It’s not uncommon, in fact, it’s expected that a small gym such as ours will shut down for Christmas, and through til New Years and then again at Easter. So why then, do we choose to stay open?

The easiest way to answer that question is to remind people of why we do what we do. We run a gym with excellent technical coaching that gets great results for our clients very consistently, but we are a community. If I have to choose between someone’s training outcome and their mental well-being, it’s always going to be an easy choice (and the winner is definitely not lifting a bigger bell or dropping a dress size!).

We want people to come into our gym community and be healthier because they have done so. Healthier physically - absolutely, but also healthier mentally and emotionally. Physical training has fantastic research support to demonstrate that it helps with all three of these things, so it’s a great vehicle for developing a healthy body that is equipped for life. The other piece of the puzzle that is super important, though, is having friends who listen to you, like you and look out for you. These are the things that we seek to provide, and the skills that we strive to impart to the members of our community.

In other words, for people that come and join our community, we aim to offer them two things:

Outstanding training that makes their body feel great and that continuously improves their capabilities, delivered in the safest possible fashion to ensure that they leave the gym healthier than they arrived.

Great friends and the opportunity to be great friends. We seek to offer acceptance and to provide an environment where people can feel safe. With that backdrop, I’m hoping that the reasons that we stay open over this period are starting to become self-evident.

Life is meant to be good, and it is way harder to enjoy life on your own or with a body that is constantly hurt, sore, or broken. Here they are, the main reasons why we stay open over Christmas and Easter:

Christmas and Easter are a tough time of year for some people. For many people, their family is either not fantastic or not here. Having a chance to catch up with a bunch of people that like you and enjoy a bit of awesome food and a little training is a great thing.

Long-term success builds from consistent positive habits. If people want to enjoy consistently good health for an extended period, then they need to create positive habits. Training consistently is one of the habits that can make a significant impact on people’s long-term physical and mental health, if we shut the gym over Christmas/Easter, we risk handicapping people who are just developing these habits at a time when the habit might benefit them the most.

We keep the gym open so that people can easily come in, spend half and hour or so, and maintain some common structures in their life as they enjoy some much needed time off from work or study at the end of the year. I really like the people that come and train with us every week. This is my community too, so the opportunity to hang out with our members while they are relaxed and have the time to 'shoot the breeze' is a great luxury for me. I also really love nice food, and it’s a great opportunity to have some great food with some people that I like. This year, Easter is going to include some Blackstar Coffee, some delicious homemade food, and some wonderful fruit from our local fruit shop on Stanley Rd. I’m a little excited…

Ultimately, the reason that we stay open, is because we think that these seven to ten days over Christmas/Easter are too valuable to our community for us to close. Thanks for spending this time with us and reading the whole way through this article.

Piers

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