Time to play the fitness card

IT turns out that exercising can be all fun and games.

A pair of Townsville personal trainers, bored by the usual run- of- the- mill boot camp classes, have come up with a novel way of pushing people to keep fit – by turning popular board and card games into workouts.

Annie Neville and Matt Isokangas created The Fitness Games three years ago and have since grown from seven members to about 60.

“Annie approached me and asked if I wanted to start up a boot camp, but there are just too many of them around,” Mr Isokangas said.

“So I said I’d be interested if we can come up with something that is different.

“We started to talk about what we liked, but what we don’t like is a plain old circuit class.

“I remember at school playing things like capture the flag … that game activity that gets you involved without you thinking about it.”

The pair run three 12week challenges a year, and a four- week “taster” program that starts on Monday.

Mr Isokangas said there were people who had lost 14kg by the end of the challenge. One person recently shed 19kg in 12 weeks.

“We’re just big kids that want to have fun while working out,” he said. FITBIT OFFER: Fitbit Versa + 12- month digital subscription.

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