An Old Building Adapting For Modern Needs

LeisureWorld Bishopstown turned 20 during 2017. Throughout the past two decades there have been many upgrades, extensions and refurbishments carried out to ensure that we continue to meet and surpass the needs of our users.

There are few people that will remember the original LeisureWorld Bishopstown back in 1997 and for those that do it’s hard to believe how the facility has changed over time.

Many people that think of LeisureWorld may not realise the range and scope of our customer base. We do our best to cater for a wide variety of population segments through a plethora of facilities and services. Our team work with customers from the age of 3 years up to 80 years plus in both one to one and group basis.

Each one of our customers has their own journey and needs when it comes to their health, fitness and leisure requirements here at LeisureWorld Bishopstown. This is something that we take into deep consideration when making any business decision. 

Our latest and arguably the biggest undertaking to date has seen the following changes been made.

1: Complete replacement of our four all weather pitches.

Brand new 3G rubber based astro turf surfaces, new enclosures and new goals were installed during August and September.

2: A reconfiguration of our changing facilities:

We must put emphasis on the word “reconfiguration” here. We have not expanded or extended our changing facilities. But instead we have identified the key areas that were under strain and needed improvement and then created a development plan to solve these problems.

• The old cubicles that we had did not provide adequate room for an adult and child to change in comfortably, the same could be said for our family cubicles. The new individual and family cubicles on offer provide ample space for individuals, a parent & child and families to change in.
• To facilitate the increased number and size of changing cubicles, our group changing rooms have been slightly reduced in size.
• We have increased the number of showers from 28 to 42, most of these showers have doors for full privacy.
• The new changing area layout will improve the flow of customers depending on their requirements. The dry adult changing rooms are the first set of changing rooms you will meet. These separate male and female changing rooms are intended for gym and fitness class users only. Pool users are asked to kindly use the cubicles near the pool area when swimming.
• Parents will now have an open plan area to send and collect their children to and from the pool deck and showers before and after their lessons. We hope this will give an improved experience for all parents and children taking part in lessons.
• As a facility that promotes access for all, we have greatly increased the size and number of our disabled changing spaces to ensure the best possible experience for users with limited mobility.

3: A new gym and gym layout:

You may have seen a 3D render video and you may have seen some posts on facebook about the various new pieces of equipment that we are purchasing, but you may not fully understand what we are doing and why we are doing it.

As we did not have the luxury of knocking down a wall or building a brand new facility we have to do the best with the space we have available. Therefore our new layout has been planned to address certain capacity issues and offer a better experience and offering for all of our gym and fitness clients.

Upstairs we currently have 3 fitness studios.

• Many of you that have attended classes will be familiar with our Indoor Cycle studio and our larger fitness studio. With the new gym layout we will be changing the largest fitness studio into a Cardio room. This room will contain over 40 pieces of brand new cardio equipment including treadmills, bikes, cross trainers, stair masters, rowing machines and upper body ergs.
• There will also be space provided for some stretching and very light resistance training via a cable machine and light dumbbells. This space is accessible via stairs or an elevator for those that require it.
• The studio that currently holds the indoor bikes will become our new fitness class studio. Class sizes will be capped appropriately to ensure that there is plenty of space for all those attending classes, although you may need to ensure you book your space for your favourite classes!
• The bikes will be moved into the third studio. We are putting a plan in place to turn this studio into a real experience zone for those coming to indoor cycling classes.

Downstairs is being modified for modern training demands.

• If you walk into our gym in the evenings you will notice certain areas are jam packed. The most popular areas are our free weights section and our core/stretching area.
• As we are moving almost all of our cardio equipment upstairs to their new dedicated home, we have created a lot more space on our ground floor. Space is like gold in a modern gym.
• While we are increasing the number of resistance machines, dumbbells, power racks, lifting platform and benches, we are also holding onto the new available space to ensure adequate room for people to do their own bodyweight and functional training on the gym floor.
• As well as the above we have purchased some new and exciting pieces of strength and conditioning equipment including a pull up rig, glute hamstring developer, kettlebells, sandbags, medicine balls, ski ergs and air assault bikes.
• We will have a dedicated area suitable for beginners that want to combine both resistance training and get started with free weights.
• Our former free weights area is now been opened up to make it a less daunting space for people to venture over to, while at the same time ensuring that everyone has enough room to take part in their own training without feeling as if they are on top of someone else.

The new look LeisureWorld Bishopstown gym and changing spaces will be fully open for public use on Thursday the 21st of December and we lare extremely excited to welcoming you in.

Keep an eye out for our official open day in the new year where there we will be giving guided tours, giveaways and more!