The Hour

For the last month STV has been running its New Year New You campaign and no one has felt its impact more than the staff of Broadwood Leisure Centre. While others have had the luxury of learning from the online videos and TV slots, Nicola, Val and James from Broadwood have had fitness guru Stella Bartram by their side to push them on.

James said: “Before I’d muck about, carry on, have a laugh. I always came down [to the gym] with somebody and just laugh about with them. Now with Stella it’s like a programme: something to work toward and build on.”

Although they work in a leisure centre, none of the three are involved in the fitness side of it. Instead they spend there days in the office, the reception area or, in James’ case, in the kitchen as a chef.

This made it even harder for them to motivate themselves.

Val said: “I think when you finish work at night you just want to get home. You don’t think about going to the gym at night and doing a workout.”

For James it was even harder still because he has to taste the food. Now he has managed to avoid this part of his job as much as possible. He said: “I do [taste it] sometimes but a lot of times now I’m getting other people to do it for me. I’ve just got to watch what I’m doing.”

Having watched them overcome these challenges, Stella was immensely proud of them.

She said: “I think these guys had a job on there hands because they do work in the Leisure Centre, but obviously when they’ve had a day’s work they want to get away as quickly as possible.

“It was really about finding things that they would do that they would enjoy doing. There was no point giving them stuff that they weren’t going to enjoy and I think that they’ve embraced all the different activities at the Leisure Centre like going to classes, swimming, getting into the gym. So that’s been a real success.”

Now all they have to do is keep it up, though James said that the fear of Stella turning up unannounced is enough to push him on.

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