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We have a variety of memberships to suit all individual needs and circumstances and you may wish to combine your gym membership (Fitness Zone) with group exercise classes (Life Zone) to get the complete package. Full details on all our memberships can be found on the Memberships page.
You can also check out our advice section below which will be updated with regular articles to help you get the best out of your training time!
Gym inductions
All members must have a gym induction before using the facilities. As part of this you will get a personal consultation session to assess your needs and goals, a gym programme, follow up review session and access to a free group exercise class - which you can use yourself or give to a friend if you already have classes as part of your membership.
We offer reviews for you to assess your progress, adjust your goals and change your programme; which we would recommend every 8 weeks. Please ask an instructor at your leisure centre for details. You can also try our workout cards below to mix up your training.
Personal training
PT is offered at most leisure centres and more details can be found on the Personal training page.
Gym challenges
These are a great way to challenge yourself, motivate yourself and try to beat your best! Look out for you opportunity to take part in the challenges and be entered into prize draws to win prizes. Speak to the fitness team for more information.
Maximise your workout time with our advice section!
Everyone has a goal in mind when they join a gym, start training or go swimming. It might be as simple as just attending the leisure centre twice a week. But if you really want to make your workouts work for you and see progress in terms of your physical or mental health, then goal setting can help you do this.
Goals can be anything that you want to achieve. You might want to lose weight, get fitter, get stronger, get faster, feel better. The key to your goals is making them SMART; specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time orientated. This makes your goal more focused, more motivating, more achievable and consequently you give yourself a much better chance of increasing your self-confidence and self-esteem as a result. Everyone's goals are different and will therefore require a unique approach.
Specific: what is your goal?
Write down your main goal. Consider how long this might take you to achieve - this may be focused on an event or a date that you want to have achieved your goal by.
What are the actions that you'll need to do to make your goal achievable? If your goal is a weight related target then this may include looking at the frequency and volume of your physical activity as well as what you eat and drink.
Measurable; set a goal you can monitor
Being able to measure your progress towards a goal will tell you whether you're making progress or not, and will help determine whether or not the actions you're doing are working. The goal could be a speed related goal for a specific event, or a strength related goal in terms of being able to lift a particular weight. The important thing is to set a benchmark at the start so you know where you are now...and then future measurement can then be related back to this starting point
Achievable: set mini goals along the way
Breaking your main goal down into more manageable and achievable chunks is a much easier way for us to track progress and see the smaller goals as within your scope - and as such keep you motivated to working towards them. Whilst you may wish to lose 2 stone over the next year, if you set smaller monthly targets, you can focus on the smaller, more achievable goal in the short term.
Realistic: be the best YOU can be
Whilst it would be lovely to think that we could become the next Olympic champion in the 100 metres, for most of us this is, unfortunately, not going to be realistic! Set yourself a goal that is practical and realistic, that gives you a chance of achieving, and drives you motivationally to it. Having a goal that is too hard will simply be demoralising as you find it harder and harder to reach. However, if you're someone that likes to be stretched and challenged, make sure that your goal does that for you.
Time orientated: don't lose sight of the bigger picture
Make your goal something that has an end date you can visualise. Setting a goal over the next 5 years is fine, but so many other things can change in that period of time that it might make your goal impossible to achieve. Setting goals for shorter periods of time allow you to focus on them, measure your progress and not lose motivation
Finally
Be kind to yourself - life doesn't usually happen in a straight, predictable line and therefore your goals, and the actions you take to reach them, will inevitably come under challenge by illness, work, family commitments and other things that you might not have accounted for when you set your goal. Appreciating this and understanding that your progress to your goal will also not be a straight line, will help you overcome these challenges and stay motivated to your goal.
What next? Having achieved your goal, the challenge of what you do next now lies ahead! It could be important to you to maintain your performance level that you've reached, change your goal completely to something different, or re-focus your efforts to continue your existing goal to improve further. This will now require a new goal-setting plan to help you re-focus.
As always, our staff are here to help you to get the most from your membership and would be more than happy to support you with your goals, and the goal-setting process.
FOCUS workout cards
You can find a variety of different ideas and programmes to use during your time in our fitness suites here. These can help you with ideas for different exercises, to change your focus for a particular day or simply to focus a workout on a particular area of the body.
All workouts include details of the exercises, number of sets of each activity and number of repetitions (reps) to aim for, and there are descriptions on the back to help you perform each exercise correctly, with images alongside.
Simply download the relevant programme card to your phone or tablet and work through whilst in the fitness suite. If you are unsure at all about a particular exercise, please refer to the descriptions on page 2 of the card, or ask an instructor for some assistance.
Similar to the above workout card but with a different set of activities to challenge you. Choose your repetition range to target endurance, strength or muscle gain.
Superset workout (activities completed in pairs) to fully challenge your legs. Using the AMRAP principle means you can challenge yourself to improve our time and complete more reps in the allocated time.
Use barbells and dumbbells to create a full workout on your shoulders with four exercises and three sets on each exercise. Rest between sets and between each exercise.
Watch out for more workout cards to come and if you'd like us to feature something in particular then speak to a fitness consultant in your gym.
