It’s 6:00am on a Friday morning and you’re rudely awoken by your phone alarm’s loud bleep. You reach out to press the snooze button.

But wait! You'd planned to meet Sandra, your work colleague, outside The Bridge Gym at 7:30am this morning. Can’t let her down, so you lace up your trainers and jog (semi-enthusiastically) out the door.

Whether an athlete-in-training or a gym novice, we all need a little push now and again to inspire renewed enthusiasm and keep us travelling forwards on our personal fitness journey. That’s where our “Bring a Buddy” idea comes in to play. We had a think about ways to make our gym accessible to more women and came up with a Friday buddy scheme that we thought could work rather nicely.

what is “bring a buddy”?

Its title does somewhat give it away: any Bridge gym member can invite a female friend, colleague or acquaintance (a.k.a. ‘buddy’) to use the gym or take a studio class alongside them any Friday throughout the year. It could be the same buddy (lucky them) or a different one every week. It's completely up to you.

This is open to all our gym members on a one month membership or longer. Any member is able to bring any female friend to the gym on Fridays free of charge. We won’t harass your friend to sign up – it is completely up to her.

No tricks. We just want to get more women active. That's that end of that. And there we all were, thinking that Fridays couldn’t get any better.

why should you do it?

You might have decided that working out solo is more your thing, and of course we encourage this too, but why not consider pushing yourself to try something different.

To make sure you’re are as convinced as we are about the benefits of bringing a buddy to the gym, we’ve come up with a handful of top notch reasons to work out with others:

try two person exercises, such as passing a medicine balls to each other between crunches or boxing in the studio with pads (the opportunities here are endless). Your buddy might also know more about a machine or certain exercise than you, so could broaden your general exercise repertoire

learn something new

keeping you interested and excited about your next workout

stay motivated

accountability

it can be nice to have someone else keeping an eye on your progress and ensuring you are not swapping your workouts for a night on the sofa with netflix, which can be tempting

connect with people around you – investing time in connecting with family, friends, colleagues or new acquaintances can really improve your daily levels of mental health and happiness, so why not invite them to do something free with you at your gym

build connections

double the fun with your buddy by your side

have fun

doing something nice for someone else can be incredibly rewarding – plus you should also find that you are becoming increasingly active yourself. And surely bringing a buddy to the gym for free means they now owe you a favour?!

it's free

…so all you have to do now is decide who to bring!

talk to our reception or gym team for more information on the “Free Fitness Fridays”** or find out more about our women only gym here.

**Only applicable on Fridays. Members accept responsibility for their buddy. No fees applicable for the buddy, but the buddy must complete a short health questionnaire before use of our gym. Should The Bridge have any concerns over a person’s health, they will not be permitted to use the facilities before a briefing with a gym trainer, so please call in advance should your buddy have any potential health concerns.