6 council staff members came out on a beautiful Thursday lunchtime in Ealing to help the tend to the trees in Walpole Park!

All new to GoodGym, it was wonderful to have lots of lovely staff members out wanting to get fit and do good in their lunch break. We started with a warm up to loosen up the legs for those who had been sitting behind desks all morning, whilst chatting about GoodGym and all the other ways to get involved!

1. Coach Runs - this is where you get paired up with an older isolated person and go see them once a month.
2. Missions - this is where 2-3 people go to an older persons home to help them with practical one off tasks to help them stay independent - gardening, setting up a hospital bed and more.
3. Group Runs - this is where, as a group, we run to help local charities and projects with a physical task.

Walk or run, the choice is yours!

At GoodGym we're all about getting fit and doing good, whether you run or not, that's why we always offer walking options on our shorter routes. Today we had two options, a shorter half lap of the park for walking or a longer loop for running. Both options give you a lovely dose of vitamin D, the ability to get into some green space and a chance to get away from your screen! After sending off our walking group into the sun, the running were put through their paces with some running warm up drills before heading out for a nice big loop of the park.

We all reconvened in the middle of the park where everyone was raring to get going with the task for today. We picked up our tools and were shown the lovely 100 year old trees we would be tending to today. The ground surrounding the trees needed glently turning with forks so that they could later be mulched by more volunteers. This allows the roots to breathe and helps the longevity of the trees in the park!

Helping trees helps the environment, well done GoodGym and Ealing Council!

Lots of passers by were interested in what we were doing and one lady asked us to quote her on the above. What a lovely comment and definitely makes our help feel even more worthwhile!

After about 40 minutes of hard digging, which was a great workout in itself, we packed up our tools and finished with a great little fitness game in the park before heading back to the office.

I hope you all enjoyed your first experience of GoodGym and hopefully we'll be back with more workplace sessions soon. In the meantime you can join any of our 51 active GoodGym areas across the UK and GoodGym Ealing is every Tuesday evening.