Wednesday, 13th April 2016
Pendle Body Magic – a joint initiative between Pendle Leisure Trust and Slimming World – is a finalist for a Sporta award!
Pendle Body Magic is an activity programme for Slimming World members, helping them become more active and improve their overall health and well-being.
The scheme provides a wide variety of bespoke fitness sessions, including Pilates, Zumbafit and Aqua-aerobics, seven days a week at a number of Pendle Leisure Trust’s facilities.
Complementing Slimming World’s own Body Magic programme, the sessions are specially designed to make being active fun and enjoyable for people who are normally inactive or embarrassed about taking part in activity sessions. They support people to gradually move towards a more active lifestyle by increasing activity levels in small, steady steps that can be built up over time.
The Sporta awards will recognise outstanding achievement in sport, leisure and cultural Trusts and showcase the outstanding ability of staff to make a positive difference in their local communities.
Divided into three categories, the awards include: engaging inactive people; successful work with the health sector and community impact. Out of more than 100 applications in total, Pendle Leisure Trust’s Slimming World project has been selected as one of three finalists for the Engaging Inactive People (Large Trust) Award.
This award demonstrates work done by a Trust to provide fantastic opportunities for, and find creative ways to engage with and retain people that are not currently active in either sport, physical or cultural activity, by offering diverse and inclusive programmes for the public to achieve extraordinary social and health benefits.
The sessions were developed by Pendle Leisure Trust following an initial insight and learning from Slimming World consultants, members and leisure centre staff.
The Trust studied their attitudes to physical activity, barriers and motivations and used their research to develop tailored activities to support engagement in the leisure centres. They also developed bespoke activities and incentive schemes to support regular participation in line with Slimming World’s physical activity support programme.
Pendle Body Magic’s Personal Activator, Holly Lynch, a fitness instructor for Pendle Leisure Trust, said: “We offer a bespoke programme of engaging and fun activities for all abilities. I help set personal step-by-step activity goals and support members to achieve these.”
Kathy Titterton, Project Manager, added: “We are delighted to have been chosen as a finalist for this awardand I would like to thank Slimming World and Holly Lynch for helping to make this project such a huge success.
“The partnership with Slimming World and the funding that we received from Sport England have been essential and has allowed us to offer this service to local people, further developing participation in physical activity in Pendle.”
Carolyn Pallister, Public Health Manager at Slimming World, says: “It’s fantastic that the Pendle Body Magic scheme has been shortlisted for this award.
“We know people who are overweight can feel embarrassed, afraid and reluctant to enrol in activity programmes in leisure centres for fear of exposing themselves to being humiliated.This ground-breaking scheme was set up to help address those barriers.
“This scheme has already become a major contributor to helping local people live active, healthy and fulfilling lives, and we hope the partnership will continue to make a difference to the people of Pendle.”