Future Fit Training to appear at 'mini REPs Convention' at LIW : 

FFT have been invited by The Register of Exercise Professionals (REPs) to give a presentation to delegates at the ‘mini’ REPs Convention, to be held at Leisure Industry Week (LIW) 2007. The presentation topic will be the Psychology of Behavioural Change, a subject that is gaining increasing notoriety in the fitness industry.

This year's LIW show takes place from 25th - 27th September 2007, NEC, Birmingham.

Health & Fitness Sector worth more than
£3.9 Billion:

The value of the UK health and fitness clubs market has reached £3.94bn – a 5% increase since 2002.  A report by Market & Business Development (MBD) also states that the demand for health and fitness clubs has risen by 16% in the last five years. 

Growth in the sector has been driven by a number of factors, including increased media and government attention on the emerging obesity crisis.  Increase in demand for new, celebrity-lead exercise regimes have also encouraged diversification and growth, as well as the raises in the levels of personal disposable income.

The report also predicts that the value of the health and fitness sector is expected to increase by 12 per cent by 2011, reaching an overall value of £4.42bn.

School to get health club: 

Health club operator Attiva is to open a PFI health club in a school – thought to be the first such development in the UK. The new club at Caludon Castle School in Coventry, will feature a 70-station fitness suite including CV machines, free weights, resistance equipment and vibration machines. The health club, due to open on 7 July 2007, will be operated by a franchisee and will be open to the public at heavily subsidised prices.

New President for REPs International Confederation: 

Susan Kingsmill, from Fitness Australia, has been named as the President of the International Confederation of REPs. The launch of the confederation also means that members of each of the individual registers can use their registration status to work in the other member countries.

Certificates of registration will start to include the ICREPS logo and there will be a linking website for members. Detailed discussions with South Africa and Canada continue, along with EREPs launching a register in Belgium and probably in Ireland during 2007. In the EU there is the opportunity to see registers develop in all 27 countries under the EREPS umbrella.

Research carried out by neurologists at Columbia University Medical Centre in New York earlier this year has found that just as exercise improves muscle tone and function in the body, it can also boost brain power by building new brain cells in a brain region linked with learning and memory.

And according to the research findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, what’s good for our hearts and waistlines also is good for our minds.  MRI scans of the brains of 11 healthy adults were assessed before and after they embarked upon a three-month aerobic exercise regime and it was found that exercise generated increased blood flow to the brain and the more fit a person became, the more blood flow the MRI detected.