The week got off to a good start with the return of our first postcard requests for our Activmob pack from someone who want's to start a Kickboxing mob, a result of all the flyering we did last week. By the end of the week we've had around another 8 requests for packs.

We spent Tuesday and Wednesday on site meeting our 3 mob instigators in their homes. Doug, a landscape archaeologist is starting a mob called Timemob . He's organising weekly walks in the area that are open to anyone and will cover a particular period each week - roman ruins, dinosaurs, houses of famous people and even ghost walks.

Jane, in her 50's, doesn't really know what she wants to do yet - but she knows who she wants to do it with - her husband and their close friends two couples who often do things together and visit each others homes. We suggested that she could do something that would decrease her back pain - one of the main reasons why she's less active than she'd like to be. 'I'm listening to you now' she said with this suggestion and Backmob was born though exactly what it'll do is unclear. All the members of her mob suffer back or bone related pain of one kind or another, in-activity is one of the worse thing you can do and Annie Marie's been giving us examples all week of how exercise has helped relieve pain.

We've been working with Anne Marie to discover how she, as a personal trainer, motivates her clients, the big learning has been that it's very individual, there are some neat tricks and techniques but it's very clear there's a reason why a personal trainer is just that. You need someone to push you for exercise to actually be beneficial, you also need to be doing the right exercise for you. Apparently 75% of people using gyms aren't actually getting any physically fitter.

Karen and her 5 friends are Dogmob - at least for the time being until that's our name not their and they don't like it. We spend a couple of hours chatting with Karen and meeting the dogs - there are lots of them 11 in total though only two very nice black Labradors were there at the time. Karens friends meet every day on the school run and then drive their dogs to Moat Park to walk them straight after, but they haven't done it for a while and they see this as an opportunity to get back into it and have some fun. I tell you what it's a good job we all like dogs on this project.

Here are some more concepts for the web that we've been testing this week.

CATEGORY: HEALTH PROJECT