Ten Good gymers donned layers and braved the cold to run to the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership Community kitchen. We welcomed Georgia's return and Amaryllis at her first GoodGym session!

We were greeted by our host Jo who had a colour coded list of tasks for us to tick off. She told us of the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership's work in reducing food waste and running cooking courses, and much more!

We soon warmed up as we speedily started cleaning chairs and cupboards. Being great multi taskers we all had a good catchup while cleaning!

Rebecca and Ben took one for the team and braved the cold by cleaning outside. While other organised GoodGym-ers sorted pans back into their families!

It was lovely to see the GoodGym gang and a good start to the year!

Do you know that....

As GoodGym volunteer we could attend a 6-week cookery course at the B&H Community Kitchen by accompanying people they support, as referred by TogetherCo. This is an exemplar GoodGym’s mission that could help isolated people to build up routine and feelings of confidence.

For more information, email hello@togetherco.org.uk and ask our GoodGym Area Lead, Stefania.

… the todo list.

Our task owners, Jo and Calum, were waiting for us at the Community Kitchen ready to give us our jobs for the evening to help keep the kitchen looking clean and tidy for their summer classes. As was the case during my previous visits, a colorful to-do list adorned the wall, eagerly waiting for our attention. However, since we were only a team of four, Jo and Calum prioritized our tasks in case we couldn’t complete them all.

2nd tasker Michael (nice to meet you), Philippa and I took charge of washing and squeegeeing the outside windows, window sills, and the kitchen entrance, while Angela fearlessly battled with the ovens, leaving them sparkling. Next on the list was cleaning the fridges, cupboard doors, and their handles. Finally, with about five minutes remaining, we all focused on the last task - cleaning underneath the countertops.

The to-do list was conquered.

Everything was checked off. ✅

There’s a satisfying feeling that comes with completing a physical to-do list!

Well thank goodness our task this week was indoors! The April showers were definitely out in force!

We were welcomed by Jo from the Community Kitchen, a fantastic organisation who host cooking classes to fund Community events for those with Additional needs, dementia, or maybe inspiration to make their food budget go further. Highly recommend you check out their classes on their website.

Jo, ever organised, had a list of chores ready for us to tackle through out the kitchen including antibac-ing, cleaning and sorting! With so many of us in attendance, we got the lot done in no time!

This weeks news was to celebrate Jane completing 10 (now 11) good deeds with Goodgym 🥳 Now it is a habit and it'll feel strange if you don't come to a Tuesday night session!

This week we had a great turn out for an indoor task that didn't include gardening.... We headed to The Brighton and Hove Food Partnership Kitchen to meet the lovely Jo, to help with some en mass cleaning!

The kitchen puts on cooking classes to help fund sessions for those who need support to make food go further or give those with special needs additional skills. Please check out their great works and classes (which book up quickly) here

As ever Jo had a list of jobs which included sorting utensils and cleaning down icky surfaces. Tabitha and Angela got to cleaning all the outside windows and Michael took one for the team by cleaning the surfaces in the toilets.

The rest of us cleaned and antibac-ed everything in sight including bar stools, sinks and even cupboard handles.

Working quickly we gave ourselves time for a fitness session, completing a tabata with a few reluctant passers-by having a go! This type of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) gives you a great all round, varied, but short burst of fitness to keep the session interesting.

This weekend there is a trail run, with pub finish; please sign up here if you'd like to join.

Not that anyone needs a reminder that the festive season is about to go into OVERDRIVE, the Brighton Santa Bus was in town!

Not to be distracted, ten Brighton Goodgymers met, pleased by the milder but wetter weather. A brief, but uphill, run to the Brigton Community Kitchen where we met Jo who runs the Social Enterprise. The Community Kitchen run a variety of cooking classes to the general public, from curries and dim sum to cakes and guides to nutrition. The money made from these classes go on to fund sessions for those who need life skills to provide a means of supporting themselves.

As always, Jo was very organised with a list of jobs for us to do including; sorting through cupboards and drawers and sanitsing EVERYTHING! With the tunes playing we got a lot done in 40 minutes including a last scramble to sort the measuring spoons and cups (which a few Goodgymers hadn't come across before!)

With the kitchen 99.9% bug free we jogged down to the seafront only to be beaten back by the wind and rain! A quick diversion back in land we set up for our fitness session. For those who missed it, but don't want to miss out we did; 10 step ups (5 on each leg) to improve our glutes, 10 tricep dips to improve our triceps (obvs) and 10 V crunches to improve our core.

Three rounds completed we made our way back to where we started, waving each other off as we went on our ways home.

This group run was a tale of two tasks, with half the crew shovelling and the other half scrubbing. After meeting in Victoria Gardens and congratulating Abion both 50 good deeds and a new Parkrun PB, the squad ran up the hill past various lush-smelling restaurants to reach Brighthelm Gardens. Here five folk headed round the corner to scrub the windows at Brighton's Community Kitchen, while the rest of us surveyed a small mountain of soil, shovels in hand.

Shovelling said soil into place had been a previous task for Brighton GoodGym but now it had to be moved to a new planter, allowing the neighbouring music school some outdoor space for their students. The crew wielded shovels and wheelbarrows enthusiastically, and with the Brighthelm team mucking in we soon had the new planter filled and ready to receive its crop of tomato plants.

Meanwhile over at the compost heap more earth moving action occurred as Abi and Shermanturned two huge piles of compost.

(Brighthelm was also the location of Brighton Goodgym's very first task back in July 2017 which you can read about here. And also coming full soil-cle was Rebecca from Lambeth who was attending a Brighton group run for the first time but had been present at Tara's very first Goodgym experience in Lambeth also in 2017!)

But the day's labour wasn't over yet- after running back down to the start point, Tara led us in a brief but brutal interval workout to round the session off. Since that first task four years ago, Brighton's GoodGym runners have completed hundreds of tasks and engaged with dozens of community projects around the city- here's to four more years!