Dean Lewington and Charlie Burns Get Set for Motiv8 session.
Being a professional footballer means having a strict healthy lifestyle. Being the team captain, Dean Lewington seemed to be the best person to be a role model along with being the ambassador for the Health and Wellbeing department. He is someone who can lead by example and be that inspiration to others. It is high priority for footballers to stay in shape and to be seen as leading that healthy lifestyle.
By being an ambassador for the Health and Wellbeing department ensures that a positive message is being given out about the effects of an unhealthy lifestyle can have on young children. To maintain a healthy balance there needs to be programmes in place to enable delivery to children and families.
Ambassador Dean Lewington and Charlie Burns attended a Motiv8 session at Stantonbury Leisure Centre to see how health and wellbeing is relayed to children and their families.
Motiv8 is a free course ran over 10 weeks that provides information and guidance for children to lead a healthier life. It covers a wide range, such as nutritional and physical activity session plans. It’s a family based approach to making the children more hands on and realise what is needed to make their lives healthier.
It is key for the footballers to show an active interest in keeping a healthy lifestyle. With having Dean and Charlie attending a session it gave the children inspiration to get to see how their footballing hero’s manage their lifestyles.
Dean and Charlie proved to be very popular with the kids. They faced questions from the kids as well as the dietician about their food habits and lifestyle.
Ambassador Dean Lewington said: “I am incredibly fortunate to be both a professional football and captain of MK Dons so I was delighted to become the Health and Wellbeing Ambassador. Through the programmes ran by the MK Dons Sport and Education Trust (SET) the kids in the local community are able to appreciate the importance of eating and living well. The kids taking part in the session were fully engaged in the programme and were keen to learn through the various activities.”
Ashley Whitmore who runs the Motiv8 program expressed “The visit from club captain Dean Lewington and Charlie Burns was a fantastic experience for everybody part of the Motiv8 programme at Stantonbury Leisure Centre. Dean and Charlie were brilliant in providing great assistance with the children for their activity, answered questions that the children and the dieticians asked them, posed for photographs and signed autographs. As part of the question and answer session, the children and the staff members were able to gain an invaluable insight to what is required to be a professional footballer, including their diet and training program, which hopefully will inspire them to make changes to their own diet and enhance physical activity levels. Some of the children were in awe of meeting their football heroes and all of them thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience and left with a massive smile on their face!”
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