Meet Steven.

My story

Why I started Stronghold

Before any of this, I served. I joined the Royal Air Force Regiment in 2005 and went straight from training out to Iraq in 2006, meeting my unit in theatre. Over the years that followed I deployed again and again, Kandahar in 2008, Camp Bastion and Kabul in 2010, back to Kabul in 2011. I made corporal, and spent my last posting at RAF Waddington training the people heading out after me. I left in 2013 after eight years and one day in uniform.

The forces taught me what the body and the mind can really take, and what it costs to keep pushing with nothing behind you. Recovery is not soft. Out there it is the difference between being ready and being a liability, and that lesson has never left me.

Coming back to civvy life, I tried a few things. I trained in rope access and worked away as an abseiler, then took a job on the hot end at a glass factory. Good honest work, but none of it was me. What kept pulling me back was training, sport, and helping people get more out of their own bodies.

Sport has been there my whole life. I played rugby from the age of eight at Doncaster Toll Bar, then union at Doncaster, and represented South Yorkshire in both codes and the Welsh Exiles in union. In the forces I played rugby league for the RAF Regiment and the RAF. Thirty years of contact sport teaches you a fair bit about getting up the next morning.

These days it is endurance and functional fitness. CrossFit, a run of Tough Mudders and adventure races, the David Goggins 4x4x48 (four miles every four hours for forty eight hours), my first Hyrox in Birmingham in 2022 and then Barcelona, a full Ironman in Bolton in 2023, half marathons with my partner and friends, and in 2025 the Rat Race The Wall, a 70 mile ultra from Carlisle to Newcastle. I know exactly how it feels to work through tired legs, stiff joints and the pressure of getting back to your best.

So I built Stronghold around the thing I have always believed: recovery is part of the work, not a luxury you earn afterwards. I went mobile on purpose. No clinic, no waiting room, no driving across town stiff after a session. I bring the table, the tools and the full setup to your home, your gym or your event, so the only thing you have to do is lie down and let the work happen.

It is also why I run Man Love Day, an invite-only contrast therapy session for my clients. Sauna, cold plunge, then round again, with a strong coffee in hand. It is a chance for like-minded men to talk, decompress and back each other up, whether that is a job, a challenge, an event or just a hard week. Looking after yourself and looking after each other have always been the same thing to me.

Away from the table I am a dad and a family man, and that is the lens for everything. Whoever you are, whatever you train for, you get the same from me: a straight assessment, proper treatment and an honest plan. No upsell, no pressure, just the work that gets you back to your best.

Steven Mills / Founder, Stronghold Recovery