🏋🏻♀️ “She seems to have tapped into every person out there, not just their heart but their head. She’s made us realise that it’s not about ‘you can’t do’, ‘you can’, but you just have to adapt it.”
🥳 I was invited to a surprise 30th birthday party on Sunday with a difference. All of the guests were women who had been through Torfaen Council’s ‘If You Go I Go’ programme – a free ten-week course of fitness sessions.
They gathered in secret at the gorgeous Grounded Coffee & Wellness in Sebastopol to surprise Megan Parker, the lead officer for If You Go I Go, who has just turned 30.
The women wanted to wish her a happy birthday and show her how she has helped them change their lives through fitness and exercise.
Before Megan walked in, I chatted to Hannah King. She has permanent scoliosis of the spine after a car crash. A little over a year ago, she thought she would never live an active life again, and that all changed after she signed up for ‘If You Go, I Go’ with Megan.
She said: “I was told that I would never be able to do things again, but through Megan and her hard work, I’ve managed to go in the gym and get things done safely.
“I lost 20 kg, so 44 ½ lbs, and she’s been the person that’s probably saved me from a really, really bad place. I just wanted to do something for her so she knew how much she’s loved and appreciated. I know all the ladies out there feel exactly the same.
‘A new way of life’
“’If You Go, I Go’ is also like a teambuilding thing as well. So it’s a bunch of ladies that maybe have mental health problems, physical health problems, and you’re all together trying to learn a new way of life and to become fitter, healthier, and sustainable for the future.
“Megan gets to know all our medical history. She adapts things to make things easier for us. She does that, then she goes into taking the classes themselves.
“Through that, then she sort of got us to branch out into different areas of fitness.
“I’ve joined Shadow Valley CrossFit since doing it and there’s some ladies who’ve started to run their own netball club. There’s ladies that’s started their own Pickleball club through ‘If You Go, I Go’.”
A quirky, positive, healthy lifestyle side-story from the event was when it was time to light Megan’s birthday cake. No one in the room had matches or a lighter. It took ten minutes for them to find someone who could help. I thought it was interesting to have a room of around 30 people, and not one person was a smoker.