Birchwood Park - Health & Fitness Newsletter (Nov-Dec23)

HEALTH & NEWS FITNESS MEMBER MONTH 2023 NOVEMBER - DECEMBER 2023 In this Edition | Club and Update, Classes, and Swimming In this Edition | GM, Course Gym Update | Recipe of the Month

A MESSAGE FROM...

Serina Hi everyone, Halloween is over, Guy Fawkes night has been and gone, the clocks have gone back, and the weather is horrible - it is well and truly winter now.

Winter can be a challenging time to stay healthy and feel at your best. The cold, rain and shorter days can make it feel harder to keep motivated and come to the gym but keeping moving doesn’t just benefit your long-term health – studies have shown moderate-intensity exercise can help strengthen your immune system as well.

Physical and mental health are linked, and this can be a tough season for many of us.

Coming to the gym is a perfect way to stay in contact with people, friends that you have built a social life with and your Myzone gym buddies. Getting involved in a swim tag challenge can also keep you motivated. For more details on these, please see reception.

Getting outside is also a good way to boost our levels of vitamin D, as it’s made through our skin when we are outdoors in daylight.

But sunlight levels are generally too low from October to March, so taking a daily supplement of 10mcg of vitamin D in these months can be helpful.

We all know that fruits and vegetables are full of nutrients. Eating a healthy balanced diet that includes at least five portions of fruit and vegetables per day can help your immune system to work well. My favourite healthy winter meals are homemade soups, stews, curries and casseroles packed with lots of vegetables.

You can also have stewed or baked fruit for dessert, or warming porridge with fruit for breakfast - which are other ways you get your 5-a-day in winter.

Remember that frozen or tinned fruit and vegetables (if there’s no added salt or sugar) are just as healthy as fresh and can be more affordable.

We can get through this winter together.

Great News for Tom I would like to share with you all the great news about our gym instructor Tom, who has successfully passed his level three personal training apprenticeship.

Tom started with us back in June 2022 as a level two gym instructor, and within three months of being with us, we enrolled Tom in his level three personal training apprenticeship which he has been working hard on trying to complete by December 2023. Tom has now achieved his goal and is ready to start taking on personal training clients. If you are interested, please come and see Tom on the gym floor or talk to our reception team for more details.

The winner of our Miami Beach swimtag challenge was Stuart Dallas.

Congratulations to Stuart and everyone who participated.

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Our new winter challenge is our 10km Christmas Island Beaches, and our winner will be selected at random in January. To join in the festive fun, please see reception about signing up to swimtag.

IRON - Victoria Gibbs & Lorraine Halstead

BRONZE - Dani Tuffrey & David Liney

SILVER - Vic Bunce Carole Hewett Claire Davis Heather Young

Ben Quiney Christine Bardoe Elaine Roles Ian Magness

Jim Hillier Madelene O’Connor Paul Fisher Rahman Langroudi Sam Kakvan Stephen Norton Other status achievements include; Carol Hewett reaching Gold and Alfie Bird has now reached his Platinum.

Diamond status has been achieved by Sophie Wintle and Hall of Fame goes to Caroline Horne - well done Caroline, that is a fantastic status to have.

CUSTOMER JOURNEY Christine Bardoe Since using Myzone, I feel I work harder or at least can see how hard I work. It helps to keep you motivated and you can set yourself goals. It’s great to see it on the screen or access it on your device when you’re doing any workouts because you can push yourself even more. I find the benefit of using Myzone is that you get more of an accurate summary of your workout compared to sometimes just wearing a watch.

It’s easy to access via the app so you can always review progress for the week or month, and then you can set yourself more goals.

Christine was also the winner of our Bingo Challenge and is currently training for the 2024 London marathon.

Carol Hewett I have always been a fitness fanatic but need motivation, hence why I attend classes, rather than the gym. Myzone has given me that extra motivation I need and bought out the competitiveness in me. I love it when I go into the yellow and red zones, and today I reached level gold status. I am 74 and Myzone helps me - it can help anyone.

Classes We saw an 18% rise in no-shows in October with a total of 459 members not showing up for classes, an average of 114 a week. Lisa has been sending out warning emails to our repeat offenders, so don’t lose your right to book online, as it only takes minutes to cancel.

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We are looking at our timetable for 2024, if you have any requests, please inform Lisa or myself before the end of November. Please remember not all requests are achievable.

and in December this year, we will be planting 900 trees and 200 shrubs in an area on the golf course. This is a very exciting project which will benefit the local community long term by improving the air quality, mitigating some of the climate change and enhancing the local landscapes.

Birchwood Park & Sustainability Did you know that Birchwood Park is a GEOcertified site? GEO Certified® recognises golf businesses that demonstrate a commitment to providing more and more value to people and nature at the facilities they manage.

We are proud of our commitment to sustainability, but we recognise that we can always improve further. We thought we would share a few of the key facts that we are proud of: •

We do not use any mains water on our golf courses. All water for the golf courses is harvested from rainfall, by collecting the water from the rooves and the car parks, and pumping it into our purposebuilt reservoir. This allows us to maintain our courses, without placing any strain on the local resources.

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All our electricity is provided by renewable energy sources.

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As a group less than 0.25% of all our waste ended up in landfill last year.

Through working with responsible waste management companies and through the efforts of our teams, we work hard to segregate waste to recycle as much as possible. We are committed to improving this further still.

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We focus on providing a habitat to natural wildlife, working with local groups to count bird species each year as well as designating sections of our land to “rewilding” to provide natural habitat for other animals and insects.

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We are currently working on a grant with the Woodland Trust to increase the volume of woodlands in the local area

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As you will have read, we are introducing swimsuit spin dryers into the changing rooms. This will not only offer an improved service but will also eliminate the number of plastic bags leaving Birchwood Park. This year alone, we have used 57,000 plastic bags.

Christmas opening times will be announced soon. Keep an eye on our notice boards for further information.

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UPGRADES COMING SOON!

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21 brand new Keiser spin bikes with app connectivity and virtual workouts. These arrived on Friday 17th November.

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We will be spending over £5,000 to improve our shower areas. We will need to take the showers out of action for a week while we complete this work. This is due in late November, or early December.

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New kettlebells in early January

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Swimsuit spin dryers for the changing rooms by the end of the year.

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New yoga mats

The final details have been done and delivery dates are soon to be announced. I am so excited about what we are doing to improve Health and Fitness going into 2024.

We apologise in advance for the disruption that the following works will cause to our normal service. However, I hope you will appreciate the investment and commitment to improvement we are showing. We will confirm any disruption nearer to the works.

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Over £270,000 worth of brand-new Technogym Cardio equipment including new Climbmills, interactive bikes, as well as your favourite cross trainers, bikes, and treadmills. This new kit will be installed the week beginning 11th December.

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Thank you for reading the latest Members News.

Please feel free to contact us on 01322 662038

BIRCHWOOD PARK GOLF & COUNTRY CLUB Birchwood Rd, Dartford DA2 7HJ