Louise Sugden often spends more than three hours a day training in the gym.
Yet the 37-year-old, who took up para powerlifting in 2017, struggles to access the right equipment when she leaves home.
It was a challenge the athlete, who won bronze at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, faced when travelling up from south-east England to visit family in Pitmedden.
Thankfully, she was put in touch with The Shed in Tarves.
Owners Hazel Combe and her daughter Rachel were keen to work with Louise – and are striving hard to welcome everyone with a disability through the doors.
How easy is it to make a gym disability friendly?
Louise says it doesn’t take a lot of work to turn sports facilities into inclusive places for everyone.
Choosing the right fitness equipment is important because many can be adapted to make them easier for disabled people to use.
“Gyms can be quite an intimidating place at the best of times, especially if you have access needs as well,” Louise says.
“It can be quite difficult for you to get on the equipment, or they don’t have the equipment that helps you do what you want to do.”
The Shed owners have now bought a para bench, which is wider and gives Louise, and other gym users, more stability to get a proper workout.
The local parent keen to help out and ‘make a difference’
Hazel and Rachel were keen to launch a forward-thinking health club when they transformed the large agricultural shed into a gym in 2019.
After opening, they were approached by a recently-retired policeman keen to train up for a new role.
Gym member Mark Stephen was aware of the challenges his own daughter faced after developing West Syndrome, also known as infantile spasms, soon after she was born.
It caused Millie, now 11, to have up to 225 seizures a day. Millie has significant additional needs and mobility issues.
“I’m coming at it very much as a parent who has lived with it for 11 years and seeing the challenges and difficulties that my daughter has had and we have had as parents,” he said.
“I just want to make a difference.”
Since then Mark has been studying an Exercise for Disability course and also got in touch with Scottish Disability Sport for advice.
Who else can use the gym?
Now The Shed is welcoming people through the doors with different health difficulties, including an amputee and another resident with significant arthritis.
Making it fully accessible is important for local residents but also gives visitors a gym in Aberdeenshire to work out in if they have a disability.
For Louise, who lives in Newbury in Berkshire, getting access to a gym on a regular basis while she visits her family in Scotland is crucial.
She follows a strict training regime and needs to work out every weekday.
“It was really important because without it I wouldn’t have been able to come up and visit my mum much at all,” she says.
“And I really want to come up and also experience all that the north-east has to offer.”
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