
Ella Mckee is Miss September for the 2020 BBB Paddington Calendar – what a calendar that’s going to be – ooft!
This young lass originally hails from Cambridge in the UK, but has lived in Bondi for the past 6 years – “conforming to being a pommy stereotype”. Ella joined us when we reopened our doors after the rona lockdown. Officially she has been a member for about 4 months, unofficially, a little longer.. “training in Gemma’s garage with the kettlebells she had nabbed from the gym”.
Apart from not liking my music choices (who does?) Ella fit in immediately with the Paddington community, her upbeat personality and constant desire to learn was an instant hit. When asked what she was most nervous about when starting she quickly responded – “I wasn’t really nervous, to be honest, I was excited! There’s no outlandish BDE at the gym despite some mad rigs, it is still inclusive and all members are super friendly and encouraging”.
Ella has admitted that one of her goals this year was to get into weightlifting but didn’t trust herself to go solo and rely on youtube tutorials – , I have previously trained at certain gyms where you are in literal darkness and form is not on the agenda”. She has made improvements in leaps and bounds and apart from “wanting to ditch the box” for pull-ups she is a completely different athlete from when she started!
She accredits her improvement over the last 4 months to the program structure which allows her to see contrast improvement, keeping her motivated to push for PB’s week after week. This system of creating incremental adaptation week by week has resulted in “a 4% reduction in body fat and a deadlift PB!”
So what does she have planned for her future at BBB? Aside from wanting to continually improve her Olympic lifting and ditch the box for pull-ups she is striving to continue her streak of PB’s – “I am not one of the animals at BBB but I am going to keeping striving to be one. (fitspo members, not dogs)”. We can’t wait to see whats next Ella!

Harry Howe
Paddington Manager
BodyByBrando, Paddington