With Palm Heights Athletics, I Achieved Peak Wellness in Accra

While I would hardly call myself athletic, I’ve spent much of my adult life wedded to various fitness routines. In college I lived on the elliptical, but I haven’t been on one since. There have been months-long stretches of hot yoga, dozens of punishing hours in HIIT classes, and countless runs that I never enjoy starting but am always happy to have finished. Over the years my motivations have ranged from chasing a smaller dress size to chasing endorphins; I hoped the latter would quell the pains of loss and heartbreak. And writing for fashion and beauty publications has given me access to innumerable wellness add-ons: a suite of vitamins prescribed by a functional medicine doctor and SculpSure to target my lower belly fat; infrared sauna sessions and tonics that promise to cleanse and debloat and energize. Yet, I’ve never felt better—or more compelled to push myself—than I did over the course of five days in Accra, training in the small boxing community of Bukom, located in the Jamestown neighborhood.

Late last year, Palm Heights Athletics—the fitness arm of the buzzy Gabriella Khalil-founded Palm Heights resort located in the Cayman Islands—launched a Home Turf Series. Whereas the property’s onsite athletic facility hosts a global roster of elite athletes to train throughout the year (20 will be based there as they prepare for the 2024 Paris Olympics) the Home Turf Series brings athletes and non-athletes alike to a hotbed of a particular sport for an immersive athletic experience. For its inaugural sojourn to Accra, PHA collaborated with British-Ghanaian boxer Joshua Buatsi; Kenny Annan-Jonathan, founder of the sports marketing agency The Mailroom; and Antonette Harrison. “Boxing is a core sport in PHA programming and in our onsite gym,” says Jenn O’Reilly, brand director and athlete curator for Palm Heights Athletics, “[so] exploring the rich heritage of boxing was an obvious choice for our first PHA Home Turf series.”

Leveraging what O’Reilly describes as “the power of sport to bring people together across many industries and nationalities,” PHA curated a group that included professionals across food, fine art, fashion, tech, music, and photography—hailing from New York, London, and Accra. “Introducing opportunities that only a deep understanding of sport can access is something we are very proud to present,” she says.

At Attoh Quarshie Boxing Club, we ran laps outside on a basketball court before heading inside for a mix of freestyle bag work and pad work combinations. Later that day, we trained at Sea View Boxing Gym, rotating among coaches and athletes, again learning combinations. At both gyms, the combinations grew increasingly complicated; “jab,” “hook,” “jab” eventually morphed into “jab,” “jab,” “hook,” “uppercut,” “jab,” “uppercut,” “uppercut,” “duck,” “slip,” “jab.” Following commands to throw the punches again and again and again—the temperature hovering around 90 degrees—my arms turned to jello. The next morning was by far the most challenging workout of the week: ten minutes of laps on the sand followed by ten minutes of running up and down a steep outdoor staircase; this was capped with high knees and jumping jacks. We ended our fitness tour the following day, working out alongside Ghana’s national boxing team, known as the Black Bombers. They led us on a run around the Accra Sports Stadium and up and down the stadium steps more times than I can remember. I’m still thinking about the otherworldly stretch my partner assisted me through afterward.

As exhausting as the sessions were, they didn’t feel like a chore, which my workouts stateside often do. I attribute some of this to the hospitality at each gym (we were guests and were treated as such) but also, the palpable passion for boxing made for a fitness experience far more enjoyable than most. So did working out in a gym full of people who looked like me; as a Black woman living in downtown Manhattan, this is never the case when I walk into a boutique fitness studio—I’m often the only woman of color, or one of very few. The athletes we trained with in Accra were generous with their time and skill, meeting us each where we were physically and mentally to share a sport that they loved. Every session ended with song, dance, prayer, or all three. It was grounding and joyous, and I could feel those elusive endorphins coursing through my body. I slept like a rock every night.

“To go back to where I’m from, it helps me recharge,” Buatsi, who joined the group one evening, says of his training trips to Accra. The boxer, who won a bronze medal at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, wasn’t impressed with the sport as a child. “It used to come on TV and I’d be annoyed because I wanted to watch cartoons,” he says. But when Buatsi’s family moved to London and his friend took him to a boxing gym—a place where “I could fight and not get in trouble,” he says—he was hooked. Though the light-heavyweight boxer enjoys the bells and whistles of the gyms he frequents in London, “everything is at 100% here,” he says of the Bukom community. “Nothing’s done half right when it comes to boxing; everything is done with passion. It’s the first sport, it’s the first language, it’s the best way of communicating [and] of learning the culture.” Plus, he adds, “you see amazing talents. Some are much better than me, I was just able to get opportunities that they weren’t able to.”

That one doesn’t need state-of-the-art equipment or the luxury amenities of a boutique fitness studio to reach their athletic potential isn’t a revelatory idea. Many of the best athletes in the world honed their talents on no-frills neighborhood courts and fields. Still, Ghana has produced six world championship boxers—five hailing from Bukom—and that’s a feat areas with far more resources haven’t been able to match.

“We don’t have much training equipment out here, so we train very hard with the little that we do have,” says amateur boxer Amadu Mohammed. “We do whatever it takes to be a champion.” Mohammed, 19, who grew up inspired by American boxer Terrence Crawford, has been working out at Sea View under coach Gabriel Allotey since he was seven. “My belief is that my gym is the best in Accra,” he says.

Seeking to recapture how I felt in Accra—motivated and energized and stronger than I thought I was—I’ve revisited the simple wellness rules Buatsi lives by. “It’s about consistency,” he says. “You don’t have to go mad, you just need a routine. Stretching, sleeping, rehydrating—that’s important too.” It’s easier said than done when you’re leading a nonstop lifestyle in NYC (and there’s no promise of fresh fish and jollof rice after your workout) but I’m trying.