The Edinburgh Good Gym: fitness with a heart If your gym membership is costly, it's time to invest in a "good" fitness regime They're not everyone's cup of chai, are they? Expensive, impersonal, intimidating sometimes. It's no wonder that only 27 per cent of those with memberships actually use them. But when even a £75 standing order disappearing from your bank account every month doesn't act as an incentive, what's the alternative? "I like exercise," says Ivo Gormley. I like playing sport, but I wasn't massively into running for the sake of it so I needed to find a way to motivate myself. At the same time, he was faced with a pressing need in his own community of Tower Hamlets, in London. "Ten per cent of people over the age of 65 only see friends or family once a month," says the 29-year-old documentary maker. So, at a time when we need more energy than ever in our communities, we have also created these places called gyms, where people go and purposely waste their energy and achieve nothing. His response to this double dilemma was the Good Gym. Membership: one. "I started running to visit my friend's parents' ex-builder, who lived not too far from me," he says. They told me he was on his own and didn't have family in the area any more and was pretty much housebound, so we were introduced. I would run there once or twice a week and bring him a newspaper. We'd have a chat - not for that long, maybe ten or 15 minutes - and I would know he was waiting so it would make me get out of the house and go and do it. After about a year, interest began to grow. More people realised the attraction of combining good works with keeping fit, and since the beginning of this year Gormley has been focusing on the project full time. Membership has now reached around 300 - and counting. "We need to work out ways we can do a little bit more for each other in our day-to-day lives," he says simply. We're not saying give up all of your Saturday afternoon or even all of one evening, just give a little bit regularly, and hopefully it will be good for you because it will keep you motivated. At the beginning, the Good Gym was focused on older people, but the criminal records checking process slowed things down massively. It takes three months to get one of these things back. We lost around 70 to 80 per cent of people through that. So we wanted to find a way that we could make entry a bit more accessible. If you join a gym, you probably get a nice tour and then can get going the next day. This is an alternative to a gym so we want to make it really easy. The result is group sessions whereby people get together, go for a run, do something worthwhile - a gardening project, say, or shifting piles of rubble, clearing land, sorting out an older person's garden - then run back to the starting point. They have grown to cover four boroughs in London, and a Good Gym has just started in Edinburgh. "We've had requests from all over the world," says Gormley, "and the temptation is to go, "Yeah!' but we also realise we have to make sure we know what we're doing and don't dilute it too much." Ultimately, Gormley's vision involves runners having apps on their phones, tracking their runs and keeping pace with who is visiting who, where and when, and a rapid response unit, where individuals can turn out at short notice to minor emergencies - such as a light bulb needing changed or groceries being delivered. But as the project grows, whose job is it to decide what constitutes "good'? "I'd like to get to the stage where we are allowing the runners to decide that," says Gormley. We delivered some flyers for a hospice the other day - it was for a jumble sale. I don't know, is junk mail a good thing or not, even if it's for a good cause? The runners thought it was a worthwhile thing so we did it. He draws a comparison with a dating agency, so the Good Gym will put together people who want to get fit by doing something and groups that need something done, and let each party decide if they want to hook up or not. "I want it to be really big," he says. I'm not saying it's going to change our society and make us all loving, caring people, but it's a small step in the right direction. Gormley isn't the only one disillusioned with the traditional exercise arena. Another alternative is the growing number of outdoor gyms appearing across the country. With one in Strathclyde, a shiny new one in Edinburgh and rumours of more springing up across Scotland, they provide a simple, poser-free environment for working out. And, more importantly, they don't cost the user a penny. They are like a play park for grown-ups. Liz Stewart, fundraising manager for Edinburgh and Lothians Greenspace Trust, explains, "We'd been lobbying the council for an outdoor gym for a while. I'd seen them in London and thought they were a great idea. Then, when funding came up, we were asked to find an appropriate site. That site is Hailes Quarry Park. "It's in one of the city's more deprived areas," she concedes, "but one of the benefits is that it's on the Union Canal so there's a lot of traffic going past - people commuting to and from work can see it." Pieces of equipment include a leg raise, assisted pull-up, leg press, lat pull-down, shoulder press, handbike, cross trainer and treadmill, all of which work using the user's own body weight as resistance and come with full instructions. "There are lots of reasons why some people might not go to a gym," says Stewart, "and a lot of that can be down to expense. This is, of course, free, which is the best thing you can say about it. You can also try it and see if it's for you. It's quite sociable, and it's a non-threatening environment if you don't know what you're doing or you're not very fit, so it's great for getting people started, particularly during the nicer weather. You could argue that it makes exercise fun again. "It's constructed like traditional play equipment," she adds, "big, tubular constructions. You just want to leap in and have a go." n The Edinburgh Good Gym next meet is on 5 May (www.facebook.com/goodgymedinburgh); www.goodgym.org; www.elgt.org.uk/projects/health-wellbeing/hailes-quarry-park-outdoor-gym