GUEST CONTRIBUTOR Spreading the word By John Searle, Chief Medical Officer for the FIA

Why would the Fitness Industry

Association appoint a

chief medical officer and what do I do? I guess the answers lie partly in my own story and partly in the developing strategy of the fitness sector. For 25 years I worked as a consultant in the NHS. I developed rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and had to give up medicine, which was devastating. Exercise became a vital part of the management of my RA to the extent that I wanted to make the benefits of exercise available to other people with RA and with other chronic diseases. So I went and qualified as a personal trainer - great fun as well as quite tough although the anatomy and physiology learnt many years before came in handy! For the last five years I have worked largely with people with a range of chronic diseases and never fail to be amazed at the ability of planned, structured, progressive, supervised exercise to transform their lives.

From a strategic point of view the fitness sector is playing a crucial role in the government’s drive to get people active to promote health in the face of the rising levels of obesity and all the other diseases which are the product of the Western world’s affluent, sedentary lifestyle. Part of this strategy is to establish exercise as a routine part of the management of chronic disease and the lifestyles of older people. This is hugely important as the number of people over the age of 65 rises. And we are

not talking about a general increase in activity but in properly planned, delivered and supervised exercise because it is this which has been shown to confer real benefits on patients and older people.

However, at the moment there is a wide gap between doctors and other health professionals who refer their patients for exercise and exercise professionals who deliver it. This gap has to be bridged if fitness professionals are to be regarded as a normal part of healthcare. That is the job the FIA has given me to do over the next three years. It is exciting and demanding and requires all of us in the sector to be on board in building good relationships with our local doctors and other health care professionals.

‘All of us’ of course, means not just trainers, instructors, clubs and operators but REPs, Skills Active and training providers because as exercise becomes a normal part of health care so we shall have to develop standards and training to meet these increasingly diverse needs. A crucial part of my job is working with everyone engaged in the fitness sector – and that is a huge pleasure.

“For the last five years I have worked largely with people with a range of chronic diseases and never fail to be amazed at the ability of planned, structured, progressive, supervised exercise to transform their lives”

04 The REPs Journal 2009;15(Dec):4