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About us

Primal Health was started in 2011 as a response to the declining health and happiness of modern western society. Originally a Personal Training company, we incorporated the tennis academy as a way to work with, influence and inspire more people to lead active healthy lifestyles. We want as many people as possible to start challenging themselves to be healthier and happier and it was a natural progression for us to use our love of tennis as an engine to do this. We love seeing people outside, in the fresh air, learning and enjoying themselves whilst playing such a challenging and rewarding sport. This ideal is at the heart of all of our sessions and is fundamental to our coaching practices.

We are very proud of what we have achieved so far and the values our business and brand stands for. We aim to be open and honest with all our clients, partners and players. Everything we do is linked to ‘Team Primal Health’ whether it be in the recruitment and training of new coaches, adding new partner venues, within coaching sessions or delivering in-school programmes. We want our players to feel a part of something bigger than just them, something that has ambitions and drive to try new things and always strive to do better.

Our Coaching Principles

Continuous Active Participation: All of our players spend as much time as possible “doing and practicing” what we are teaching. There are never any lines/queues on our courts and all players are always actively developing their skills keeping them engaged, focused on the content and therefore improving.
Group Ownership: It is vitally important that all our coaches engage all players as a group and work with them, not on them. For learning to occur people must “own their change”. They must desire the outcome and strive to achieve it. It is the coaches’ job to facilitate this change, using their expertise to deliver a session that benefits all players and gives them the outcome they desire.
Specific Individual Feedback: During every session all players are given specific feedback on an individual teaching point. The group will be working on a collective outcome but everyone will be progressing at their own pace and it is important that every player has something specific to focus on. We also base our teaching heavily on input/process goals rather than outcome/result goals. We teach people how to develop the skills they need individually as well as the groups needs as a whole.
No Failure Environment: We aim to cultivate an experimental atmosphere during our sessions to allow players to make the necessary adjustments to their game without the fear of failure. This is achieved by focusing on input rather than output goals and rewarding effort and intention over output and attainment.
Maximum Participation: We love having big groups of players on the court. The atmosphere that this creates is really special and makes it really easy to motivate and inspire the group. These are the most important aspects of any coaches job and we actively seek having lots of coaches working with lots of players all at the same time. It is also really good fun and great opportunity for coaches to learn from one another too.

Primal Health Founders

The first business Ben and Josh Stokes started together was ‘Stokes Racket Stringing’ when they were aged just 13 and 16, they clubbed their money to raise the £280 to buy a stringing machine and started to learn how to string rackets using youtube. The money they raised from this enterprise was used to start the coaching academy and the brothers have never had to invest any personal money into any area of the business since. The first Primal Health Tennis Academy session was held at Bancroft’s school during the Easter Holidays of 2010. Brothers Ben and Josh Stokes started the business over the phone whilst Josh was away in Australia. It was the new ideas and methods Josh had seen and been involved with in Australia that made them want to start something on their own rather than continuing to coach with other people. Growing up in North London, Ben and Josh have participated in a whole range of sports for different schools, clubs and in the garden growing up! They first became interested in tennis when aged 10 and 13, as they moved house right next door to a tennis club. The summer of 2000 was when they hit their first ball together and have never looked back training and playing together regularly still!