In July last year a strange couple wearing red t-shirts wheeled a cart through my office handing out fruit and leaflets advertising the weight management program. I was already a regular gym attender (5 times a week) but hadn’t got round to acting on my resolution to ‘try out a class sometime’. The next time I was at the gym I sought out a member of the active life styles team just to find out more.
I had no intention of singing up on the spot, I never do things like that, but this initial chat was with the most friendly, enthusiastic and knowledgeable fitness instructor I had met. (This was Shannon, she was also wearing a red t-shirt.) I didn’t believe a lot of what I was told (90% of health information including that from the NHS is wrong) but Shannon’s extensive knowledge (Well backed up by scientific studies and background knowledge) convinced me to at least find out and I walked out of the gym signed up to the Weight Management Program.
During the program I met the rest of the team and enthusiasm for fitness must be contagious as they all worked hard to encourage, help and push me to achieve more in my gym sessions. Soon the enthusiasm spread to me and I was doing fitness circuits, running round Hyde Park (in the running club), doing weights and even started attending (my now favourite) Grit classes. I learnt how to exercise properly radically changed my diet and did this all as part of the group of ‘regulars’ also on the program. Exercising with others massively increases the effort you put in.
It changed my gym experience forever and I will never go back to just hopping on a few machines. If you have one of these ‘resolutions’ to try a class one day I would recommend finding Shannon (home in on the red t-shirt) and having that conversation.
-By Robert Metcalf, Technical Project Services