Couch to Fitness Evaluation

Our Parks and London Sport reached out to Move Consulting for support in reviewing their Sport England funded remote exercise programme, Couch to Fitness, which was developed in response to the national lockdown in 2020.

It offers people a free online nine week fitness programme. It's designed to help complete beginners start small and build up gradually. Each video has 3 instructors working at different energy levels, so there is always a beginner option to follow. With all the programmes you can exercise at your own pace with the option to repeat or skip any of the workouts as often as you wish.

Head of Digital Proucts at Our Parks, Chris Norfeild said, 

“ Couch to Fitness was having great success in reaching people new to activity through direct marketing and wanted to better understand if the programme could be used as part of a referral solution for key organisations, including health professionals working with the same audience, as part of a physical activity pathway.

Move Consulting were able to demonstrate an in-depth understanding of the sector,  working with stakeholders involved in health and referral organisations and in particular up to date understanding of the role of physical activity. Their proposed method for exploring this challenge gave us confidence that they would be able to identify and engage a suitable breadth of stakeholders in the research."

OUR APPROACH

To fulfill this project brief, the team at Move undertook a series of research conversations with key stakeholders including the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP),  the National Academy for Social Prescribing (NASP) and expert voices on exercise referral from the world of academia to understand the policies and quality assurance standards in place for the inclusion of products and services as part of a referral offer. 

Building on this base of evidence we developed an expert advisory group who supported in the review of the Couch to Fitness Programme. Using the APEASE framework to guide review of the intervention we were able to understand the needs from different potential referrers in order to develop a series of recommendations and development opportunities to continue to strengthen the programme and make it fit for purpose as a viable signposting opportunity for health care professionals, this included submitting the programme for formal endorsement from the RCGP which we continue to explore with the client. 

WHAT THIS MEANT FOR OUR CLIENT

" The team at Move summarised relevant insights and presented them in a clear and actionable format for us. We have been able to take forward many specific 'quick win' recommendations and we are still using other insights from the research to inform the ongoing development of the Couch to Fitness product and our strategy for engaging potential referral and health care organisations."

                                                Chris Norfield | Head of Digital Products | Our Parks