Three hours at the SSP Team Games in Caterham

By Elena Suhova · Cup of Green Photography · Caterham, Surrey · Published 28 September 2026

SSP, or Surrey Strength & Performance, is a small-group personal training gym in Caterham. Once a year its members split into teams and try to beat each other at everything, and this year's Team Games ran on Saturday 26 September. I was there with my camera for all three hours.

I've worked with SSP over the years, so this wasn't my first time in their gym. If you train in Caterham you might know them already. If not, they're at surreystrengthandperformance.com and on Instagram as @sspcaterham, and a few frames from an earlier shoot with them are on my Caterham page.

The plan on the screen

The morning started with everyone crowded round the screen, reading the plan. Three rounds: strength, strongman and cardio. Every kilo lifted and every second saved went towards a team score, which is a clever way to get a room full of people cheering for each other before anybody has touched a bar.

Round one: strength

Round one was the heavy one. Everybody worked up to their best three reps on the trap bar deadlift, then did the same on a barbell floor press, and the kilos went into one big team total.

There's a lot of standing around in a round like this, and I love it. While one person lifts, everyone else watches and winces along with them, and that's where half my pictures come from. The other half is the lift itself.

Round two: strongman

Round two was where it got loud. First a sled push and pull pyramid against the clock. Then the med ball Atlas stones, which here meant heaving a heavy ball onto a platform on the rack and back down again, over and over (that's the photograph at the top of this page). Last came a farmers carry, up the ramp outside and back, with a dumbbell in each hand.

Round three: cardio

The last round was a conditioning elimination on the SkiErgs and bikes: a hundred calories on the ski, a hundred on the bike, then a hundred on each. By then everybody had lifted, pushed, pulled and carried their way through two rounds already, so the faces here tell you exactly how it felt.

And some of them were still laughing.

Competitive, and friendly with it

It was properly competitive. People wanted their team to win and you could see it on every face. But the spirit in the room was lovely all morning, with people clapping each other through the last reps and laughing between rounds, and everyone had a fantastic day.

And then everybody sat down

When the last calorie was done, people found a bit of floor and got their breath back. Then we gathered everyone for a group photo, the only picture of the day I asked anybody to stand still for.

How I photograph an event like this

I work as an invisible photographer. The event carries on as if I weren't there, nobody stops for me and nobody poses, and I move around the edges looking for the best angle on whatever is happening.

At SSP that meant getting low beside the trap bar so the plates filled the front of the frame, shooting through the rack at the stones and standing at the end of the sled lane so the effort came towards me. It meant watching the people waiting as closely as the person lifting. And it meant stopping for the small things, like chalk in the air or a row of dumbbells in the sun.

I also think about where the photographs will end up. A gym needs wide pictures for the top of its website, upright ones for Instagram, close details to break up a feed and a lot of real faces. So I try different looks on purpose, and SSP come away with a set of pictures they can use on their website and across their social media for months.

An events session or a brand session?

This was an events session. SSP wanted the day documented as it happened, so there was no brief to stick to and nothing to plan beyond the date and the start time. I turned up, the Games ran, and I photographed them.

If you run a gym or any business with people in it, the other way to do this is a brand session. That one is planned. We agree a brief first, work out which pictures your website and socials are missing, and give it the time it needs, up to half a day or more.

Which one suits you depends on what you want from the photographs and how much planning you'd like. If you're not sure, tell me what the pictures are for and I'll tell you which fits.

What it costs

An events session is £299 for up to three hours, which is exactly what the Team Games took, and you get the whole collection afterwards, finished in my style. Every hour after the first three is £125. Brand sessions start at £245 for about an hour, and Half a Day is £595. Everything is on the pricing page.

Gift an events session