Extra Time - Kick Start to Health
The Liverpool Football Club Extra Time Programme is known locally as Kick Start to Health. This forms part of the LFC ‘Action for Health’ Programme. Partners involved include LFC, Liverpool PCT and Liverpool City Council with Breckfield North Everton Neighbourhood Council co-ordinating delivery.
Kick Start to Health has gone from strength to strength and now has 16 sessions running in 11 community & sheltered housing scheme venues. Some of the activities included in the programme are:
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Walking Groups
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Wii fit
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Chair Based Exercise
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Legs, Bums & Tums
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Tai Chi
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Line Dancing
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Fitness Sessions
The project meets a range of health & support needs of the local older community; it tackles the poor health of older residents by providing health awareness and access to physical activity sessions. Through this programme we aim to improve the physical health and mental well being of residents aged 50+. Many participants made positive lifestyle changes such as weight loss, exercising more, stopped smoking as well as making new friends.
participant quotes
“This gives me more energy to do tasks at home. I am more sociable than ever before – Margaret Hesketh
“Before I joined the sessions I used to just sit in on my own. But now I go swimming with a lady I met in the sessions” – Margaret Lockhart
“I feel more mobile and cheerful” – Margaret Lockhart
"I've lost two stone through healthy eating and being more active by coming to this class" - Catherine Barron
"I have now lost two and a half stone and can swim for the first time in my life!" - Josephine Powell
Case Study
Catherine Barron – Maritime Lodge
Catherine is a 67 year old lady who lives alone in a sheltered accommodation block. Before Extra Time/Kick Start To Health her only form of physical activity was getting the bus to town and having a walk around looking at the shops as she didn’t know where to start and didn’t know her neighbours well enough to ask what was going on.
Since the Kick Start to Health sessions started at Maritime Lode Catherine says she “feels part of a real community; if someone doesn’t turn up to a session we go and knock to make sure everything’s ok”. Catherine says the sessions “makes you get off your bum and try something new”. Although there are some important physical advantages to the exercises she feels that the best thing about it all is the mental wellbeing and says that the group regularly meet for a cuppa in between sessions. She says she’s “the youngest of the group but loves being able to support and encourage the other participants. It’s funny, rewarding and makes you feel happy”. She loves the variety of sessions on offer and feels she can dip in and out of things to suit her mood but she loves Wii Fit the most – “it’s always me who gets up and cheers when I get a strike, I’m always the noisey one. I love the sessions and I’ll do anything I can to help they continue”.
