The Leeds Rhinos Foundation and Leeds City Council Public Health came together to provide another successful healthy living initiative with a BOX class for people with learning disabilities at Fearnville Leisure Centre running over 24 weeks.
BOX, which is England Boxing’s official fitness studio based boxing class devised to teach Olympic style boxing technique with all-round body conditioning, has been delivered by the Leeds Rhinos Foundation and Leeds City Council at eight venues across Leeds in 2015, with the class at Fearnville one of the success stories of the initiative.
The classes attended by over 12 clients weekly has been delivered by Health Improvement Practitioner and Fitness Instructor from Leeds City Council, Tina Leslie delivering the sessions with a focus on enjoyment, inclusion and improved mobility throughout the course.
The course devised to offer an alternative fitness class for people with learning disabilities has seen a marked improvement in the group’s engagement and fitness levels since the start of the programme, as Tina Leslie explains:
"When the sessions first started the participants were mostly unfit and lacked mobility and strength, having worked with the group over 24 weeks there has been a marked improvement in all areas of fitness particularly in strength, hand eye coordination and best of all social skills they come out the sessions smiling and chatting which is great to see.
"They are a great client group to engage with and are really enthusiastic, it has been a pleasure to deliver the course and hopefully we can offer more classes like this one at Fearnville, throughout the city.”
The participants from Leeds City Council Adult Social Care, who have come from a range of day centres across the city, enjoyed their final session at the Gipton based Leisure facility last week and provided a thank you card for their instructor for delivering the course.
Health Partnership Manager for the Leeds Rhinos Foundation Dan Busfield commented:
“The Leeds Rhinos Foundation are delighted to have been able to offer a worthwhile and beneficial class for the attendees at Fearnville Leisure Centre that has helped increase the physical activity levels and contribute to improving healthy lifestyles of the group.
“Based on the feedback from the class, which included people with a range of disabilities, there has clearly been some positive changes occur over the duration of the course as well as testimony from support staff about how much the group have enjoyed getting fit and engaging with the class.”
“We would like to extend a big thank you to Leeds City Council Public Health for working with us to help deliver the course and hope to further the relationship going forward to provide more courses of a similar nature to help benefit more people of all abilities and backgrounds in the community.”
A video of the class is available to view below:
For more information on the Leeds Rhinos Foundation’s Health initiatives in the community contact Dan.Busfield@Leedsrugby.com