Corporate health and wellbeing

It’s no secret that great companies invest time, energy and resources into providing opportunities for their employees and teams to improve themselves.

Improvement is not just through learning, growth and development, but also through individual or team-based wellbeing programs.

Here are some reasons why your company should be driving improvements in your health and wellbeing:

Build the company’s reputation and improve culture in the workplace;

Reduce direct and indirect health care costs that can be linked to sick, stressed or demotivated staff;

Increase individual, team and company outputs and business performance by achieving higher levels of resilience, engagement and team work between employees; and

Demonstrate an authentic “care” for employees that will help with staff retention.

Maybe strike up some conversations in your work place and get something organised to kick off in spring 2018 – it’s less than two months away now!

Make time for Pilates!

Whether you take Pilates for improvements in fitness, wellbeing or for rehabilitation purposes, Pilates works and, with consistency, you will be rewarded with the results you strive for. Here are some of the great benefits of the exercising using the Pilates method:

Improved posture and alignment. Pilates helps correct imbalances in posture and alignment by training muscle groups equally and evenly. When the body is out of alignment, excessive stress is placed on the joints, ligaments and spine. Once improvements are made, the body functions more efficiently and injuries are avoided.

Improved flexibility. Many workouts, especially those with heavy resistance and weights focus on muscular contractions and muscle shortening. Stretches performed (if any) are typically static. With Pilates, movements and stretches are mostly dynamic and there is a focus on both shortening and lengthening the muscles.

Relaxation and stress relief. Pilates methods incorporate a strict focus on deep and regular breathing which brings on a sense of calm and wellbeing.

Muscle tone and strength. Pilates is not easy. Hard work and excellent execution of moves and sequences will bring with it improvements in strength without creating bulky muscles. Better muscle tone, especially around the thighs, hips and waist is readily achieved with time.

Improved physical and mental endurance. Pilates is a true mind and body workout. Body weight exercises and sequences challenge the physical capacity and ability. Completion of repetitions, combinations and sets with targets for achievement will engage and will challenge the mind. Pilates is a wonderful way to exercise for men and women of all ages.

Bodyweight training – Try Metafit!

Have you taken a Metafit class before? Our members love Metafit and refer to it as the hardest class on our program. Metafit is a high intensity bodyweight training program and it is fantastic. It is known as the original 30-minute metabolic group fitness class that delivers results. A coach will lead you through a structured class that will definitely test your limits.

Like Metafit, bodyweight training can be described as exercising without equipment or machines, instead using the mass or weight of the body to provide resistance. Here are seven great things about bodyweight training that should encourage you to get off the machines and use your body to its full potential.

Bodyweight training is suitable for all levels of fitness. It can be adapted to anyone’s level of fitness or goals. If you are just starting out, the intensity and repetitions maybe lower. As you increase your fitness levels, you might add speed, power, more repetitions or advanced movements to the activity. Take an exercise like the squat for example – a new exerciser might do 8-10 reps of a half squat and rest for 30 seconds, whereas a more advanced participant might squat deeper, do more squats, add a jump and have less rest, all resulting in higher intensity!

The variation is endless. There are a couple of foundation exercises like the squat, lunge, crunch and push up, but for each of those there might be 10-20 variations. These variations provide a range of challenges and benefits to the exerciser.

It’s portable. You don’t need any equipment for bodyweight training – all you need is your own body! Look for structures like benches, walls, trees, playgrounds etc. to help set up opportunities to train different muscle groups in different ways.

It’s functional. Functional training is training for the purpose of living. We can link exercises like the squat and lunge in training to life because we repeatedly perform these movements every day when we move lift and carry things. Training functionally with life in mind, daily tasks can become easier, we can perform them better and we will reduce the likelihood of injury.

Improvement in cardio fitness, strength and flexibility. Your bodyweight training will and can cover all three of these key exercise components. Make sure you take time at the end of each workout to stretch.

You will get results. Many of the bodyweight exercises use compound movements. Compound exercises like a lunge, squat or push up include movements of more than one joint and involve many muscles and large movements. If you go to a gym, a good trainer would have you completing compound exercise as a preference.

Its free! Once you know how to execute a few of the key exercises and movements, you are ready to go. You can work out anywhere at any time and there are no excuses not to train!