As we look forward to this year and what you hope to achieve in 2025, setting unrealistic goals is easy.
We all know what we must do to achieve a better life: Eat better, exercise more, spend more time with friends and family, and spend less time on electronic devices. That sort of thing.
Like many others, I want to move more and take time out of my busy work and family life to focus on my health. A niggling knee, some extra weight and a looming perimenopause means I am finding bending down or running upstairs much harder jobs than they ought to be.
A health scare with my elderly dad in December has also brought health sharply into the forefront of my mind.
I have a Winchester Sport & Leisure Park membership, which has been idle during the Christmas festivities.
However, it’s the first week of 2025, a new year, a new you, and all that jazz, and the leisure centre has released its latest set of classes. So I am back, trainers on, and my gym kit has been retrieved from the floor of my wardrobe. I am ready to test the classes and facilities again.
The leisure centre was packed, full of people with similar mindsets who were hoping to get fitter this year. The gym and the car park were also full. A good sign that I am not alone in this quest to be a bit fitter.
I can’t praise the leisure centre enough. It’s a great asset to the city.
For many months, while it was in the planning stages and being built, I remember former councillor Frank Pearson telling meetings of Swanmore Parish Council (on which I was a parish councillor) about how great it would be. I also remember thinking that perhaps he was overegging things. I wondered who would drive to Winchester to go to the gym when the perfectly functional Fareham Leisure Centre was closer and arguably quicker to get to.
However, I am a convert. Winchester’s pool is beautiful, clean and big, and the family pool is a perfect depth for younger swimmers. It is fun with its splash park, too. The light streams in on a sunny day, and you can see the field outside while swimming. It’s new, the changing rooms are well-designed, and it even has proper hairdryers (not those awful tube things).
The gym is also great, with views out (albeit mainly over the car park), which lets natural light in and gives a pleasant feeling—no dingey, smelly basement here. So many clubs and groups meet at the centre, too—the noticeboard is packed with activities I would like to try.
Everyone Active runs the centre, which also operates the centre in Fareham, where my children take swimming lessons, and the centres in Holly Hill and Whiteley.
My membership gets me into those centres, too, and the kids get free swimming outside their lessons, making for a nice, cheap, and, most importantly, active day out.
My kids are also great fans of the climbing walls at Fareham Leisure Centre, and we hope to try the walls at Winchester soon (if they ever release weekend dates?).
The monthly membership (which allows you to go anytime to any class at all centres) is on the expensive end of gym membership at £52.99 per month when you compare it to the cheaper inner city chain gyms, but I think it’s worth it.
If I have convinced any of you to sign up and try it, I’ll see you at a Bodybalance class soon. Here’s to a fitter, more active 2025.