MOTIVATIONAL speaker Mike McLaughlin, spurred on his audience so much they were able to punch through a piece of wood like martial arts specialists.

Mr McLaughlin, from Catacorp, was entertaining a 35-strong group of Swindon businesspeople at an ecademy meeting at the County Ground.

His talk was about raising personal performance in business through positive thinking.

Swindon's ecademy group has been meeting for more than a year, and is led by Warren Cass, managing director of Inspire Events. "It's great to see so many Swindon businesses involved in ecademy and benefiting from inspirational events like this," said Warren.