As a hip surgeon, I see every day how important it is to stay as fit, strong and healthy as possible, particularly as we get older. I took the plunge a couple of months ago and joined SWEAT Winchester, a gym that specializes in small group personal training. In this video I chat with the owner Liz Penny. We talk about the benefits of this type of training, and how it can be tailored to people with joint problems, and even after you have had surgery.
Let me know what you think!
Here are my contact details:
02380 258402
info@lathamhipssurgery.com
Do you do exercise classes or go to the gym is it one of your New Year’s resolutions to start being more active many of us start with good intentions we sign up and after a few months find excuses not to do it anymore it’s too cold I don’t feel great I’ll go next
Week and so it goes on I took the plunge a couple of months ago and signed up to a local gym the last time I did this was about 30 years ago after a few months I stopped going and bought a rowing machine instead I’ve used that regularly
Ever since so why have I joined a gym well I felt I needed to do something different and challenge myself an advert for a local gym popped up on Instagram and it caught my eye this gym offers small group personal training and it really appeals to me because it’s
Focused it’s interactive and it’s socialable the psychology of this is very different to a typical gym we’re all of a certain age and that makes it feel much less threatening as you aren’t surrounded by bodybuilders and fitness for Fanatics pounding away on a treadmill you actually feel part of a
Small team and that helps to keep you going I feel better fitter and stronger even after a few weeks I had a chat the other day with Liz Penny the owner of sweat Winchester which is where I go we talked about the way that small group training works and how it can be
Tailored to the needs of people with joint problems or who’ve had hip surgery have a look I’m with Liz Penny this morning who owns the sweat gym here in Winchester Liz maybe you could tell us said a little bit about sweat and how it
Came to be yeah of course so um I’m the founder um I originally started sweat back in Al it’s 10 years ago in London um and we really kind of thought that there was a sort of Gap in the market for sort of small group training so
Training people you know semi sort of private personal training whereby um you know people are getting sort of a lot more attention from um the trainer without it being on a onetoone and and it’s so therefore it’s a lot more affordable kind of thing so originally
Started in London as over time time sort of the business model has changed and evolved and then we opened up down in Winchester um back in sort of 2019 just before covid struck there’s kind of three fundamental things that we do at sweat the first thing is is training so
Training people in small groups um you know they get the they get structured program um that’s on a you know on a periodized sort of model so it changes every five weeks on a different cycle um you got a coach Le session so anyone for sort of any injuries or they’ve got any
Restrictions or they might be quite new they don’t you they don’t necessarily have the training age to understand exercises so that coach is there to make sure they’re doing it effectively the sessions are time efficient so we do 40 minute sessions because you know like myself I’m quite busy you don’t have a
Lot of time um you know a lot of people when they go to the gym they think that they need to work out for you know an hour or an hour and a half where they don’t need to do that so we’re kind of in and out in 40 minutes so it’s very
Time efficient the second thing that we focus on um is accountability main reason why people come to us in the first place is because they lack that accountability they lack motivation coming into an En environment like this um you know really kind of infuses that enthusiasm and that that motivation so
It kind of kicks in and then it becomes um part of their life and consistency is what gives them the results and then the third thing that we look at is is people’s nutrition as well so um Vitality is key um we don’t you know
We’re not kind of into you know sort of you know like things like fasting or you know calories and things like that it’s more about um fueling the body correctly in the right way um and and following sort of fundamental principles for for your habits um so that you can kind of
Accelerate the results that you get in the gym basically fantastic it seems very efficient and I like the fact that it’s you know good use of my time come here early in the morning I feel great half an hour afterwards endorphins kick in it’s a really good start to the day
Um but you know I as a hip I see a lot of people with arthritic conditions not just hips but you know bad backs shoulder stiffness all the diseases of middle-aged and older yeah so how do you accommodate people say have you had anybody who’s had a HIIT replacement who
Comes here do you know what I’ve never had we’ve never actually had someone to my knowledge um that’s had a hit a hip replacement per se we get a lot of clients that have got various different elements I’d say it’s very uncommon for someone to come in that doesn’t have
Something going on and the first thing that I say to people when I speak to them before they kind of sign up is the fact that they need to move basically they need to move their body they need to do some loaded movement they need to build their strength
Um yeah okay we do cardio elements they’re going to build their stamina all of those things but they need to basically continue to move and load their body because as you as you age you get less active um you start to naturally lose kind of muscle mass as
Well um and the worst thing you can do is nothing basically so to come into an environment that’s very safe and structured is is key really a lot of people are petrified you know a lot of people um they haven’t done it for years have they yeah or sometimes never at all
We’ve got clients in their 60s that have never exercised before in their lives you know and this is the first time that they’ve ever done anything um and they might have issues going on they might have shoulder issues hip issues back issues ETC knee issues um so so yeah so
It’s all about kind of you know giving them that confidence and that safe sort of secure environment and and you know get coming in and given it a try really ex um that’s that’s the key thing really yeah but it’s definitely for us we focus on strength we always get people to
Focus on strength training um initially because um the this is the fundamental sort of functional strength basically so those everyday movements you know picking your grandkids up or you know in the garden shoveling stuff around dragging bags of whatever you do in your free time um are mimicked in this kind
Of environment so um people have natural strength um but we just need to work on that basically and do you would you see any problems say someone who’s had a hip replacement say 3 six months beforehand uh because there are restrictions that as surgeons we are very particular about
Bending excessively and twisting in the first few week weeks after surgery by about three months most people can do pretty much anything yeah but would there be any things that I mean how would you go about do you think post working with somebody who’d had a hip replacement and was worried about maybe
Dislocating their hip or overdoing things yeah I mean again we’ve had a lot of clients that have had surgeries in different areas so the first key thing that we do is we want to work with either they’re surgeon or their physio whoever is basically agreed that they’re
Good to go and move basically and understand what that looks like so we wouldn’t necessarily talk to that person but we want guidance and advice in terms of what they’ve said that they can do and what they shouldn’t do um we’d also dependent on what that that is that’s
Going on we’d also look into that and research it as well um so we’re making sure that person is doing the right movements in the sessions basically so um yeah we we you know it’s quite common for that to happen when someone comes in from from having a surgery in some in
Some respect yeah and that’s good because what I like about the small group training is it’s very bespoke I mean you wander around and you make sure everyone’s doing the right thing making sure that they are their techniques good that’s been really interesting for me because working on the technique really
Does get the maximum efficiency out of what you’re doing maybe you could just talk us around the the room and what the equipment you is because you know I’ve been to gyms before and I you see these all these people on treadmills and machines and what I like about this it’s
Very stripped out very basic yeah JY yeah and that’s quite a pealing so maybe you could just sort of talk us through how um how you how a session might work yeah of course yeah so the I guess of um the space is that you have space and um
You know there’s so many different types of exercises that you can do um you know with different pieces of equipment Etc so um we’ve got a lot of cardio so we use sort of rowers skiers and bikes and the great thing about these is that they’re low impact in fact zero impact
So very good for the joints very easy to use um some would say not on on the assault bite kind of thing but challenging the body cardiovascular um as well so so these are different components that will appear in programs basically so we got different types of equipment um that offer that variety
Again so people don’t get bored yeah um over here we’ve got um the rig so on the rig is where we would do you know we store stuff but it’s also where we would do um some of our lifting so things like squats deadlifts so like real kind of
Functional movements and things like uh bench pressing chinups um we can hang like they’re like rings so like trx’s for example so you can do sort of like suspended training which is all sort of to do with gravity um so using your body more as a machine
Basically so that’s that area here um in the middle we’ve got a track um so we’ve got some sleds um so our clients use these to push and pour and drag and um all different types of things plus we use the track um you know to do things
Like bear crawls and um again very functional movements that people find quite challenging kind of thing like moving their body up their body weight up and down uh um yeah and then we just got a lot a lot of space um we’ve got things like dead balls kettle bells uh
We’ve got the boxes I mean you could you could be I’ve got battle ropes you could be here you know for months and months and months and never do the same exercise working five week blocks and we go through sort of each phase we do like an endurance phase a hypertrophy phase
Will be next and then we do a strength phase but whenever we have new clients coming in um we would never get like a new client to be working in sort of like a strength for a trophy phase if they if they if they’ve never done any training
With us they would be doing a slightly different modified sort of rep range um so that they can kind of build that strength because it’s not just the muscles it’s the ligaments the tendons coordination core strength Etc that we need to be aware of so yeah yeah fantastic and generally how long would
It take in your experience for someone to go from a cold start to actually getting to a reasonably good level of Fitness how long would that take maybe doing two sessions a week yeah I mean it’s different for each person depend on what you know they’ve got going on yeah
Yeah everyone’s different um uh nutrition and things like that are a big factor sort of sleep and things so like that how how energized they are when they’re training but we run a six week program for sort of new clients and I’d say that six weeks is a good that’s the
Reason why we do it because it’s a good Benchmark because You’ be very surprised people that walk in on their first session you know they’re quite timid they don’t really want to lift too heavy they move particularly well but then by the time just training twice a week by
The time they get to the end of that six week you know it’s a completely different person just in terms of their confidence the way they hold themselves yeah and and just their movements um their confidence in themselves in the gym um yeah and and their Fitness levels as well so six
Weeks is a really good Benchmark for somebody who’s who’s quite new and people are um feel very vulnerable when they first they won’t verbalize that uh you know a lot of people will say I was absolutely dread in my first session but I’m so I’m so glad that I’ve done it and
I feel really really good now got a lot of clients and they would never ever have thought they would do this sort of thing ever kind of thing um and they train religiously sort of two to three times a week now so um so yeah which is
Amazing it’s great to see well I’m fully signed up yeah okay Liz that’s great thank you so much for your time and I’ll see you next week for my next brutal session you will do thank you very much see you later I hope you found that interesting
As we get older it’s much more important than ever to keep active and to maintain our strength balance and coordination it’s never too late to start and it really doesn’t take too long to feel the benefits let me know what you think in the comments below if you’d like to know
More about anything to do with hips please get in touch the details are below thanks for watching and I’ll see you next Time