Physical Training at Colnbrook IRC

Mr Sasha Stojanobski is a physical education instructor and is also qualified as a custody officer at Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre and has been in post for two years. There are up to 388  people detained at the centre with a  minimum age of 18.

What sport facilities can you offer the residents here?
Sasha Stojanobski (SS) We have a very well appointed gym consisting of a sports hall, a cardio-vascular centre with rowing machines, bicycles and treadmills. In the sports hall we organise collective sports like cricket, football, basketball, tennis, volleyball and circuit training. The weights room provides free weights, Olympic bars and various machines to exercise and develop different parts of the body. A novel feature, perhaps, is a discipline called Zimbatics which is another cardio vascular opportunity, Zimbatics is a mixture of dance and martial arts moves, it is a popular activity. As for staff, we have six PT instructors three of which supervise each session.

Do you have a particular teaching aim here or are the facilities purely for recreational purposes?
SS There is a recreational element to it of course but we do much more. It is important to teach people how to exercise safely and how to gain the benefits of regular healthy exercise. Every individual is different and comes with individual needs and staff members are always on hand to help. It so happens that most of the men here have come from a prison environment and would likely have used the gym there to have reached some level of development. We do our best to take them further.

Do you do PT as an aid to gaining a qualification of some sort?
SS Not at the moment but there is a plan to be able to do so next year.

What percentage of the people here use the gym?
SS We keep a tally of how many attend each session and on average about 100 people attend each day. We encourage people to come to the gym by organising events like gym competitions. We have a board outside on which we display the attractions day by day and display posters in the units and distribute flyers. We also encourage the staff to come along and at the moment they are in the process of forming a football club. I play soccer myself and there is a lot of interest.

All very impressive and thank you Sasha for speaking to the Review.