Nuffield Health has opened its first specialist sports performance lab at its flagship City Fitness and Wellbeing gym in London, offering elite-level diagnostics to help clients develop tailored exercise programmes.
The City Fitness site, which recently benefited from a £1.9m investment, is aiming to bring elite-level tools and analysis to a wider audience. In keeping with the health charity’s philosophy of integrated care pathways, the Nuffield Health Sports Performance Lab will support those looking to improve sports performance while also supporting injury rehabilitation via a team of physiotherapists, physiologists and doctors.
Using innovative technologies, the lab will help people to train in a more effective way and is open to both non-Nuffield Health members and members, with appointments starting from £200. The lab will support all fitness levels, ranging from those who have just started their first training plan, to amateur and professional athletes.
Harnessing the same techniques used to assess and monitor the performance levels of Olympic athletes, the facility offers high-tech gait analysis, bike fitting for performance, functional movement screening, Vo2 maximal fitness testing and lactate profile testing. The tests provide personalised reports enabling people to understand how they move, how to look after and prevent injuries, how to optimise fitness levels and improve athletic performance. Results will then be used to create tailored and effective training programmes.
The Sports Performance Lab features equipment from cardiopulmonary and metabolic diagnostics specialist Cosmed as well as Wattbike.
“Historically the world of sports performance has been out of reach to the general public and those motivated enough to find these services are often left confused by the technical nature of the tests and results,” said Jay Brewer, Nuffield Health Professional head of Physiology.
“This is why we have adopted a simple sport specific approach to performance testing beginning with running, cycling and triathlon, delivered in a number of understandable packages. Once the right sports performance package has been chosen, we then use our team of experts to turn the data into meaningful programmes that deliver the best gains in performance.”
The Sports Performance Lab opening now complements existing services at the Nuffield Health City Fitness and Wellbeing gym, which already features a medical centre, physiotherapy, nutritional therapy, swimming pool, sauna and steamroom, dedicated group cycling studio, squash courts and 86,000sq ft (7,990sq m) gym.
