John Pounds Centre relaunches gym with accessible Precor equipment

The John Pounds Centre, in Portsmouth, managed by the John Pounds Community Trust, has refurbished its gym with Precor Inclusive Fitness Initiative (IFI) equipment, making it more accessible. Portsmouth South MP, Flick Drummond, attended a recent open day along with beneficiaries of the trust’s Healthy Living Scheme.

Jude Caunter, now a permanent instructor, initially joined The John Pounds Centre on a work placement through InstructAbility, a bespoke programme designed to engage disabled people in the fitness industry as gym instructors and gym users. As a result more disabled exercisers started to use the gym and staff quickly realised that that disabled users were limited in their training programmes as the original equipment did not meet the needs.

The 10,000 member, 156 sq m, gym now boasts specific Inclusive Fitness Initiative (IFI) treadmills, upright and recumbent bikes and a step machine along with an IFI Vitality Series Selectorised Leg Curl, a Leg Extension unit and an IFI Icarian functional glide. The gym also benefits from new Precor Experience Series™ Adaptive Motion Trainers (AMT), two recently launched elliptical crosstrainers with converging crossramp and a Spinner® Shift™ bike. Five Vitality Series™ Selectorised single and dual-use strength stations have also been installed.

The number of free weights available has increased and the space has been redesigned to ensure clear wheelchair access to the TRX station.

Matt Mason, Centre Director at John Pounds Centre comments: “Providing an inclusive gym is really important to us as it’s the principle of why the John Pounds gym was built. It’s a professional space, in a safe and local community setting, helping anyone and everyone live a ‘happier and healthier lifestyle’. Since opening in 2005 we have had Precor equipment. The kit is well built, robust and the service team is always responsive and enables us to keep up and running with very little downtime of equipment. When looking at new equipment that met the IFI requirements we kept coming back to Precor and the support the team provides.”

Justin Smith, Head of UK at Precor states: “The John Pounds Centre is a great example of a community gym providing facilities for everyone to exercise, no matter what ability or physical limitations they may have.”