Our mid-August Tuesday evening group run was the perfect time to let women of Acton know about the upcoming final term of the Movement on The Mount, starting in September. What is Movement on the Mount, you may ask? The project is all about helping local people get more active.

Action West London runs programmes for women who may face barriers such as low confidence, language difficulties, low income or caring responsibilities. The organisers want to encourage women under 16 and over 65 coming from varying backgrounds to try free classes, including street dance, bodyweight circuits, yoga, stretching and relaxation, and many more.

GoodGym Ealing supported the programme once again, with 7 GoodGymers distributing approximately 400 leaflets around the letterboxes in the neighbourhood.

Since the theme for today was movement, Harvey, Sevan, Steph Ducat and Kash ran to the task together, Giles - sporting his new GoodGym t-shirt - ran directly from home, Maria walked, and Scott cycled. But that's not all! We also stopped along the way to tackle exercise stations, including jump squats, squat holds, wall sits and incline push-ups - all making use of the urban environment around us! The flyering itself added around 3km of extra walking to everyone’s day.

Impact

Earlier in the year, we asked Action West London to share some statistics about the women who registered for Movement on the Mount after our leafletting tasks. Here is what we heard back:

• 22% of the people who signed up found out about the programme from the leaflet
• 37% of them didn't currently exercise
• 68% were non-white
• 31% were white British
• 22.4 % were in the 45-54 age group
• 15% were in the 55-64 age group

What's coming up next?

There are more opportunities to get active with GoodGym in the coming weeks!

Thursday 20th August Getting Hanwell School of Boxing into shape 💪 Help a sports charity with the tidy-up ahead of restarting classes in September

Saturday 22nd August Volunteering at Southall parkrun led by Steph; 🧭 Explorers wanted! 🥾 Clear a path for the rangers 🌿 Afternoon session at Grove Farm

Tuesday 25th August Wee Forest, Big Problems 🌳✂️ Keep a special community garden accessible to and usable by all, led by Sevan

Ms E's health had gotten worse since Kash and Sevan's last visit. That was worrying her and as she was proud of her garden, she was almost as concerned about the state of it. As with a lot of recent gardening missions, things had grown despite the lack of water recently and needed to be kept in check to not cause bigger problems later.

Before being able to get tools from the shed, Kash and Sevan had to deal with a drunken tool container that had toppled over and blocked their path. One of its supports had buckled and even once it was emptied, it was still leaning forward dangerously. Propping it up didn't work, then Kash had the smart idea of spinning it around. As the ground underneath wasn't level, the leaning ground one way and the leaning storage the other way equalled out and at least for a while, the storage will stay standing.

With that sorted, it was on to trimming back the plants. The three challenges were to stop any invaders from neighbours' gardens, keep the path along the centre clear of branches and cut everything down to head height. On both sides, creepers were sneaking in so Kash and Sevan did a neat job of trimming along the fence line. Ms E's own plants had some sharper edges and points, making bagging them into thin black sacks a fun task.

Roses were lopped and hydrangeas were chopped and eventually the pair managed to complete the highest priority tasks, leaving some smaller bits to be tidied up for next time.