Best friends Katya Jones and Aimee Fuller tell us how their shared love for activity and adventure helps them to feel supported, inspired and bonded for life
Words: Joanna Ebsworth | Photography: Max Howard
Sometimes even the smallest shared interest can form the foundation for a meaningful friendship. For Russian dancer, choreographer and Strictly Come Dancing star, Katya Jones, 36, and two-time Team GB Winter Olympian turned broadcaster, Aimee Fuller, 34, that common ground was a mutual appreciation for nuts.
I remember seeing Aimee hovering over a massive bowl of nuts at my ex-husband Neil Jones’ birthday party in 2021, while everyone else was in another room playing games and eating McDonalds,’ says Katya, who recently celebrated her 10th anniversary with Strictly after making her debut on the Saturday night BBC show in 2016. ‘Neil had invited Aimee after they met on a job in 2020 and she had introduced him to wakesurfing. As soon as he met her, he said, “Oh, you would really get on with my ex-wife”, and he was right, because it was just me and Aimee talking over roasted cashews and almonds for the rest of the night. That was the start of our adventure, and since then, our shared love for nuts has only increased!’, she adds, before she and Aimee descend into a fit of infectious giggles.
‘Instantly, there was an energy and connection and understanding between us over each other’s career paths,’ says former snowboarder, now broadcaster, Aimee, who has competed in both the 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympics. ‘Dancing and snowboarding happen to be very similar in terms of following them as a career, in the way you have to essentially take on the world, do it all on your own and organise everything yourself. It’s not like we are from sports or arts where you are mollycoddled and there’s a team behind you.’
Katya adds: ‘I left my family behind in pursuit of chasing my dreams and, like Aimee said, we both had to do everything for ourselves, make our own costumes and earn our own money. Later, obviously, it became me and Neil travelling together and feeling like we were against the world, because no one else was there to support us, organise us or help us pay for everything. We had to learn life for ourselves, and the more I talked with Aimee, I realised I really identified with the way she refers to her sporting career as her “degree of life”.’
Aimee nods away in agreement. ‘I call my snowboarding career the degree of life because the skill sets I learnt while travelling around the world and fending for myself have given me the confidence to go into any room or environment and feel comfortable, because of the situations that snowboarding threw me into,’ explains Aimee, who now puts those skills to good use as a broadcaster, whether she’s running the full 13.1 miles of the Great North Run while interviewing fellow participants for the BBC, or encouraging guests to spill their motivational secrets on her popular Monday Mile podcast.
‘I think Katya and I resonated over our careers, as well as this shared zest for life and passion for fitness and adventure. There have been so many things we’ve been able to share since then, and we’ve become best friends and each other’s biggest cheerleaders along the way!’
What was the first activity you did together?
Katya: It all started when I asked Aimee if she’d ever done a Barry’s class. I’ve never enjoyed running and I’d never tried Barry’s, but Aimee said, ‘Yeah, I have. I’ll come with you. Why not?’ And that was it. We’re both really open to trying new physical things, but we also have very similar family values and morals. Neither of us have any family nearby, and I do think that’s another reason why we bonded so much.
Aimee: My family are all in Belfast, so Katya and I are definitely each other’s London family. Interestingly, I’d say Katya met me at a time when I was the least like ‘me’ I’ve ever been. I was at the end of my snowboarding career, I’d gained quite a lot of weight, and I had fallen out of love with many of the things that I had once loved, like running and yoga. So, when Katya said, ‘Hey, have you ever tried hot yoga?’, it definitely helped to inspire me to get back on track.
Katya: I’d been doing hot yoga for over a decade as a form of recovery from dancing rather than exercise, because it helps me get really deep into my muscles, and it gives me some headspace.
Aimee: I love the hot room now and it’s a staple of my weekly movement. It’s like active recovery and a mental reset! Even when we practise together, for once there is silence, but the presence of being next to Katya pushes me.
How has your friendship developed since then?
Aimee: Initially, doing activities together like Barry’s and hot yoga and wakesurfing was just about enjoying life. But then it turned into supporting each other through the highs and lows of our careers and life in general. In one way, what we do for a living is very different, but in another way, we both work in the media and it can feel very similar, so we can really resonate with each other while also enjoying seeing each other shine. When Katya’s dancing on a Saturday night and I get the opportunity to go and support her, it’s an absolute privilege to watch her do her thing.
Katya: It’s almost like we each enjoy supporting the other more than doing our own thing! But I think we both feel it’s so important as women to lift each other up and be happy for each other. We’re really good at that. And being there for each other when it matters most. Because our lives are so unpredictable, and some days we don’t know where we’re going to be or what’s going to happen next.
Aimee: Totally. It’s definitely about knowing when to step in and offer support, because every time there’s a high, unfortunately, there’s always a low, right?
How do you support each other in times of stress?
Katya: We usually just take ourselves down the river and have a nice long walk, don’t we?
Aimee: Oh, we’ve done many laps of the Thames on Sundays. There’s also been many random Sunday mornings where I’ve said, ‘Mate, let’s just go and do some yoga’. But I think that’s when finding your tribe, aligning with each on values, and not listening to exterior noise is so important. Because the act of committing to something with someone else and showing up and being there for them, as well as yourself, is such a powerful tool.
Katya: Sometimes, you don’t even realise you need to do something like go for a walk or do yoga, and it’s only when you commit to showing up for a friend and you do that thing that you then realise it was exactly what you needed.
What else do you like about exercising together?
Aimee: As friends, we’ve trained together across a multitude of activities that neither of us have done before, and we’ve developed so many new skills that have helped us to grow together as people, which bonds you even more. We’ve done a lot of travelling together, and it’s our habit to always do a workout together before we go to the airport. But I remember the day before we went to Australia for the first time, about three years ago, we couldn’t do our regular workout, so Katya sourced a boxing trainer. The first time I tried it, I really struggled because the co-ordination needed is so different from snowboarding, whereas Katya steamed ahead and picked things up straight away.
Katya: Yes, but we committed to it, really enjoyed it and now, three years later, Aimee has come such a long way. She used to say I picked things up quicker, but we’d go home and practise and now she’s like a machine. And how incredible is it to know that you can still take up a new skill and improve at something, right? On the flip side, I was so shockingly bad when we first tried padel, it was embarrassing. For the first few months, Aimee would just throw a ball at me for me to try and catch, and I couldn’t even do that. But I stuck at it, kept practising, and told myself, ‘I can do it!’.
Aimee: I’d say padel is the one activity that’s probably pushed us the most on a friendship level because you play it as a pair, so have to be such good communicators. What’s crazy is we played in a tournament 18 months ago and we came dead last, and then six months later after a summer of playing with different people, we played in another tournament and we got second place!
How key is good communication?
Aimee: As friends, it’s really important that we’re open and honest about when something might be too physically demanding, depending on what we both have on. I do a lot of running, so if I’ve got a half-marathon or marathon coming up, I’m not going to play three hours of padel tennis. And if Katya’s in the middle of Strictly, we’ve learned that it’s probably not the best idea to go to Barry’s on a Sunday. So communication has become one
of our strongest skill sets.
Katya: When we filmed the TV show Celebrity Hunted together in 2023, everyone kept asking us why we weren’t fighting or disagreeing, and why nothing dramatic was happening. But our only problem was that the camera crew couldn’t keep up with us!
What happens when you want to do different things?
Katya: At the end of the day, we are different in so many ways, but that’s fine! Aimee loves running, whereas I don’t, but she’s not going to force me to run every day when we’re on holiday. Although I will always go on a birthday run with her.
Aimee: And very occasionally, she will run a small sportive with me for a very good cause, such as the Lady Garden Run to raise awareness for gynaecological health. Similarly, I don’t love Pilates, but I’ll still go with her because I know it’s good for me. That’s the great thing about our friendship – sometimes, we allow ourselves to be pushed out of our comfort zones for those we love.
Have you had a go at each other’s area of expertise?
Aimee: Snowboarding’s a really tricky sport to learn and it’s taken a couple of years for Katya to get there, but she can properly ride now, and the pride I feel that she’s a snowboarder and not a skier is really quite immense. Last year, I went on holiday with some of Katya’s crew and some of my crew, and the melting pot of bringing everyone together was fantastic. Seeing Katya excel was great, and when she asked me at the end of the week where she ranked within the group, it was cool to be able to tell her she was probably second best. We were away with the Mission Impossible stunt crew, so she was pretty stoked!
Katya: I was just on a mission thinking, ‘I’ve got to get better. I can’t be rubbish when my best friend is an Olympic snowboarder’, so I took it very seriously!
Aimee: In terms of dancing, I’ve never wanted any dance lessons from Katya because I wouldn’t want to be accused of taking shortcuts if I ever got asked to do Strictly – but you should see me dance when we’re on holiday, and I’m pretty sure I stole the show at last year’s Strictly wrap party with my breakdancing.
Katya: You know, I’m not into wearing fitness trackers and being attached to numbers because I like to do what feels right for me, whereas Aimee always wears her Apple watch. But when we’re on holiday, we always laugh when we wake up in the morning because we’ll already have burnt 2,000 calories from dancing all night!
Why is it so good to have a friend to bond over exercise with?
Aimee: Exercising with friends gives you a purpose and reason to show up, and it’s also a fantastic way to grow your social network. By committing to an activity with a friend, you get to help and support someone else, as well as yourself, and I think that’s been really evident in my friendship with Katya. There’s definitely been times when Katya has dragged me out when I haven’t felt like exercising after a hard day’s work, but I’ve gone along to honour my commitment to her and then felt so much better in myself for going.
Katya: Also, it doesn’t have to be about doing rigorous exercise every day. I swear that just going for a gentle walk and a natter always helps you feel better. Alternatively, if you go to a class, maybe have a coffee before or afterwards to make it feel more enjoyable. Or make things feel more accessible by starting small. Because if you start small with a walk, that walk might turn into a run, and that run could one day turn into you committing to your first half marathon with your friend or your mum or your sister.
