active ageing
The importance of evidencing success
creating an infrastructure Sport England and ukactive are starting to create community-focused Wellness Hubs, which transform ageing leisure stock into swimming pools, gyms and multi-sport facilities with GP drop-in centres, rehabilitation services, libraries and police stations on-site. Reimagining Ageing recommends a national roll-out of these accessible facilities to create more inclusive and welcoming physical activity experiences. It also calls for better support and training for exercise professionals, to enable them to work confidently with older adults, with an army of older fitness instructors, leading the way. “CIMSPA’s Labour Market Intelligence Report
reveals the average age of those working in the sector is 38,” says Ward. “We want the government to support older people by making it easier and more affordable to retrain as fitness instructors or sports coaches.” Lastly, the report proposes the
establishment of a locally-owned ‘Activity Therapy’ service, developed with healthcare professionals, volunteer services and the physical activity sector. These services would embed the physical activity sector throughout every relevant care pathway of the NHS and provide a framework for a range of evidence- based exercise schemes to be delivered across the UK.
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pactfacilities.co.uk
Strength training has been proven to tackle some of the major conditions affecting seniors from dementia to diabetes from osteoporosis to a reduction in muscle mass. Through the provision of a technology driven, intuitive, motivating, automated system which delivers a progressive, full body workout in 30 minutes, eGym is evidencing high usage levels among this demographic as well as significant improvements in physical health.
In 2017, Broxbourne Borough Council invested in a nine-piece eGym circuit at the Laura Trott Leisure Centre. Today, more than 240 members aged 51 and over are using eGym with an average monthly attendance of 5.5 eGym sessions.
Data collated from regular single repetition strength tests has also evidenced that, on average, regular eGym users benefit from a 14 per cent improvement in strength with those aged 70 to 90 showing a nine per cent improvement.
www.egym.com
know the market Success in these interventions lies in understanding what our ageing population actually wants, says Utku Toprakseven, director of sports intelligence at 4global, which manages the DataHub. Using data collected from more than 500 million individual visits to more than 2,000 facilities, the DataHub can offer an overview of what’s engaging the older market to help predict trends and inform programming decisions. “We have real-time information on millions of older consumers’
lifestyles, activity habits and buying preferences, and can put it at the fingertips of decision makers,” he says. “Take programming. Our figures show 90 per cent of the visits by people over 65 take place during the week, with almost half occurring between 9am and 12pm, so numerous facilities could more effectively target this cohort to fill spare
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