A personal trainer from Deepdale is offering boot camp classes for people with health conditions including COPD, asthma and arthritis.

The classes are run by Stella Sansom, who is trying to get people with illnesses that put them at higher risk of Covid-19 back out exercising in a safe way.

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Stella has completed training and is insured to help people with different illness. The boot camps are open to people of all abilities.

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Stella, 39, said: “It’s a really nice team atmosphere, we’ve got every ability of people there.

“We’ve got people who would struggle to get up the stairs without getting out of breath and then we’ve got people who have amazing fitness.

“Everybody mucks in and everybody is supportive of each other so it’s a really nice atmosphere and its really good for getting people socialising.”

Stella has also been teaching classes online during the lockdown but is excited to be back teaching in person.

The field the group is using at the Lonsdale Club in Fulwood is large enough to allow social distancing and Stella has exclusive use of the field.

“The first one we did was with people I had been training online over lockdown,” she added

“It was like we had opened a door and it looked like they were coming out of the darkness.

“Some of them had been so scared to go outside during the lockdown because of medical conditions or just because they were scared anyway.

“They were saying it was so nice to actually have a little chat with somebody and actually feel safe at the same time.”

In personal training programmes, Stella organises consultations with each of her clients to create a personal training regime, catered to them.

Stella added, “Its not a good idea for someone with COPD for them to just go and join in just any old fitness class or just see a regular personal trainer.

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“If you are not aware of contra-indications and what you can and can’t do, it could be life threatening.”

“I used to train a young girl with osteoporosis and she had not managed to find a personal trainer who would take her on.

“We strengthened the muscles around the affected joints to stop the dislocations which helped massively.

“She made such quick progress, within a couple of months she was saying she felt so much fitter and could run up the stairs without getting out of breath.”

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Stella has been on a fitness journey herself, starting the gym when she was a size 20 but has now turned it around and is now the fittest she has ever been.

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“I remember my partner saying to me, you’re unhappy, you need to go to the gym and I didn’t want to join a gym,” Stella said.

“Eventually he convinced me to go and I managed to find a way of making it fun which was to go on the cross trainer and watch episodes of Dexter.

“By the time I got the end of series one I absolutely lovely being at the gym because I got away from the kids.

“For people who are overweight usually the thing I hear is that they think everybody is going to be staring at them and I think knowing that I used to be in that situation myself and knowing that I know how that feel helps.”

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Will you be joining Stella’s boot camp classes? Tell us in the comments below.