Staying elfy this Christmas at GoodGym Barnsley

A team of 6 ran to Barnsley Town Hall to help prepare for the Christmas family open day!

Tonight GoodGym Barnsley welcomed our newest member Jason, let's show him some support here

Christmas at the Town Hall is coming and over 500 families are expected to turn up this weekend to join in the fun. Part of the festive fun is an elf themed workshop for the kids where they get to decorate an elf hat with tinsel and add some ears to it. To prepare for that, Nicola from experience Barnsley asked if we could fold coloured paper into the correct 'elf hat shape'. On #GivingTuesday we came together to lend a hand!

The six strong group arrived a little damper than they had left, thanks to the heavy rain, and were pleased to be doing an indoor task in the beautiful Barnsley town hall. Nicola led us through the grand hallways, telling us the tale of the resident ghost Jamie who died in the elevator shaft - sensibly, we took the stairs!

We got to work straight away folding the colourful paper into hats, with the option to cut out elf ears too once finished! The origami shaping was too much for Steve, so he headed up team ear-cutters straight away!

Mairead, Jason, Rachael and Suse got stuck in with the hats, folding those hats, checking them twice! I put on some festive tunes to get everyone in the Christmassy mood (in November :-p ) Rachael aka Scrooge wasnt impressed by this!

The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear!

Once all of the hats were folded, everyone turned their attention to the ears, cutting out around 100 in the final 10 minutes! After a few sELFies in the hats, we headed upstairs to room 14 to do a quick fitness session!

Tonight's fitness session was all about strengthening and mobalising the hips. The hip muscles are probably the most likely area to be underdeveloped or lacking strength, causing other muscles to compensate for it, which can cause injury to other areas. So tonight we did The Myrtl Routine This included:

• Clams
• Lateral leg raises
• Donkey kicks
• Donkey whips
• Fire hydrants
• Knee circles forwards and backwards
• Hurdle trail leg forwards and backwards
• Lateral leg swings
• Linear leg swings
• Linear leg swings (bent knee)

Depending on where your weaker muscles are, you might feel the burn in your glutes, hip flexors, iliotibial band or quads. This is something I personally do to warm up before a run, however lots of people also do it after a run to strengthen muscles!

Warmed up and ready to leave, the group headed out back through town to Shaw Lane. After a quick stretch off we said our goodbyes!

Another fantastic team effort and good deed done, thank you for giving back on #GivingTuesday