Category Archives: Cardiff Stuff

On Aspire Fitness

Cardiff Stuff, Reviews, , , ,

Gyms. Ugh. Sport, fitness, exercise, even more ugh.

Me and physical activity got off to a bad start – slow, short, weedy and always the last to be picked for any team,  I used to dread ‘all out’ which was the name for the period between the end of lessons and the evening meal at my (boarding) school. I presume it was called ‘all out’, because it was meant to imply that every single one of us got some fresh air and physical activity, every day…well, as far as I was concerned there was plenty of fresh air in the copses and dens where I smoked my badly rolled cigarettes, and the occasional sprint from a schoolmaster on the prowl more than counted towards my physical activity quota.

I stopped doing any kind of sport (except the mid-fag sprinting) the minute it became non-compulsory, which I suppose was probably 16 or so. I did have a brief flirtation with swimming in my final year at uni, because I got a bit embarrassed confessing that I couldn’t swim more than 10 metres – and then only on my back. So I went to the pool regularly enough that after six months, I had managed the super achievement of being able to swim, uh, twenty metres. On my FRONT! Get me!

After university, I did occasionally have a panic about my unhealthiness, leading me to sign up with various gyms promising the earth, but I never stuck with them. I felt like such a muppet not knowing how anything worked, and I hated the latest-kit-and-fake-tans crew that seemed to lurk around with not much else to do but gossip and stare pityingly at muppets like me. Also beyond a standard induction and perhaps a photocopied exercise program, there was no support and encouragement. Until I phoned to cancel my membership of course, and then the support and encouragement practically oozed down the phone line, slowly calcifying into arsiness as it became clear, that no, I really, really did not want to continue having the lifeblood sucked out of my bank account in exchange for feeling useless and self conscious  in public three times a week. I can do that perfectly well enough on my own, and FOR FREE, thank you very much.

Given my track record with gyms, I don’t know what made me join Aspire Fitness when they opened in Canton back in 2008. Except that I had a six month old and a two and a half year old, and I was desperate for something – anything – that I could do to give me some time to myself for half an hour a couple of times a week. Also, just after I’d had the flyer through to say a new gym was opening,  I had spied three people in their Aspire hoodies, having a coffee in Chapter. I figured they must be the owners and suspiciously inspected them from afar for signs of latest-kit-and-fake-tans-ness but there were none. Even better, one of them was definitely eating CAKE!

So I signed up for the gym, and because it seemed like a good deal, I also signed up for personal training, and then, feeling all proud of myself, I went and signed up for a bloody half marathon with my three sisters who’d all been running for ages. Of course I spent the next week bricking it about how many new and wonderful opportunities I would now have to look, act and feel like a muppet, and how long it would be before I could decently cancel my membership, and whether there might be cake available in the gym, and whether if I fed my sisters enough wine they might forget that I’d promised to run 13.1 stupid miles with them.

So I rocked up on my first session, at 6.30am, which went a little like this..

Joe:’So, why do you want to train?’

Me: ‘What?? I don’t WANT to train at all, you  muppet. Why would I? What I WANT is to lose weight, get a bit healthier, and replace my pelvic door with a pelvic floor. Preferably painlessly and while eating cake’.

Well, that was what the voice in my head said. I have no idea what I actually did say. I probably mumbled something about losing the baby weight, I honestly have no idea. Whatever it was, I ended up really enjoying the training despite myself, and not only did I turn up to my next session and the ones after that, but I started going to the gym in between times as well – and, weirdly, liking it!

Going to Aspire was such a massively different experience than going to any of the gyms I’d been to previously. For a start, all the staff looked genuinely pleased to see me whenever I arrived. I’m sure they were equally pleased to see everyone who walked through the doors of course but when you’re a bit scared and a lot post natal, a friendly smile makes a huge difference. And Joe, who had (and still has) the misfortune to be my trainer, was always remarkably unfazed by my unco-ordinatedness, and had this knack of getting me to do stuff I never dreamed I’d be able to do, without me even realising I was doing it. Last but not least, the other members were not scary and certainly not pos-ey at all, and, like the staff, really friendly…I was encouraged to join the gym’s running club by a couple of them and I never, NOT IN A MILLION YEARS, imagined that I’d have the confidence to go running with people I didn’t know.

I did my half marathon – in fact I did three. Three! Me! And not only that, but I found I was enjoying myself so much that I decided to work towards becoming a personal trainer, and managed, with loads of help from the Aspire team, to actually pass the gym instructor’s exam. I haven’t managed to do anything with it yet – I had my youngest shortly after that and the next couple of years were a bit of a blur, but still – I did it, and I will at some point, when life is a bit less crazy, pick it up again. In the meantime I’m training for a 26 mile walk in September, raising money for Hope for Justice (with friends I met through the gym), I’m running the Cardiff Half Marathon in October, and I’m learning to deadlift. AND I CAN’T EVEN BELIEVE I AM WRITING THAT.

So there you have it. I really cannot recommend Aspire highly enough. If you are thinking of joining a gym but nervous about it, or you want to train for anything at all, you should definitely call them – they really do know – and care – what they are talking about, they’re lovely people, and they also do shedloads more fun stuff than I’ve written about here, from rock climbing to triathlon training. You can book a free trial in the Canton gym on 02920 23 55 23, or in the Nantgarw gym on 01685 887544 – or drop them an email on info@aspirefitness.co.uk. Get on it!

 

ps Aspire didn’t ask me to write this post, and I’m not getting paid for it. Though I hope when they read it they will feed me cake.

 

On Foodbanks

Cardiff Stuff, Social enterprise, , , , ,

There’s a food collection in work at the moment, for the Cardiff Foodbank. They do amazing work, collecting, sorting, and handing out food to those most in need in Cardiff and this post is not meant to be negative about foodbanks in any way shape or form. But – hello – last time I checked it was 2013. That’s TWO THOUSAND AND THIRTEEN, people, and we are lucky enough to live in a first world country. What is going on if people cannot afford to feed themselves and their families? And if the UN is officially ‘alarmed‘ by the situation in the UK?

Seems to me as if there are three problems here. Firstly – wages. Yes – isn’t it wonderful that we have a minimum wage, currently £6.19 an hour.  Except it’s not actually enough to live on, is it – that would be £7.45 per hour, as calculated by the Living Wage Foundation. But we wouldn’t want to put the minimum wage up to a Living Wage, would we now – think of all those lovely multinationals who wouldn’t take twats like Iain Duncan Smith out to lunch any more if we did such a thing.

Secondly – benefits. (Just a little reminder here in case you’re a Daily Mail reader that only 2.6% of benefit claimants are unemployed. Or to  put it another way, only 3% of benefit spend goes on Jobseekers Allowance.) But jobseekers, DLA, attendance allowance, incapacity benefit – the point is, none of them do what they are supposed to do, which is to give people a reasonable amount of food, warmth and dignity. Of course, a fair bit of the benefit bill goes on income support and housing benefit, and another big chunk of HMRC spend goes on Tax Credits, so that those people on minimum wage can actually afford to live. Hang on, couldn’t that be solved by raising the minimum wage a bit so that the state didn’t have to top up their earnings? Oh – sorry – we couldn’t POSSIBLY raise minimum wage – see Iain Duncan Smith and his lunches, above.

So that’s one side of the coin – people don’t have enough money to buy food.

The third problem comes from the other side – the food prices themselves. Now, I know everyone seems to worship at the magically correcting free market altar, and I know on paper that market forces, rational expectations and the like should all make for a wonderfully self-levelled world. Which I suppose they might, if everyone just consumed what they needed. But once greed becomes a factor, the idea of free market economics providing for a fair and happy world for us all just goes right up the swanny. You might have heard of ‘food speculation’ (but depending on which newspaper you read, you might well not have – it’s something of a dirty little secret for the people in the know).  Basically, food speculation is bankers betting on the price of food, to make cash. So some people come out of it very well indeed, thank you – like Barclays, who are estimated to make up to £340 million a year from gambling on our food supplies. But most people don’t. Those who are hardest hit are the food producers, and next on the list is anyone for whom food expenditure makes up most or all of their income. Which is a hell of a lot of people in the developing world – and, because we seem to be regressing here in our supposed world leading country, more and more people here in the UK too.

What can we do about it? First and foremost, please give to your local Foodbank. Just a couple of extra items in your trolley is going to make a real difference to someone – it could mean a child comes home to a hot meal for instance. Secondly – don’t vote Tory – they really are a cliquey club of rich little schoolboys who don’t give a shit about you, me, or our kids, as long as they’re all right. Thirdly – check out Bankers Anonymous to help those poor wankers – sorry bankers – quit their gambling addiction. And finally, if you want to know more about food speculation, the best and clearest information is to be found on the World Development Movement’s website, along with ways in which you can  put pressure on the government here and at a European level, to regulate betting on food prices in global markets.

I guess I’m thanking my lucky stars that it’s not us at the food bank. Probably you should be too.

On the Cardiff Pound being in the news!

Cardiff Pound, Cardiff Stuff, Social enterprise, Wales, , , , , , ,

Just a very quick post – feels like I’ve hardly seen my kids this week and want to spend some quality Friday night time with them – but here’s some coverage of the Cardiff Pound from the South Wales Echo today! 

Thank you to everyone who has contacted me offering support and ideas – I have been overwhelmed by the welcome this idea has received. I’ll be in touch very shortly!