Ladies night edition 2 in Wrexham!

On Monday 22 January, the second edition of the Wrexham Ladies Night was launched across four leisure centres with 10 sessions taking place. Over 240 ladies attended across all four sites which proved to be a huge success, allowing the centres to be filled with plenty of women wanting to start their active journeys after Christmas. Here, organiser Terri talks about the successes and learning points from the activities.

It was all well organised and well attended due to it being free of charge to encourage women to participate. The only downfall was that some people said it was too busy at some centres with the amount of people. So we are working with them to suggest only to let a certain number of women in at a time. This helps to control the numbers and allows everyone to have a positive experience.

The sessions came about from a follow-on of our first Ladies night back in September. We ran a 12 week programme across three leisure centres with only five sessions. We decided to do this again to see if it would encourage even more people after the Christmas break – which it did thankfully!

We have actively been working with Freedom Leisure. We met them on numerous occasions to work out when their quiet sessions are in the centres, so we could develop GOGA sessions. We decided to keep all sessions to a Monday evening and developed their women-only swim sessions to become a GOGA activity as well as promoting the gym facilities too. Some of the other sessions we offer are Clubbercise and Aquafit as well as a Walk to Run/ 0-5k session.

The 0-5k session proved to be hugely popular with over 60 ladies signing up to it. This was great to see and we did not want to turn anyone away so we added a third session in the evening. The running group is great for the women due to it being on a well-lit athletics track and has encouraged them to sign up as they don’t fancy running on a cold dark wintery evening alone.

It has been great to see the group develop into a social hub as the first session is filled with the women who achieved their 5k on the last Ladies Night- they wanted to continue their active journey. 

We promoted the evening on social media through the council and local newspapers and websites. It was hugely successful with over 350 comments on one individual post- ladies tagging their friends and family, arranging to meet up and exercise together. This was great to see as we have had various mother and daughters turning up to exercise together which is always nice.

On the launch of the Ladies Night, the Active Wrexham team helped out at the four sites to help the women. Freedom Staff got them through the registration process as well as answering any questions and welcoming them into the centres.

Since the evening we have had numerous emails and calls about how positive the evening was and to see how the power of sport can bring women of Wrexham together.

Comments from the night included:

"Just a quick note to say last night was great! Dave seems great and I think he will be good for us"

"First session was great and he makes sure all abilities were included"

"Thanks for your help GOGA"

To ensure the sessions are inclusive, we are providing various sessions to disabled and non-disabled women so they have plenty to choose from. We then provide the women with a leisure card and signpost them to their local leisure centres so they can be see the local opportunities available.

They are then invited to come and try different sessions with Freedom Leisure so that they can sustain their active journey. We have seen a lot of women return from the last programme showing that they are continuing being active and are happy to be socialising over exercise.

The programme is on for 10 weeks so we will be speaking to the women over those weeks to see what other sessions they would like to see from GOGA that can be inclusive for all participants.

 Our top learning points to share to others are:

• We labelled our running session a ‘walk to run’ session instead of a ‘0-5k’ programme. This enticed women in to stop them being put off by a running programme idea. We promoted the programme as available for all abilities, allowing it to be inclusive.
• Due to the evening being so busy, we are now looking at organising and controlling some of the numbers on the night allowing everyone to have a positive experience.

For further information on these sessions please contact Terri Richie on Terri.Ritchie@wrexham.gov.uk