Preview: Fitness Festival 2019

This Saturday the Fitness Festival returns to Castle Field and it looks like it is going the be the biggest yet! Now in its fifth year, SWEAT Southsea founders and festival founders Luke and Tina Newton set out to create a free event that would inspire and celebrate active and healthy lifestyles. You can pop down and take part in free classes or you can learn more about local and national organisations, teams, charities, and businesses.

Throughout the day there will be fun challenges and prizes to be won, music and dance, demos and showcases as well as a variety of workouts to get involved in. These activities are open to everyone of all abilities and is a perfect way to try something new. You can get involved by just turning up on the day.

When I spoke to Luke he said, “We strongly believe that there is a sport or activity for everyone and this is reflected in our collaborator line-up which includes Roller-Derby, SUP, Women’s American Football alongside Zumba, Pilates, Yoga, national charities and our Partner Future Fit Training to name just a few. We were included in OK! magazines top five Fitness Festivals to attend alongside Balance Festival and Virgins’ Festival of Sport – quite an achievement for an independent business with a small team of two and we were pleased to welcome over 4,000 visitors last year.”

I had initially set out to talk about some of my highlights from this year’s festival but there is literally too many to go into the detail that I’d hoped to.

Fresh from her Spanish training camp and of course her run on BBC’s Strictly, the festival welcomes back Lauren Steadman. Lauren will be around for the day but can be found taking to the stage for a special Q&A.

We were included in OK! magazines top five Fitness Festivals to attend alongside Balance Festival and Virgins’ Festival of Sport.

Lauren Steadman stood on Southsea seafront

Also joining in the festivities are Body Confident Bootcamp. Steff and Shona set up Body Confident Bootcamp in April 2017 with a vision and passion to create a community for women to feel empowered through exercise and nutrition. Their aim was to not only build body confidence, but to inspire their women to live each day with a positive mindset and motivate them to make healthy lifestyle changes to achieve results both physically, and mentally.

As busy working mums themselves, Steff and Shona understand the struggle of finding time to exercise around family life. By starting the Bootcamp they have brought like-minded women together, seen friendships blossom and built a family that they love.

As many of us know, becoming more active is just half of the battle sometimes. I’m terrible at planning balanced meals and then end up making poor choices, so I am looking forward to hearing from TV dietician Priya Tew.