Martin: “I have been active in sport most of my life and during my periods overseas I have continued to run as a means to keep fit. In 2005 I returned to the Netherlands from an overseas career and in 2007 at the age of 60, I ran in the City - Pier - City 10K for the first time. I also participated in 2008, 2012, 2013 and 2016. In 2017 I had the opportunity to work in Dubai for a couple of years, returning back to The Netherlands in 2019. I wanted to participate in the 2020 CPC but had put some weight on during my Dubai period, and had not really kept fit enough to run 10Km. So I was considering to try to improve my condition and had visited a couple of gyms and fitness clubs to see if anything suited me.  

We were living near the Piet Heinstraat and whilst walking through the street in August 2019 I saw the Fit for Life gym and wondered if I could get back in condition there - so I walked in to get some information. I had a short intake discussion with Richard, one of the coaches at the time, and told him that I was looking to run in the 2020 CPC and that I was hoping to finish in under 1 hour.

After the initial discussion, we decided to have a more complete discussion and I decided to come for a fitness session to see how the programme worked. The idea of a holistic approach without rows of fitness machines, that you could support the training by exercises at home, seemed attractive, so I signed up with Richard on a personal trainer basis.

Richard explained that it was important to have an objective for the programme, and we agreed that the CPC target was acredible but stretch target given my age. He also explained that it was important to work on the core fitness first before focussing on running. This we did on a one to one basis through 2019 and early 2020, with him providing more specialised and detailed running coaching as the CPC got nearer. In march 2020 I ran in the last pre-covid CPC, managing a 59 mins 52 secs 10Km.

Given the success of the programme, we persuaded Kristina to join in, and we continued with a two on one personal trainer programme, which, because of the warm weather we were able to continue outside once the Covid regulations allowed.                

Personal Fitness Nederland demonstrated that a focussed programme (Fit for Life) can result in both a weight loss and condition improvement. I lost almost 14 kg during the period August 2019  - March 2020. It demonstrated its flexibility both during the Covid years, and afterwards when I had to recover from a significant period of inactivity after an eye operation.

I wanted to continue the programme after the recovery from the operation and so Kristina and I both decided to continue with the personal trainer and we joined the open sessions once we felt that our condition allowed.  We are now regulars at the open training, and the recent FitBoost programme indicated that you need to keep paying attention to your lifestyle if you want to stay fit and healthy”.