A Kilmarnock personal trainer has been working hard to get kids fit.
Kevin Smith welcomed pupils from Loanhead Primary to his gym, Coach Personal Training Studio.
The youngsters headed along to the Bentinck Street venue to learn about the importance of health and fitness from an 18-year professional in Kevin.
He told the Kilmarnock Standard: “In conjunction with Loanhead Primary’s Health Week we are promoting good health and fitness with the kids.
“I did something similar last year at the school, so this year I decided to bring them down to see the gym so they can get a feel for the environment.
“It’s about getting them to normalise exercise and gym life, we want to get them thinking about it from a young age, we want to promote healthy life choices at an early stage to promote wellness.
“A smaller private gym like this is perfect for them, it’s a less intimidating environment, I want them to feel comfortable from a young age.
“Young ones are really body conscious at the moment due to social media so we need to work on that.”
Loanhead’s depute head Sam McCulloch trains at Coach Personal Training so she knew Kevin was the right man to educate the kids.
And Kevin reckons she deserves recognition for her hard work at the school.
He said: “Sam deserves a lot of praise, I train her and know how hard she works.
“She is very active at promoting health and wellbeing and mindfulness for the kids, she does a lot of that in the school so she deserves recognition for the work she does.”
And Ms McCulloch said: “This health week is about community partnership to extend the depth and breadth of sport provision for the pupils whilst introducing other interests.
“I train with Kevin so I know how great he is and it was important to get the kids down to his gym to see it’s a good environment to be in.”
Kevin opened his gym just before Covid lockdown restrictions hit, but he says it was about improvising and adapting.
He said: “I’ve been a personal trainer for 18 years and I worked in commercial sites before deciding I wanted to launch my own brand with my own core values for health.
“Gyms can be come and go places, I wanted to try and build retention and strength through the membership and get everyone working as a team.”
He added: “It was daunting at first launching my own business, I set up the new place and then Covid happened so that wasn’t ideal.
“But I’ve got a really strong client base, we did loads online with Facebook lives and my retention of members actually stayed quite high.
“Before too long we were out doing exercise in the parks, it would have been easy to chuck it when Covid hit but we improvised and changed with the times.
“It was important for people’s mental health during Covid, it was a massive issue so we had to work on success stories which we did.”
Kevin welcomes new members for anyone looking to get fit, lose weight or feel part of a community. He can be contacted on Coach Personal Training Studio’s Facebook and Instagram, or by emailing coachpersonaltrainingstudio@gmail.com
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