Belinda Steward's outlook this National Fitness Day

One of the biggest barriers to exercise for people can often be an overwhelming feeling that gyms or other fitness settings are not somewhere they belong.

Most would not challenge the view that health and wellbeing opportunities, including access to physical activity, should be accessible to all. Sadly, the truth is that many still feel excluded from staying active.

Just one stark example of this is a Women in Sport study which found 1.3 million teenage girls (43%), who once considered themselves ‘sporty’ are disengaging from sport following primary school. A fear of being judged by others, a lack of confidence in their ability, body image and puberty were found to be significant barriers to participation.

It’s our duty as an industry to overcome these types of seemingly invisible, but very real, barriers faced not just by young girls but from a whole range of people for various reasons.

Places Leisure is committed to ensuring fitness is for absolutely everyone and, with over 100 leisure centres and over 30 million visits to our sites per year, we have a responsibility to help break down the barriers to make physical activity accessible to all including by showing that leisure centres are safe spaces for everyone.

Sometimes it just takes one or two visits to a friendly and welcoming centre for individuals to begin to tackle their ‘gymtimidation’. That’s why this National Fitness Day we are giving away five-day passes to the public which give access to our gyms, swimming pools, fitness classes and more, to encourage new people to introduce fitness into their life. In its 13th year, National Fitness Day is an initiative run by UK Active aimed at bringing millions of people together through physical activity with the aim of creating an attitude that ‘your health is for life’.  

Our offering for National Fitness Day is just one of the ways that we try to make physical activity more accessible to all. Running throughout the year we are proud to have specific membership packages designed to make our centres more accessible including our inclusive membership which provides a significantly discounted rate for those receiving certain benefits. Our inclusive membership is also available for members with disabilities who receive the discounted rate whilst giving free access to two support workers or carers. We also have memberships for those who have long-term health conditions where we will provide tailored additional support to suit each individual's exercise journey, these individuals are typically referred to us by their GP, social prescriber or physiotherapist.

Different membership options are not enough to tackle accessibility on their own. We work with many partners to provide opportunities and paths of entry to physical activity including with ukactive,  Women in Sport, and Sport England. ukactive provides us with policies and best practice guidance that we can implement into our ways of working. Recently I joined their Public Operator Council - a key part of their governance structure helping to shape the direction of the organisation to increase the sector’s reach and impact.

Working with Women in Sport, one of our most successful programmes is The Big Sister Project. The programme is aimed at helping to encourage and support girls aged 9-15 years old into sport and exercise during puberty. As part of our commitment to help girls get active, we offer a free Places Leisure membership for those who meet the eligibility criteria or a 50% discounted membership giving access to unlimited gym use, unlimited swimming, age-appropriate exercise classes, and free access to the Places Leisure app and virtual studio. After rolling the programme out in 11 of our leisure centres, we supported over 3,000 teenage girls to get active with 64% of participants saying they now enjoy taking part in sports and exercising more. Due to its success, we decided in August to roll the programme out nationally making it available at all our leisure centres across England.

We also have partnerships with Parkinson’s UK, British Blind Sport and Face Everything and Rise (FEAR), all aimed at improving accessibility to physical activity.

Our work to provide more accessible options to access leisure centres along with our partnerships and the programmes that we provide more points of entry to physical activity are only possible via some of the funding that we receive from the UK Government.

Funding is often limited, leaving those within the industry to fund initiatives at a loss meaning they are often first to go when budgets get tight. Additionally, for the funding that is available many industry players, including Places Leisure, can struggle to secure funding to deliver these programmes due to the complexity of the system which sits across several Government departments.

The UK Government must recognise the impact and need for these programmes and do more to invest in these initiatives as well as make the funding process easier for providers like Places Leisure so that we can work on creating healthy habits to support using physical activity as a prevention rather than just a treatment for illnesses and conditions,

Places Leisure is part of the Places for People group, the UK’s leading social enterprise, which means our profits go back into helping communities and our number one focus is the health and wellbeing of the public. We believe that fitness is for everyone, and we are committed to creating active places and healthy people for communities to thrive. It’s time to break down fitness barriers so everyone has the same opportunity to ensure their health is for life.