Junior Activities at the Club – A Few Changes

At Club Towers we have a diverse membership comprising of people at all stages of their lives from the youngest babies, through to our oldest member at 87 years of age! Before the Club opened in 2017, we discussed in detail how we could best achieve a good “balance” in the Club between those members who have children, want them to be active, and want to exercise with them (sometimes without them!), and those who do not have children, and are looking for a relaxed and peaceful environment. Feedback from members to date suggests we have been largely successful in creating a good environment for all of our members.

Over the last six months, however, we have become aware of a few small issues, which we wanted to try to resolve. Hence, we have reviewed all aspects of our policies relating to children to ensure that they meet our overall Club objectives and, as far as possible, accommodate all of our member constituencies.

This has led us to make the following changes to our junior, parent/junior and adult-only activities:

Gym/Studios:
As you know, for health & safety reasons, under-16s are not allowed in the gym except during designated sessions. There is no change to this rule, but we are extending the sessions when 12-15 year olds can use the gym as described below.

• PT supervised junior classes in the gym for 12-15 year olds – these run four times a week and have proven very popular. Hence, we are not proposing to change them. We are, however, ensuring that numbers are kept to eight per class, and would ask you to please remember that juniors needs to be signed into and out of these classed by a parent/guardian so that we know where you are in the Club in the event of injury/accident.

• Juniors (12-15 years old) in the Gym under Parental Supervision: These sessions have to date been running on Friday evenings (4-6pm) and on Saturday and Sunday afternoons from 2-6pm. From next week, we will add two more sessions: Weds 3.30-5.30pm, and Thursday from 8pm-10pm (see below for additional times in the school holidays).

Please remember that:
– Juniors are not allowed in the free-weights area at any time.
– You must directly supervise your child in these parent-junior sessions. You cannot go into the free weights section and      leave them on their own in another part of the gym.

• Les Mills identifies a small number of classes as suitable for 14+ juniors. Hence, from w/c 25th June, we would like to invite 14- and15-year olds to participate (with a parent/guardian) in three studio classes:
– Body Combat: Wednesday 6pm – 7pm
– Body Attack: Thursday 7pm – 8pm
– Grit Cardio: Saturday 11.20 – 11.50am

Swimming Pool:
• Tuesday and Friday – 4.00-5.30pm – We will remove the lifeguarded sessions available to 12-15 year olds without a parent/guardian. These are not really used as far as we can tell, and hence we do not plan to continue with them. These lifeguarded sessions will continue on a Monday (4.15-5.45), Wednesday (4.00-5.30pm) and Thursday (4.15-5.45pm), alongside the swimming lessons we run on these days.

• Additional junior swimming lesson session will be added on a Wednesday from 4.15-5.45pm from September.

• We are reviewing our Family splash sessions on a weekend afternoon, with a view to making them more attractive to families. More will follow on this topic once we have sorted out the lifeguarding requirements.

Tennis & Squash:
We wish to encourage the older juniors to play more tennis and squash, and enable them to use courts to play each other. Just to reiterate that 11-15 year olds can play each other on a squash or tennis court without parental supervision, provided:

• The parent remains in the Club.

• Reception has been informed which court the juniors are on, and the location of the parent in the Club.

• Squash googles are worn at all times on the squash courts.

Obviously, we expect the juniors to be able to play tennis and squash to a decent standard if they are to play on their own, and particularly to understand the etiquette of the games. Any disruptive behaviour, or health & safety issues (such as lack of squash goggles) would result in them having to play under parental supervision at all times.

School Holidays:
This is an area where we have received a lot of feedback from members across all our membership categories, and we must admit that we did not really consider the school holidays as needing a different timetable. This was an oversight. Hence, we propose to trial the following changes during the summer holidays, starting on Monday 23rd July and ending Sunday 9th September.

• We will run an additional adult only swim time each weekday.
– Monday to Weds will be adult only from 12 noon – 2pm.
– Thursday and Friday will be adult only from 10.00am – 12.00 noon.

These adult only sessions cover the times of all our aqua classes, when it is difficult for families to use the pool.

• We will run lifeguarded swim sessions on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings from 10am to 11.30am, enabling 12-15 year olds to swim without parental supervision.

• All other swim times will remain as per the term-time timetable.

• Parent and junior gym sessions from 12-15 year olds will run every weekday afternoon from 1.30pm to 4pm (in addition to the normal term time sessions).

• Crash course Level 1/2 swimming lessons will run from 23rd-27th July from 2.30-3.30pm.

Other Changes:
We are looking at a number of other changes, such as extension of our creche/kids club hours to Saturdays, as we move through the summer, and welcome any ideas or comments from our members.

The changes that we make will always be implemented carefully and incrementally, to ensure that we do not upset the welcoming, friendly and warm environment we have tried hard to create, and to ensure that we continue to cater for all of our members. Many thanks for your continued support!

Steve Davies – General Manager