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| Sebastian Rodwell’s Life After Physical 100: Rugby, Teaching and What He Does Now. |
Sebastian Rodwell has already built quite a life away from the spotlight, but Physical 100: Italy has given audiences a fresh reason to take notice. The 36-year-old brings an unusually broad sporting background to Netflix’s fitness competition, having played high-level rugby in Italy and England while also maintaining a career in education, marketing and sports development. These days, he is based in Germany, where he continues working as a teacher while staying active on the rugby field. Basically, retirement is apparently not part of Rodwell’s vocabulary.
Born in California to an English father and German mother, Rodwell spent most of his childhood in Tuscany, after his family moved there because of his father’s winemaking business. Growing up in the region gave him plenty of exposure to football, which he played casually as a youngster, but rugby eventually came along and changed the direction of his sporting life. At 17, he tried the game with Montelupo Empoli and quickly became hooked on its physical demands and strong team culture.
What began as an experiment soon became considerably more serious. Rodwell joined Firenze 1931, earned opportunities with Italy’s Under-17 set-up, attended the Tirrenia Academy and progressed through the Under-18 and Under-20 national teams. His development eventually took him into senior rugby with Cavalieri Prato in the Eccellenza league. For someone who initially just fancied trying a different sport, things escalated rather quickly.
At 21, Rodwell made another major move, this time heading to England to combine university studies with competitive rugby. He enrolled at the University of the West of England, studying Sports Business Management while playing as a student-athlete at Hartpury College. The arrangement suited him perfectly: he could study while continuing to play regularly, rather than having to choose between a degree and the sport that had become such a major part of his identity.
Rodwell graduated in 2014 and soon joined London Irish Rugby Club, where his career became a curious mixture of playing, coaching and commercial work. He worked as head coach of the women’s side and as a community marketing officer while also turning out for the men’s team. He later moved into a commercial management role at Alan Services, proving that his CV was apparently determined to collect as many different job descriptions as humanly possible.
In 2017, he returned to Tuscany and joined Medicei Rugby Club, created through the merger involving Firenze Rugby 1931 and I Cavalieri Prato. There, Rodwell combined professional rugby with marketing and team-building responsibilities. By 2020, however, his career was moving increasingly towards education, with work as a freelance lecturer at the Florence University of the Arts and a marketing and business development role at Mercafir.
That transition became clearer over the following years. Rodwell worked at Bilingual School Florence before moving to Germany, where he combined teaching with rugby. At European School RheinMain in Frankfurt, he worked as a secondary school teacher before taking on roles including pedagogical advisor and sports activities coordinator. During the same period, he completed an International Postgraduate Certificate in Education, adding another qualification to an already rather crowded professional CV.
Since August 2025, Rodwell has been working as a teacher at Accadis International School-Bad Homburg, continuing the education career he has steadily developed alongside his sporting commitments. His current professional life therefore looks rather different from his days competing at senior rugby level, but sport remains firmly in the picture rather than being left behind.
Rodwell is also still active in rugby with SC Frankfurt 1880 Rugby Club. His connection with Florence has not disappeared either. He remains involved with the Verdi di San Giovanni, known as the Greens, in the traditional Florentine game of Calcio Storico.
It is about as far removed from sitting quietly in a classroom as you could imagine, which perhaps explains why Rodwell seems perfectly comfortable switching between teaching students and throwing himself into demanding sporting environments.
His appearance on Physical 100: Italy therefore feels less like a random television detour and more like a natural extension of everything he has been doing for years. The competition asks contestants to demonstrate strength, endurance, agility and resilience, and Rodwell has spent much of his adult life developing precisely those qualities through rugby, coaching and education. Netflix may have introduced him to a wider audience, but the foundations of his athletic identity were laid long before the cameras arrived.
There is also something genuinely amusing about Rodwell’s career path. Most people eventually settle into one lane, perhaps after trying a couple of different directions. Rodwell appears to have looked at the concept of a straightforward career and politely declined.
He has been a rugby player, coach, marketer, lecturer, team-building specialist, school adviser, sports coordinator and teacher, while somehow finding time to keep playing. His CV reads less like a career progression and more like someone repeatedly selecting “new challenge” whenever life offers the option.
Rodwell is probably one of the more interesting Physical 100: Italy contestants precisely because his story does not begin or end with reality television. There is something refreshing about an athlete whose identity is not built entirely around medals, social media attention or being the strongest person in the room.
His career shows how sport can open doors into coaching, education and business, while still remaining part of everyday life. The slightly chaotic mix of rugby, teaching and traditional Florentine football also makes him rather memorable. Honestly, moving countries, changing careers, studying again and continuing to compete sounds exhausting, but Rodwell seems to have decided that having one hobby would be far too sensible. His story makes his Physical 100 appearance feel like another chapter rather than the main event.
For now, Sebastian Rodwell remains in Germany, teaching and playing rugby, while maintaining his connection to Florence and the sports that have shaped him. Physical 100: Italy may have introduced his name to viewers who had never heard of him before, but his life away from Netflix is arguably just as intriguing. What do you make of Rodwell’s unusual mix of teaching and elite sport, and did his rugby background make you see his Physical 100 journey differently?