We deal with lots of different businesses as part of our work at thebestofnorwich and we do try to get a real feel for those businesses.  Well this week I found myself doing fitness in the park on Monday and then board breaking and pole bending on Thursday.

Not your usual 9-5 office job then!

I thought I was fairly fit but the fitness session in the park used muscles that I didn't know existed. Run by Liberte Fitness, it has been devised by Loughborough University and gives a full workout. Being outdoors was great and the group were really supportive. It was hard going part way through as I wasn't used to this sort of exercise, but I can see that if you did it every week, it would get easier. I felt fantastic for the rest of the week in spite of aching muscles.

Papillon, the founder of Liberte Fitness says that people of all ages and sizes take part, and you don't need to worry about what you wear either - once you roll around in a few rabbit droppings, no one is going to be looking at how fashionable you are. For me this is a big plus. I never go to the gym or organised sport, so I don't have any of the kit.

Mind you, Liberte are just bringing out their own brand of sports clothing and even people who don't take part in the fitness sessions have been asking to buy them - they have a rather interesting slogan on the back!

Just as the muscle ache set in on Thursday, I turned up at a day of personal development and team building training with Think!Training in Norwich.

Louise, Tosin and Anna are very relaxed, but they certainly know what they are talking about and have a lot of experience helping some very big businesses with team building and change management.

They went through some fascinating topics and made the day fun with lots of interaction. It was all built around making you think, making you come to your own conclusions and therefore the learning was much more effective than if they just told you what you should be doing.

There was a hilarious team building exercise that really showed people's personalities, and taught us how to tailor our communication to people’s individual preference.

The best part of the day for me was the board breaking. Learning to see through "obstacles" - seeing "through" the board and focussing on the target on the other side. For me that was a poweful visual aid.

The hardest part of the board breaking was holding my arms up with my aching muscles for the exercises beforehand!

The bar bending was more difficult but amazing - I still can't work out how we did it, but we did.

So, thank you to Papillon of Liberte Fitness and Louise, Tosin and Anna from Think! Training for a fascinating and rather unusual week.

(Think! photos courtesy of Julia Holland, All About Image)