4th October 2017 | Gillingham

Manager's Message

Welcome to October, one month colder and one month nearer to Christmas with the fun of Halloween and Fire Works in between.

We welcome Stephen our new Bistro Supervisor and Becky our new Beauty Therapist to the business.  Stephen has lots of new great ideas for cream teas, winter warming soups and events while Becky comes to us with a wealth of experience and specialises in massage.

We recently held our Charity spinathon and Open Weekend to raise funds for Guide Dogs For The Blind and raised over £300 towards our goal of £5000 to name a Guide Dog puppy Roko and sponsor his training.  We also will receive a birth certificate and photo of our pup aged 6-8 weeks, three pupdates of his progress, two 'report cards' letting us know how he is progressing and the chance to meet him once and a framed photograph of him taken after he enters Training School (aged between 12-16 months).  We had 8 hardcore members take part in the spinathon and they gave it their all for three hours.  It was a mix of experienced spinners to beginners and we are so proud of all of you and thank you so much for all your support. Read more about The Guide Dogs and the spinathon later in the newsletter.

We are currently continuing on our plan to rejuvenate areas of the club. We love our building and we love seeing you all enjoy yourselves in it, so rest assured over the next few months we will be working hard to make your experience with us better than ever.

Keep a look out for our classathon in November, our Halloween Open Week and our Quiz Night all coming soon.

Have a great October - and special congratulations and cheers if you are challenging yourself with Stoptober or Go Sober For October! Don't forget that exercise is fantastic for both of these challenges because it releases feel good endorphins and can stave off the craving for nicotine and/or alcohol.

Sam Lewis

General Manager

Member Referral Offer

Introduce a friend to Roko and if they decide to join then we'll give you both a Roko voucher pack worth over £100. There's no limit to the number of friends you can refer and receive rewards for and we hope you can really benefit from this voucher pack.

Simply click here to refer your friends on-line and we'll contact them to arrange their personalised tour

Club Events

Spinathon

Every day we take sight for granted but every minute in the UK another person goes blind.  We really hope sponsoring a puppy will unite our members and be a great way to raise money but we do need you all behind us.  Keep a look out for further events advertised in club, on Facebook, twitter and so on.  We will regularly be hosting the Medway Branch of Guide Dogs For The Blind so expect to meet lots of puppies in due course, keep a look out for Alison, and her Guide Dog Ed who we are all a lot in love with and will be training for the Paralympics in the club.  We can’t wait to follow her progress and to see the gorgeous Ed every day in club.

We had 8 hardcore members take part in our spinathon and they gave it their all for three hours.  It was a mi of experienced spinners to beginners and we are so proud of all of you and thank you so much for all your support.

The Guide Dog charity is an amazing charity with every penny going towards raising and training Guide Dogs.  It costs over £50,000 to raise and train just one Guide Dog so your help is desperately needed.    Some big charities don’t filter too much funding down to the people who need it but every penny of Guide Dogs funding goes towards raising, training and developing Guide Dogs to give a visually impaired person their independence.  A breakdown of a pound looks like this:

51p - Provision of guide dogs and other adult mobility services

The breeding and training of new guide dogs and supporting working guide dog partnerships

3p – Provision of other children’s services

We offer a range of services and activities for children and young people and provide valuable advice for parents and teachers. Find out more about our services for children and young people.

39p - Cost of generating income, including trading activities

Includes all fundraising activities

5p - Advocacy and raising awareness

Advocacy includes the cost of lobbying to break down barriers and to enable blind and partially sighted people to get around on their own

1p - Research and Development

We fund research programmes that help provide sound evidence on which to base our working practices, policies and campaigns. We invest in developing new and effective services with the overall aim of making a positive difference to the lives of people with sight loss.

1p - Governance

Governance costs are those costs relating to the general running of the charity. They include the strategic planning process, internal and external audit and costs associated with trustees and trustee meetings.

Fitness News

Roko is proud to introduce rok-x: half hour, gym floor based classes for all abilities. Rok-x is a fusion of High Intensity Interval Training (HiiT) and Functional Training.

There are many benefits to this type of training and you only need half an hour to have a fantastic all over body workout!

HiiT is where you give 100% effort in quick, intense bursts of activity, followed by short, sometimes active, recovery. This type of interval training enables sustained elevated heart rate and burns more fat in less time.

Functional training is carrying out exercises that are designed to strengthen key areas of your body that allow you to perform the activities of daily life more easily. These exercises target large muscle groups and are designed to improve strength, balance, co-ordination, endurance and agility.

Simply book in at reception for one of the gym-floor rok-x classes scheduled on the studio class timetable.

body-x
Weight bearing circuits. This class is designed to push you to your cardiovascular and muscular endurance limit using mainly bodyweight.

plyo-x
Fast-paced, sport based, high energy plyometric (also known as jump training) workout.  This class is designed to increase your power strength and speed!

strength-x
This class is designed to push you to your cardiovascular and muscular endurance limit using weighted equipment.

circ-x
Circuit based interval training combining strength and endurance exercises, giving the benefits of both cardiovascular and strength workout.

The Spa

For the month of October 2017 the spa is offering an amazing discount on Jessica geleration fingers! £25 instead of £32!

We are also offering 15% off of any ELEMIS body products! October only!

We would like to wish Steph, the new baby and family the best of luck as she is now on maternity leave.

We also need to give a warm welcome to our new beauty therapist Becky!

Reception News

As I’m sure many of you are aware we are raising money to sponsor our very own guide dog here at Roko.

We have various charity events taking place which have been advertised around the club and every penny raised will all go to this wonderful cause.

There are many ways to make a donation

There are lots of donation boxes spread around reception and the club lounge or you can simply pay at reception and one of the receptionists will be happy to ring your payment through the till as you can also donate using a credit or debit card.

Please help us make this happen so that we can help others who need our help