Nutrition plans to home workouts: the affordable personal trainer helping Salford stay healthy

By Luke Patrick | 23rd Feb 2022

Gym Memberships and Personal trainers are seen as the best ways to keep yourself fit and healthy.

However, while you may be losing the pounds on the scales, the pounds disappearing from your wallet will make you run a mile.

To combat this, two qualified personal trainers have launched the UFirst Fitness Society that offers affordable personal trainer sessions for groups of members at Buile Hill Park in Salford.

The programme also offers a range of home workouts, monthly progress checks and bespoke nutrition plans to help Salford Residents reach their individual goals.

UFirst was founded in 2013 by Sarah-Jane Broderick and her partner Anthony. Both are qualified level three personal trainers but as prices rose when working out became more popular the couple set up their own company to make the personal trainer experience more financially accessible to people in Salford.

Mrs Broderick said: “We wanted to create a way where we can give access to quality personal training, nutrition, information and coaching to people you can't afford to sustain pricey one to one session all year round.”

The sessions run locally at Buile Hill Park in Salford and include a wide range of exercises that are tailored to all abilities.

Mrs Broderick said: We mostly base the sessions on resistance training, so pushing weight moving weight and alongside that, we do some high-intensity cardio and some low-intensity cardio as well, so we can have mixed abilities in each group so some of our more advanced guys will be doing so more difficult stuff whereas some of our newer beginners we do more basic stuff.”

Mrs Broderick explained how the UFirst sessions differ from going to a traditional gym:“ if you're working with a personal trainer then you would be working one to one and what we do is we bring together everyone into a group so communities are a really important thing for us and so not only do you have the watchful gaze of two personal trainers and nutritionists and but you also have the rest of the community to spur you on to support you, motivate you.”

Mrs Broderick went onto explain: “when someone joins us, we do a private induction with them in that induction we will discuss their goals what is there trying to achieve whether its performance goals aesthetic goals sports specific. You know mental and what we'll do that is we'll get them to take their starting measurements, so we weigh them, we take body measurements and take pictures.”

Nutrition plans and monthly progress checks help to support members with their individual goals and help them to stick to the programme.

The focus of the sessions is to improve people's physical health, but Mrs Broderick explained that looking after mental health is vitally important as well.

She spoke about how some members only come to the sessions to keep their mental health in check.

Talking about the successes that her members had experienced because of working with the personal trainers.

She said: “we've had members who've lost over 30-40 kilos in weight which in itself is life-changing, we've had people come off medication that they've been on the long term which is also really life-changing, we've had people and you know say to us that they don't struggle with depression or anxiety anymore.”

Mrs Broderick talked about the difference in pricing between the conventional personal trainer sessions and the UFirst sessions.

She said: “typically for once one personal training you pay anywhere up to the average says remove £35-40 an hour now are guys who come and join you first our prices start from 80 pounds a month that includes two training sessions a week at 2 ninety-minute training sessions but also your nutrition coaching, your progress check-ins and any you know we write home workouts and people can't make a session so is essentially like having your own PT.”

Anyone can join the sessions if they become a member. The benefits of the lower cost allow people to have the support of the programme for the long run which can significantly benefit their mental and physical health.