December 13, 2017

It’s Nolte for the win in the Saints #chairVchair Challenge

If you know CN&CO chief señor Carel Nolte – even vaguely, or purely by reputation – you’ll know that he’s not one to back away from a challenge, especially if there’s a fundraising or fitness component to it. As chair of the St Stithians Council, Carel was challenged a couple of months ago by the chair of the Old Stithian Association, Shaun Edmeston, to a fitness contest. The so-called #chairVchair Challenge would give a bit of publicity to the school’s Warriner High Performance Centre (HPC), raise some cash for the Thandulwazi Trust and get the chairs into better shape.

Plus there were major bragging rights for the winner – who, as it turned out, was the man himself, Carel Nolte.

Each of the chairs was assigned a trainer from the HPC for the two month period of the challenge. Carel was trained by Robin van Ginkel, director of hockey and head of sports science at Saints, while Shaun was trained by biokineticist Charl Kaschula. The contest comprised squats, planking, bench press, broad jump, a 2000m row and a road run. In addition, each chair’s body fat percentage was measured at the start and end, with percentage decreases compared.

“The challenge has been great,” said Carel at the end of the challenge. “From a physical perspective it has been good for me to challenge myself and it has also been good to learn from Robin and the other people who work at Saints; I’ve gained some handy tips. Overall, it has been great to do something with Shaun and it has reminded me that we have great alumni at our school.”

Shaun was gracious in defeat (although there were no real losers…): “I think it is a great, great thing that we’ve done here and we’ve raised a nice amount of money,” he said. “This is a great way for us to give back and to keep the [Saints] community going.

“Seeing we had so much fun doing it this year, we would like to expand this into an annual fundraiser. The alumni will challenge the school to a full set of fitness tests and we’ll put together a team starting early in the new year. We will see if we can improve the amount of money we raised and see if we can get some more people coming down to the HPC, which is an absolutely fantastic place.”

 

All images courtesy of St Stithians. Feature image shows Charl Kaschula, Shaun Edmeston, Carel Nolte and Robin van Ginkel after the #chairVchair Challenge.