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The power of peer support By Dr David Hunter of Glasgow FrontRunners
We all have our own personal histories and relationships when it comes to exercise. For me, this wasn’t a particularly conducive one at school. As an adult, I had an on/off relationship with the gym but never really enjoyed the experience. In 2013, I found myself running with Glasgow FrontRunners (GFR). In 2018, I wrote a blog for the GFR website about my experiences with the club and my journey from complete beginner to successfully completing a marathon. It was in the writing of that blog that an idea emerged. I had experienced a range of emotions (anxiety amongst them) going along to GFR for the first time. If I had felt like this, how had others? What were the things that motivated people to come to a club like GFR in the first place and what was their experience once there? Whilst knowing this would be useful to help grow the membership of the club, there was another angle - the lack of academic research around LGBT+ individuals in general and specifically in relation to their experience of exercising with a peer group. This led me and Kevin Boyle, a founding member of GFR, to undertake a piece of original research. We interviewed 12 GFR members to explore their experience of exercising with a peer support group. The overriding finding from our research was that exercising with peers represented a healthier way to meet people. We discovered that running improved participants’ physical health - no real surprise there. However, equally
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jogscotland magazine
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Spring 2022
