ST PAUL'S SCHOOL RENOVATES TO PROVIDE PREMIUM FITNESS FACILITIES THAT RIVAL PROFESSIONAL SPORTS

A UNIQUE LONDON SCHOOL

St Pauls, a private school for boys aged 7-18 located on 45 acres of green open space on the banks of the River Thames in Barnes, London is unique amongst London schools for the on-site facilities it offers – from boat club to theatre, art gallery to cricket pitch, concert hall to engineering workshop.

The school is always seeking ways to make improvements to its facilities to better the experience for its students and its staff which has most recently been a refurbishment of the majority of the senior school site.

FROM TIRED SQUASH COURT TO HIGH-END SPORTS PERFORMANCE CENTRE

St Paul’s has always prided itself on not only the inclusivity of its sport programme, but also the aim to identify and help develop the potential of pupils, from interested novice to the elite performer.

Ryan Blake, Head of Sports Science comments: “After years of planning, we have finally managed to increase the size of our fitness facility dramatically, it’s now 10 times the size it was, allowing us to cater for the 1000 plus pupils at the school and all the different activities which occur on a daily basis.”

“We have upgraded an old, underutilised squash court fitness centre into a premium performance centre with state-of-the-art equipment which rivals most professional sports organisations. All of St Paul’s community have been blown away by the space and it continues to be the main feature of our sport and leisure facilities.”

WATTBIKE FOR OFF-FEET CONDITIONING & PERFORMANCE TESTING

As part of the refurbishment which was finished in April 2023, Blake has insisted on installing more Wattbikes to complement the three Wattbike Pro’s already on site. This included five more Wattbike Pros, two Wattbike Trainers’ and one Wattbike AtomX, a ground-breaking smart bike with innovative design and cutting-edge technology which was chosen to introduce more sports performance testing and monitoring.

Students and staff alike utilise the Wattbikes for general warm up and cool downs, for heart rate specific conditioning, rehabilitation programmes and for high intensity sports performance training.

“We have three main user groups who are using the Wattbikes.” Blake continues. “General users just for maintaining or improving general health and fitness, our recreational users who are using the bikes to train alongside their co-curricular activities and our student athletes who are really focusing on their sports performance, strength and conditioning.”

“The bikes give our athletes a great option if the weather is bad, an off-feet option for our athletes putting their lower limbs through a lot of impact and it’s a luxury to have the option of the different Wattbikes. I’ve personally found no better alternative to Wattbike in the past 15 years of working in professional sport and educational environments.”

To find out more, visit www.stpaulsschool.org.uk