In support of Movember, former Māori All Black and current Counties Manukau rugby player Joseph Royal took up the challenge to work out for 24 hours. The descendant of Ngāti Whātua has been supporting cancer awareness in his playing duties all year, and went another step further to be active for a whole day.
Training from morning to night, for 24 hours was Joseph Royal’s aim.
“It was just a challenge I put out for myself for Movember this year,” says Royal, “Movember NZ reached out and asked if I wanted to be on board. So I said 'yeah' and a part of my Movember challenge is doing a 24 hour circuit.”
Royal wanted to come up with a new idea to raise awareness.
“There's people out there doing runs to raise money and raise awareness, there's the rowing challenge out there, I thought 'what could we do to challenge ourselves and try to bring a bit of awareness?' I don't know where it came from but we just thought 'let's go hard for 24 hours and see where we can get'.”
Under the F45 Tāmaki branch, he worked out for 24 hours, in 18 different circuits.
His inspiration was his fiancé Kelly Morrison's cousin Talei Morrison, who was a big advocate for cervical cancer awareness.
“She had a campaign for cervical cancer called 'Smear your Mea',” says Royal, “Just the mahi she has done for women and making sure they go get their checks- and speaking about it. On the back of her mahi we've tried to push our case to get our men regular checks or talk to someone if they're feeling down, or just being strong [enough] to ask for help.”