Gemma Rudd is a personal trainer at Lordswood Leisure Centre, she qualified last thursday and is just starting her career in the fitness industry. As somebody who is totally new to X Training and being a personal trainer , the UK GCA caught up with Gemma and asked her about the world gym challenge and how it will be implemented in her gym.

Who did you qualify with ?

Lifetime, they run through City & Guilds and they have been established over the last 10 years. They are a government funded company so they pay for your qualification. They give you 7 months to get through it and they have got on-line tutors that come in every month and help you get through.

Personally, how much did it cost you?

Nothing - absolutely fantastic ! When I looked into it would have cost about £3,000 to be a Personal Trainer, but if you are doing 16 hours or more in a fitness environment you can qualify for it .

How do you find working in the fitness industry?

I absolutely love it - just what I was born to do. I am a real people person and meeting new people and helping them achieve their goals really is a passion of mine and I feel strongly about and getting on board with world gym challenge, it’s is an amazing opportunity to push that even further and get my knowledge out there I suppose

How do you see maybe inter-challenges between the members of your gym say the footballers taking on the rugby teams and that type of element, would you like to see that happen?

I would like to see this happen but  I just think it could sort of get a bit too competitive and it is not supposed to be taken so seriously, I think it should be  a fun thing trying to beat your mates and stuff.

The actual nature of the gym challenge it is one of the few non contact sports - you don’t need a particular skill. Do you find that appealing to gym members?

I do , I think because you don’t have to be brilliant in one field , for example think a Fireman can can go from beginner to advance in a fairly short period of time because a lot of them are very fit  but I also think it would appeal to our gym members that have not done any challenges like this and don’t play sports and maybe think “I will give it a go and see what happens”   they can and also compete against strangers or friends so that is another option as well. I do think it will be really appealing on lots on levels.

When you look at people in the gym what is really important to realise is that you have to come in at the right level on this challenge – it looks quite easy on paper – it is very hard to do especially at the top end. How would you go about trying to encourage people to start off at the beginner or intermediate?

I think it depends on the person, I mean people going straight in on the advance is tough.  I think I would let them try it first  and then talk to them about the times they could achieve at a easier level and let them build up a tolerance to the level of fitness appropriate for them and whether they should do a beginner or intermediate – but if someone was just asking what sort of level to go on I would say well for your fitness level I think you should go for beginner or intermediate, although I think a lot of the guys would want to go straight for advance, as you say it does look easy, but I would try to talk them out of it to begin with

The challenge on the 10 October, we have obviously got around 6/7 months to cope with that . How would you go about encouraging people to train for this?

We have got a lot of advertising going around the centre and all of my trainers in the gym are asking to promote it  - get a feel for who wants to wants to get involved and perhaps speak to them. We will then start training with the trainers and myself  and see how that goes – or get people training together and promote it that way so everybody is working together.

In Manchester, Gorton Fitness First the members have helped form a fitness committee, they have got a number of people who want to do these type of  challenges and discuss the way they want to train together and discuss the options and training – do you think you can create that here ?

I mean all of my trainers here are really excited about it they just want to  get into it and do it now. I think that this would be a really good way of people to get on board.  I think a fitness committee is a great idea - you can discuss what is going to happen and the best way to train and this could work really well for both personal trainer, client and member.

Ultimately, the main aim of the world gym challenge is to create a community within a gym so that you get people young or old fit or unfit working together and on the day of the challenge the whole gym units. How do you think the prospects of having an annual event where a course record is set each year ? How do you think that would appeal to your members?

I think it will appeal quite a lot to the members, I think after the first challenge we will see how many people are interested , how many enquiries we get and when the next one will be etc. I think for competitive  members and people who just want to have something to mark themselves at it’s very exciting  and the ones that just want to achieve something form themselves it will work really well too.

Tell me about your charity work here.

We have done a lot of charity work, I mean Help the Heroes has done really well and I got involved with everything we done for that – also Demzela House. People are willing to give to really good charities with great causes – they are good charities so everyone donates to it – the smaller charities sometimes do not get enough exposure so we try to some thing for both – local and national.

What other charities do you work with ?

The BHF (The British Heart Foundation) because it goes with our GP referrals so we would probably run for them and  Help The Heroes as we obviously have raised a lot of money for them, also  and the Oliver Fisher Baby fund is one of our favourite ones, and it is at Medway Hospital which is local.

Your ideals and your vision of when someone first joins a gym, that person has a journey, do you think that the world gym challenge trying to promote this kind of fitness is over bearing on the individual or do you feel that he could embrace it and set a target to get fitter ?

I think all depends on the type of person.  I mean we do have a lot of people coming in here who are nervous of being in a gym I mean its a bit daunting having people around them and I think on depending how they are when they first come into a gym depends on whether it will work or not. I think if we can  promote it and tell them how good it is going to be – I think it will work really well ,but I do think  it is going to be mainly women who are going to shy away from it - they will think that people are looking at them and fell a little self conscious  - but  all the trainers are here to help and if it works well it may boost confidence and be a real sense of achievment as well as get them fitter in the process.

I think that you have hit something really important there,  a gym is just an empty shell of fitness equipment, what makes the gym is the members and the personal trainers, it looks to me that you have a spot on group of individuals here that can really encourage them to be part of this – do you have a little side bet amongst yourselves ?

What the trainers? We are all up for it ! it will be fun and great for the staff - members and anybody who wants to come and support on the day. I am a competitive person but tend to be more competitive with men than I do females – as well as the fact that I am probably the only female that will take part in our team, so I will be competing against the guys.

Gemma, thank you and I appreciate your time, and I look forward to working with you on this .