It was laundry day in Wandsworth last night, as 26 GoodGymers met at the Battersea Arts Centre ready to help out Love to Learn - a project aimed at supporting local young people and families from refugee backgrounds.

But first we welcomed some lovely new faces – hello Dagmar, Lulu and James. Nice to see Chris who was visiting us from Camden as well. We had some huge shout outs this week. A round of applause to Jack, who not only helped out at missions on both Saturday and Sunday but also is smashing the Wandsworth leader board with a huge 10 good deeds so far in September. Way to go! Well done to Lucy and Sophie who are not far behind him. We also wished Jack and Tom the best of luck for their half marathon in Cardiff this weekend – we’ll be spurring the whole GoodGym team on from here in London!

We were under some serious time pressure to pick up a load of laundry from Love to Learn and get it to the launderette, which was staying open an extra ten minutes just for us lucky lot. So with the wind behind us and the Challenge Anneka theme music in our heads, we covered the mile to the charity in record time. One human chain, and a quick pick up later, most of the team were back pounding the pavement to the launderette whilst Asifa, Lulu, Jack, Tom, Roshan and Dagmar stayed behind to do some tasks.

We reached the laundrette as the owner was standing on the doorstop with his cycle helmet on his head ready to go, and all but threw ourselves over the threshold. It was with a giant sigh of relief that, free of bags of washing, we made our way to a darkening Battersea Park for our fitness session.

Whilst waiting for the rest of the team to join us after their marathon cleaning session, we played a quick game of British Bulldog, with Sarah emerging as champion on the first match, and Matthew reigning supreme the second time. Then the fitness session. It was always going to be a hard one, but with a few ABC (agility, balance, coordination) exercises, some intervals, the plank challenge and a monster relay later, it still wasn’t over. We split ourselves into three groups, and set off back to the BAC, stopping at our favourite hill for a couple of hill sprints to round off the evening. And despite some colourful language, everybody faced their nemesis and smashed it.

Of course, the night wasn’t over without the weekly CoRUNdrum. It seemed fair enough – what stone fruit sits atop the towers at St Paul’s Cathedral? Pineapples. However, there was some dispute over the wording, with the upshot that Will is going to come up with a better London based quiz question next week. Good Luck, Will, make it a good un’!

It was Sophie’s birthday (Happy hill sprint birthday, Sophie!) this week, so we all took ourselves off to the bar for some cake and drinks to finish off a tough but fun evening. Special hat tip to Dave and Sarah who both made it to the session despite both having taken international flights that very day. That’s commitment, well done team! Congrats also to Kylee who nailed her fitness goal in record time, and to Daniel who ran his first parkrun this weekend in a great time. Keep it up everyone.

See you next week for a longer run to Tooting – sign up here you lovely lot:

https://www.goodgym.org/group_runs/tooting-charity-needs-our-help

An awsome fitness filled evening in Clapham saw a Fitness 4 All record attendance of 25 athletes dominate an epic 60 minute session!!

A dynamic joint mobilising and muscle activating warm up lead us into a poweful plymometric burst of skipping, hopping and jumping action. Mixing this up with some recovery running to all corners of the Common in our tight nit teams of 6. Strong running from everyone lead into a blast of lower body strength developing exercises rounding off with a battle to the end with a awesome static squat challenge, some amazing leg zapping squat holds for just over 4 minutes were needed to crown the champ.

After a 2 minute break we then mixed faster running in our teams with coordination improving skipping and some lateral strength exercises before finishing off the session with a 4 station circuit. Running dictating the time of the Cardio, core and leg strength exercises.

Brilliant efforts from everyone and hope to see you all again next week for the final session in Clapham for this block of sessions (i will be back very soon!). Be great to see you again next week, please sign up here. Be great to have you along to a GoodGym Group Run in any of the 25 locations around the country!! check out the upcoming events here. These runs combine running with volunteering in the local community and are great fun!

Have a great week,

Silky Smooth strides

Joel

Maybe in the last day of summer we had 14 GoodGymers including 4 first timers dominating some running focused fitness fun!

Squeezing off as much running as we could into the final Ray's of day light we got off and running after a mobilising dynamic warm up. Splitting into three pods we reduced the speed from last week but kept to the motto of the Keep moving! running/walking off to different designations of varying lengths and paces we got a solid 25 minutes of near enough continuous moving in, even finishing off by accelerating through the gears for a final push.

With the light hanging on we skipped our way to so form improving drills to get our hips up and powerfully driving into that triple extension position with our lower body. Before splitting into two speedy units to smash out some Indian file running as the light ran out.

With a few minutes in hand we worked on some key body strengthening exercises for runners. Working on leg strength, core stability and some powerful explosive Plyometric moves we worked hard for the final 12 minutes.

A series of static stretches and a loud round of applause rounded off a top evening of Fitness action!

Hope to see you all again for the next 2 weeks at Clapham, please sign up here for 22nd and here for the 29th

Stride smooth

Joel

17 super GoodGymers enjoyed a beautiful South London September evening to run their way to Glory in the first Clapham Fitness 4 All session.

Starting the session with a dynamic warm up and working to hone our running form really focusing on the ever important body position to help us all get into our running Flow.

After a series of drills incorporating skipping, lunging and accelerating we split up into teams of 3 to tackle some relay running with powerful High Fives and rolling through the speed gears as we run 4 blocks of 5 minutes running. We changed the distance and pace of each block and great to see everyone really putting in serious effort to dominate the running especially the shorter faster reps!

Hope to see you all again next week to build on this weeks session with some more Running Fitness fun. If you have not already done so sign up here.

Lean smooth

Joel