The STFC Community Foundation’s Football Fans in Training programme is continuing from strength to strength. This hugely successful 12-week course is proven to help men and women lose weight, live a healthier lifestyle, and change their life for the better!

We run courses for men and women, so we’re open to everyone aged 35 to 65, with a waist measurement of 38” and above. Although we emphasise that the end goal should be improving health and fitness, each cohort has, on average, lost a collective 32 stone, which combines to a combined weight lost of over 5 TONNES!

Every 90-minute session contains a different topic, which includes managing your alcohol consumption, understanding food labels and calorie intake to help balance your diet. There is also a physical component to each session, and our aim is to ensure you set targets on a weekly basis based around both physical activity and food changes.

Public Health Swindon and Swindon Borough Council have been instrumental in supporting us with the Football Fans in Training initiative, which has helped over 500 local Football Fans become healthier and lose weight. The Foundation is continuing to establish new links with local authorities and has since been recommended to patients at the Great Western Hospital as they begin rehabilitation. 

What’s more, many of our participants are now taking part in regular weekly activities to maintain their healthier lifestyles. We’ve had participants join six-a-side football teams, participate in the RunVEMBER challenge, walking groups and even run the London Marathon.

The course is excellent, a lot of good advice. Each week there’s something different about nutrition, about health, about exercise, about healthy lifestyle, portion sizes, keeping yourself active. Each week there was something new.

Football Fans in Training changed my life in many ways. I still lead a healthier lifestyle now, I try and watch what I eat thanks to Football Fans in Training. They set me on a good path — not just losing weight for that period, but as a lifestyle change. That’s the important thing.

- Simon Maisey

Since January 2020, we have embarked in our ​“FFIT Follow up courses” in which we invite former FFIT participants to attend monthly follow ups, where we cover a specific piece of course content, weigh in and do some physical activity, whilst giving the participants a chance to catch up with old friends from their course.

For a deeper look at the course, please watch this video, to hear Dave’s experience of the programme.