A new fitness program is making its way to Swift Current and it's looking for middle-aged men who are interested in improving their health.

Hockey Fans in Training (Hockey FIT) is described as a twelve-week, off-ice healthy lifestyle program for men between 35 and 65 years of age who are considered overweight or obese and are fans of their local hockey team.

Doctor Brendan Riggin is with the Centre for Studies in Family Medicine at Western University and the head coach of the Hockey FIT program. He says that the program grew from a successful pilot program that had been funded by a Movember Foundation innovation grant. That pilot project saw the program partner with both the London Knights and the Sarnia Sting hockey organizations as a means of getting men actively interested in healthy lifestyles.

By partnering with a team in each community in order to help promote the program; they also provide access to some of their facilities for a few of the training sessions as well as some other incentives for participants.

"The men who participate get this exclusive behind the scenes access where they can see the teams facilities. We introduce them to some of the team players, trainers, coaches. We've had general managers drop by as well. And they offer some words of encouragement for the men to continue hopefully to improve their health."

With the success of the pilot project, Hockey FIT was able to secure funding from the Canadian Institute of Health Research and the Public Health Agency of Canada, allowing them to approach other various CHL teams to offer the same program in other communities free of charge. They began in Ontario with fifteen OHL teams and one American Hockey League team and are now moving westward into Saskatchewan, Alberta and BC.

Approaching the Swift Current Broncos, Riggin says that the response from the team and the organization have been fantastic.

The twelve-week program includes an educational component; teaching the men healthy lifestyle tips, as well as an exercise component involving aerobic, strength and flexibility exercises in ninety-minute weekly sessions.

Riggin stresses that the program is not a diet in that they don't restrict the men on what they can or cannot eat, emphasizing instead the importance of making small and manageable changes that are sustainable in the long term.

"That really comes from that pilot program that we did when we followed up with guys one year after the program had ended they had maintained about a 10-pound weight loss but also continued to improve their blood pressure. So we attribute that success to making very small manageable changes within the program that the guys will then be able to sustain on a long term basis."

Similarly, the exercises themselves are all plyometric, meaning that they rely on bodyweight alone. As a result, participants are not expected to purchase any equipment or pay for any gym memberships. It was a conscious choice on the part of Hockey FIT organizers in order to keep the exercises as simple and inexpensive as possible in the hopes that men will be encouraged to sustain the activity after the program has ended.

"In Canada, the reason we're focusing on men is that 62% of men are actually overweight or obese compared to women who are 46%. But the reason we're specifically targetting 35-65-year-old men is that about 70% of those are considered overweight or obese. So it's disproportionately high for men in general, but then especially for middle-aged men and so we are trying to find ways to actually get them to participate in healthy lifestyle programs because I guess the cost or the burden of these guys being overweight is estimated at almost 37 billion dollars annually."

He adds that the good news is that 70% of those costs are preventable with changes to lifestyle.

Recruitment for the Hockey FIT program is continuing until the middle of April, with 40 to 60 spots available.

Interested participants can visit hockeyfansintraining.org, or reach out to the organizers directly via email at hfit@uwo.ca.