This testimonial from Chris is a great example of how NWUK Instructors literally go the extra mile in order to make sure everybody achieves their goals. Well done Chris for putting in the effort – you look amazing!

“A few years ago, my husband and I thought we were fairly fit for our age, around 66/67, and thought we had a healthy lifestyle. We walked quite regularly with a group of friends. But without realising it, we had gradually put on weight, and consequently often felt tired with not a lot of energy.

One day, I saw an advert in the local paper for Nordic Walking. I thought that might be quite good to do and I worked quite hard in persuading my husband to join me! We went along to 4 ‘Learn to’ sessions in an extremely wet and miserable January. Despite that we enjoyed it and decided to continue all helped by a very enthusiastic leader in Ian (from Mercian NW in Bromsgrove)

We soon met some great like-minded people and began to look forward to the walks and other activities, despite the weather! Ian began to introduce more and more varied activities to the week and we began to join in and were soon very active.
More importantly, we began to realise that we were enjoying ourselves with our new activities and looking forward to each one. Last February, Ian introduced a Healthy Living Course, which seemed to be the trigger for me. I concentrated on my diet, combining it with hard work in indoor and outdoor fitness sessions. It was very hard work at times and I pushed myself far more than I had ever done before, even at a much younger age, when my life involved a lot of sport at a high level.
Soon I began to see results with a loss of weight and having to wear clothes of a smaller size! I have actually lost over 2 stone in about 8 months. That is a brilliant feeling. I began to realise that all the effort was paying off – I can walk faster, am stronger and I feel much, much better and look forward to my NW activities. In fact, on holiday recently, I really missed the NW sessions!
All this involved a lot of effort and hard work on my part, with commitment to regular sessions, but more importantly, a brilliant fitness programme from Ian with continual encouragement and the right amount of ‘pushing’ and also great encouragement from our friends in the group.
Another positive from joining NW is the joy of having made some really great friends and having an incredible amount of fun!”