Two schools in the south-east of England are hoping a specialised offering will help to empower young women and encourage them to achieve their fitness goals.

The sites have both been refurbished to include Matrix Fitness kit and designed to provide an inclusive and welcoming environment without compromising on the standard of equipment.

New choices
Leighton Park in Reading is a co-educational day and boarding school for 11- to 18-year-olds that recently invested in its sports facilities by creating a new and improved fitness centre. The school empahsises that healthy eating, fitness and exercise are important aspects of overall student wellbeing and support academic studies and achievement.

The fitness centre is used to support sport studies, but can also be used by students as part of their extra-curricular activities or their own fitness programmes. New equipment was installed to encourage female students to participate in physical exercise, with a range of Matrix treadmills, rowers, bikes and elliptical machines all on offer.

Students also benefit from all-weather surface tennis courts, a floodlit AstroTurf for sports such as hockey, basketball and netball, a covered swimming pool and a gym and weights room.

Jeremy Belas, director of sport and senior enrichment co-ordinator at Leighton Park, says: “Traditionally, the school has always provided weight training, but this held very limited appeal to the girls in the school. Nigel Williams, our head, specifically wanted to create a new facility that would encourage the girls to come into the gym and try exercising in a different way.

“Our Matrix-installed Fitness and Cardio Centre has certainly achieved this, with more girls at the school choosing fitness-based activities as part of their games afternoons and extra-curricular activities, and working out using the high-end functional equipment.”

Reaching goals
Also encouraging young women to participate in exercise is Queen Anne’s School in Caversham, an independent boarding and day school for girls aged 11–18 years. The school occupies a 35-acre campus and benefits from a new 140sq m gym, with the original gym having been converted into a dance/aerobic studio.

Queen Anne’s aims to meet each individual pupil’s needs through a wide range of activities and teaching styles. It looks to promote an understanding of realistic goal-setting within PE, as well as an ability to identify personal strengths and weaknesses.

The school boasts a fully-equipped sports centre including a new fitness suite, two dance studios, a squash court, four badminton courts, a climbing wall and a large room for Zumba and yoga.

The new fitness suite features 35 pieces of Matrix equipment including a range of cardiovascular machines with individual consoles, indoor spinning bikes and Aura strength equipment including a Multi-Functional Trainer.

Ed Hellings, director of finance and administration at the school, says: “As a leading independent girls’ school, we needed a gym that not only promotes health and wellbeing to our girls, but also reflects the standard expected by the girls themselves and their parents.”