it’s to encourage and give back. Where I’m coming from, we don’t talk about things, we just get on with life, but there’s a lot of people that need, they just a conversation, they need someone to say you know what, even if it’s just one person, just to talk to someone about some real sh*t.

Literally, just talk, just have a conversation, a real conversation that you’re going to leave with something from that conversation. It’s impactful in you, it’s life changing conversation, there’s a lot of empty conversations and people just talking for the sake of talking, and time you don’t get back. You don’t get time back, people buy certain microwaves to speed up the time of cooking the food, it just shows time you don’t get back, so look after time it’s precious.

Do you feel social media, especially Instagram is a good thing or a bad thing?

Social media can help you to swim, but it can also drown you as well so you have to find the balance. Keep your head above water but don’t go underwater too much or you’ll die (laughs) you have to be careful.

Why do you say that?

It can, people can look at my journey on social media and you will see the ups and downs. I’m glad I’ve been through a lot of the stuff I’ve been through over the years through social media, I knew I was able to handle it because I’ve come from such a broken place.

People like me only know how to survive. But, like I said it, can come to a breaking point where you do break and no matter what conversation or no matter what person you speak to, you’re already stepped off the cliff so you have to be careful when you get to that point, you definitely have to speak about your problems to the right people and open up to the right people and people who really, really want to see you grow as a person.

Social media now is just “what can he do for me” or “what she can do for me” or, “what can this brand do for me” or “what can this influencer do for me”, but what about the conversations “have you eaten today?” “how was your sleep last night”, real conversations that we don’t ask, like “how are you as a person?”

We’re losing touch with our human self a lot now, because everything’s becoming so digitalised, and it’s about how fast you can grow and how fast you can get there. There are positives and negatives, but balance is important.

Exactly, I don’t stay on there too long, I do what I need to do. I got all the brands that we work on there so you do have to go on social media for these things, it’s the world we live in today, but I don’t focus too much on there. I’m in the physical world should I say, I do a lot of stuff behind the scenes that is not on social media, I just find a balance, balance is key.

How do you feel having a public social relationship online?

Everybody’s different, I would never take back having a public social relationship, because it’s part of my journey, and like I say life is like a game, you got checkpoints, and then you’ve got the end of the game, some people’s gonna be in your life for checkpoints.

You have to appreciate and be thankful for the good times and the bad times because that’s moulded you into who you are today moving forward. So yeah, definitely, if people want to share moments on social media as well as save memories, some people have photo albums, some people have vlogs.

So that was my photo album, the vlog, the memories, so it plays a part in your life so if people want to share that, so be it, but for me, doing that again on social media, I don’t know.