Find Yourself with John Cheah
Sweating and laughing hard through Metcon60 at LEVEL made us big fans of John Cheah. An ex-dancer and weightlifter (he’s training for big things so stay tuned), John is the embodiment of strength and lightness.When you meet John, the first things that’ll strike you are his muscles and wit. We’ll never forget how he describes how to position your legs during a deadlift correctly during a class: “imagine you have a cube of tofu between your legs and you can’t squeeze them too hard.” In between laughing at his funny analogies and loving his class, we were inspired by his story and decided to capture it for ClassPass.
His life as a former modern dancer made complete sense to us. Physicality and form are both key in dance and weightlifting, and John’s perfect posture, polished movements, and muscle isolations are a great example of how art and science can work together seamlessly. Watching him, we’re even fascinated by a flick of his wrist, which he isolates beautifully to demonstrate a proper push up on a weight rack. (How he does that so well, we don’t know.) On camera, John shines and comes to life with ease and poise. He shares how dance changed his life, having met the love of his life doing so. A casual but confident speaker, John tells us about his wife who was initially skeptical about dancing with him, but was won over by his dancing abilities and obvious charm.
Finally, when we filmed him at LEVEL, we asked for some advice on what his thoughts were on learning new things. John compares weightlifting to learning a new language. He describes deftly, that when picking up something new, mastering the basics are key. Pragmatic and tongue in cheek, he cites swearing as one of the key components of learning a new language (naturally).
In launching our new campaign Find Yourself____, we’ll be following several instructors around the region on their personal fitness journeys and passions, with John being the first in the series. As we’ve loved watching John tell his story, we hope you feel as inspired as we do, so stay tuned for more from all our instructors across Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur. We hope that their stories will serve as a reminder that new things don’t come easy, but in this New Year, we hope you find John (and others) on ClassPass, and maybe yourself too.
