London Sport Consultancy to help develop Couch to Fitness to meet the needs of inactive women

Our Parks have appointed London Sport Consultancy to further develop Couch to Fitness following our successful collaboration in creating and launching the programme in 2020.

Couch to Fitness is a successful at-home fitness programme for beginners, developed by Our Parks with support from London Sport and funded by Sport England, in response to the covid-19 lockdowns.

Our Parks have recently received additional funding from Sport England to further develop the Couch to Fitness offer with the aim to develop the programme to better meet the needs of inactive women. 

Not originally developed as a programme specifically for women, data shows that over 93% of Couch To Fitness users are female, so the latest round of funding received is via Sport England’s This Girl Can campaign 

The funding aims to help more people join, start and complete the programme, gradually increasing their activity levels across the nine-weeks and creating a sustainable activity habit.

London Sport Consultancy’s work will also generate learning for the physical activity sector about building a digital platform to engage less active audiences and supporting behaviour change.

Working closely with Couch to Fitness users and key stakeholders, London Sport will work to develop a brand-new platform to host Couch To Fitness and deliver an improved user experience.

London Sport will work with partners to make it easier to signpost women to the programme and demonstrate how it supports less active audiences to take the first steps to a more active lifestyle.

As lockdown restrictions ease, Couch to Fitness can play an important role in building people’s confidence and capability and supporting and acting as a bridge to in person activities and events.

Chris Norfield, Head of Digital Behaviour Change, said:

“We are delighted to continue working with Our Parks on the development of Couch to Fitness which already has an impressive programme completion rate of four in ten users.

“With over 100,000 people signing up in the last year it has played an important role in supporting people to be active, particularly those disproportionately affected by lockdown restrictions.

“We look forward to working with Our Parks to help develop a new platform that will mean they can support more people to start and complete the programme and, ultimately, lead more active lives.”

Born Barikor, Our Parks Founder, said:

"Strong partnership working is crucial to diversifying, frequently reaching and encouraging multi layered audiences via tone of voice and diversity at board & planning level. 

"The success of Couch to Fitness to date is because of multi organisations with the same mission and purpose but with different skills sets and life experiences which allows a collaborative approach that truly fosters innovation to create something new and ground breaking. 

"London Sport has played a huge role in the success of seeing 100,000+ Parkers sign up to Couch to Fitness and I am delighted we can continue this strong partnership."

Kate Dale, This Girl Can Campaign Lead, said:

“It doesn’t matter what you do - it’s the getting off the sofa that counts. We are delighted to support Couch to Fitness to help women to build lasting activity habits in a way that works for them. 

"As we start to take steps back towards normality, we want all women to feel confident and ready to take on the world.”