The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport and the National Sports Commission yesterday cut the ribbon on the country’s newest fitness facility, the ‘Fitness for Life Gym’, located on the second floor of the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall.
The new gym with its ‘turn-of-the-century’ fitness equipment, was unveiled yesterday by Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr. Frank Anthony, Director of Sport Neil Kumar and President of the Guyana Olympic Association, K.A. Juman Yassin.
Anthony told members of the media and representatives of the various sport associations gathered at the official opening that the launching was designed to coincide with the activities of International Challenge Day.
Anthony advocated the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle adding that this was just another one of the efforts by his ministry to ensure that a larger percentage of persons got involved in some kind of physical activity.
“There is a relatively small percentage of our population that embraces sports, which leaves a great portion inactive,“ he said.
“As societies grow more affluent, people are no longer walking as much as they used to, they go in a car or taxi and drive to wherever they need to go. However, more people are getting sick from what we call chronic non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and hypertension,” Anthony observed.
“In the past,” he continued, “persons jogged on the road and walked in the park but since we are in a modern environment we thought that one of things that we will do is to invest a bit of money into creating a few gyms across the country,” he said.
The gym replaces the space on the second floor of the facility which was formerly used as a canteen and includes much of the standard fitness equipment, such as combination fitness machines, mechanical cycles and treadmills.
According to Kumar, opening hours for the gym will be from 6am-9am and 3pm-9pm each day. And prospective members will have to pay $500 to join and $1000 monthly.
Kumar added that all national athletes whose names have been submitted by their various associations will be allowed to use the gym free of charge.
Although no personal trainer or fitness instructor has been employed as yet, Kumar said that those responsibilities will be placed solely on supervisor of the gym, Ovid Hardy, who is a martial arts and fitness instructor.
