Joan is 87 years old, 
from Holmes Chapel, she has recently completed the ESCAPE-pain class at Holmes Chapel Community Centre. When she began the class she was extremely nervous, she didn’t have very good balance and wasn’t confident when walking around.
At the beginning, she had a lot of scepticism; she didn’t believe that exercising would be able to have the same effect on her pain as medication did. After 3 weeks of ESCAPE-pain classes with instructor Josie Hurst, Joan began to feel a drastic difference; she had a reduction in pain and also started to feel better within herself.
The structure of the class made her feel extremely comfortable and she felt that being around people with similar problems to her helped her gain confidence in the class – she felt like it wasn’t just her suffering and knew that other people were going through the same thing.
Joan was shocked in the class as she thought she’d struggle with some of the exercises, but she found that there was nothing she couldn’t do and it felt great! The exercises made a vast improvement in Joan’s ability and confidence, and the fact that the exercises could be done at home made her more interested in exercising at home.
Since completing ESCAPE-pain, Joan no longer requires the stick that she was dependent on and can walk up and down the stairs with ease. However for Joan, the pain reduction is not the only way her life has improved because of ESCAPE-pain. Her balance has drastically improved and Joan now feels confident enough to go down to the shops by herself!
Joan has now joined the gym, and along with 3 of her friends that she made at the ESCAPE-pain class, goes to the gym at least twice a week and they all travel there together. The friendships Joan has made from ESCAPE-pain have helped her a lot; they all support and motivate each other.
Joan now enjoys exercising and has set her sights on doing some Aquafit classes next! Joan is extremely grateful for the help she received from Everybody Lifestyle Coach Josie Hurst, they built up a great relationship and Joan now attends Josie’s follow on classes, where they continue implementing the exercises. Joan loves the social side of the classes and found the relationship between everyone was a lot of fun, and they made time to make a lot of jokes together.
To find out more information about our ESCAPE-pain programme please click here