Welcome!

Here we go again. January. Our gyms are full, classes cosy and trails busy. The new year health kicks are well and truly underway, signalling the return to exercise for long-lost and brand new worker-outers, spurred on by the promise of a new year.

Brilliant!

It takes guts to roll up to a gym where it seems everyone was born a weight-lifting salad-eater or to plod around a park amongst graceful gazelles. Whether you remember it or not, we were all new to exercise once. We all took that first step into a new environment and received enough encouragement to come back.

So you have to wait another minute for the rowing machine, don't you dare huff and puff and complain! Get creative and use that time for some body-weight training, use another machine and, please, be understanding. Gyms, in particular, can be intimidating places, don't let your impatience contribute to that reputation. Isn't a busy, buzzing venue better than a quiet, cobwebbed space?

This healthy, sweaty world we occupy year round is not an exclusive club, anyone who even considers becoming more active should be welcomed with open arms. We have something really special – being able to move and improve, the empowerment of endorphins, feeling entirely invincible – surely that's something we can share? We talk about it enough!

Greet these resolution-ers into our gyms, spin classes, running routes and swim clubs with open arms. Let's give them the encouragement they need – the support we've all been given at some point in our active careers – to help them make their new year's resolution stretch to February, to make it become a new habit, second nature, a new lifestyle...Whatever their fitness goals, let's welcome them all!