Nurse Laura Tully remembers well the wary response she got in the winter of 2019 when she went into an IFA meeting in her home rural parish of Moore in south Roscommon in a bid to recruit people to take part in her first Fit Farmers programme.

“It was a very hard sell, but one farmer stepped forward to put his name in the notebook,” she recalls. “Fair play to him. Really from there, he was setting the example for the others, and I filled the class. I promised them it would change their lives and it did.”

Word soon spread among the farming community about the positive benefits of the six-week practical health and wellbeing programme.

Divided into a one-hour education workshop and a one-hour workout, Laura tailors each one specifically to the group’s needs. Now five years on, there is a waiting list to join the next round in Elphin in October, and Fit Farmers has become a well-known brand and success story.

First-of-its-kind

Having seen farmers for years in her professional life, Laura recognised the need for a preventative health and exercise programme for the agricultural community. Many were not looking after themselves or leaving problems to fester and coming in too late for treatment. 

Among the issues she identified were high cholesterol or sugars, problems following a heart attack or a stroke, musculoskeletal injuries, and vascular problems.

So, Laura dedicated her free time to developing a first-of-its kind comprehensive health and wellbeing programme specifically for farmers, with the main pillars looking at diet, movement, sleep and balance – that’s your stress control and work/life balance.

“It’s a series of workshops and workouts—over two hours once a week for six weeks,” says Laura, who is now known as ‘The Movement Mentor’.

“It’s usually delivered in a local community hall, which means it’s central for farmers, easy to get to, and it’s fully funded, so it’s removing the barrier of cost and travel time.

“It’s in a local community, which helps farmers feel more at home, more in their comfort zone, rather than having to come into town or a gym.”

The average age of the farmers she works with is 69, but the youngest was 21 and the eldest was 92! She focuses on small, practical changes that farmers can make to improve their overall health and gives them signposts of where to go for trusted information rather than consulting Dr Google.

It’s a series of workshops and workouts — over two hours once a week for six weeks

Her full-body workout with fit sticks or activator poles that she calls “the best anti-ageing tool” tackles “flexibility, strength, stamina, fitness and balance to prevent falls."

It is all about having a bit of fun to music like Johnny Cash. Having seen a demo of at The Hub, Castlerea recently, it’s certainly a dynamic workout that will have you sweating.

Then there is “healthy homework” during the week to develop “healthy habits” to sustain participants beyond the programme.

“They can take the sticks afterwards and then do their fitness walking, so you are getting 52% more of a body workout in terms of your calorie burn (with the poles) and then also, for balance, we would do a lot of standing on one leg, even taking the poles up, and you can see how much people improve over six weeks.”

Notable results

The “buy-in” from farmers has been key to the success of the programme, according to Laura, who leads the Sexual Health Service at TUS in Athlone.

“One of the slides I put up is to make time for wellness before you have to make time for illness because you’ll get a bang someday that will land you on a hospital trolley and then you have no choice

“There are really notable improvements, even in six weeks, in weight loss and improved cardio-vascular fitness. So fitness levels are higher and there would be notable improvements in health markers like blood pressure, heart rate, sleep, mood, BMI and body and waist circumference.

“They are significant improvements in the things I can measure, but the most positive outcomes are the things farmers tell me. So, they would say they are sleeping better, their mood is boosted, they have more energy, maybe they are finding it easier to tie their laces or to pick up equipment or stuff around the farm,” says Laura.

She has also had remarkable success discovering a skin cancer issue and an early prostate problem at a class. Both issues were dealt with quickly and with success because of the early intervention.

Tiler Michael Mulryan, who is from a farming background in Ballintubber, encourages others to “get out and do it” because he has seen really positive benefits from his involvement in the initiative, which is fully funded by Roscommmon County Council via Healthy Ireland funding and delivered via Roscommon Sports Partnership.

Recovering from cancer, he was advised to build himself up, and he put on three stone in three months; it was a job to get his weight back down. Blood pressure was also a problem for him.

“In the first six weeks (of Fit Farmers), I lost a stone weight,” he tells Irish Country Living.

It was something to look forward to every week for Michael, who says he had more energy, felt better, and enjoyed the craic being part of a group.

“One day, I was bringing back bags of tile adhesive, and they were lighter than the weight I had lost and I was able to throw them in – simple things like that,” he says of the benefits.

“Each week, Michael was tightening the buckle on the belt, and then he had to buy a new belt. And then a new wardrobe,” Laura adds, and while Covid interrupted things afterwards, Michael walked around 15km a day in two blocks, sending her his mapped walk on WhatsApp, and losing around three stone over that time.

Ambassador

He has kept up the healthy habits and comes to any of her activator pole classes wherever they are on. He also attends the group walks that Laura organises from time to time with previous Fit Farmers participants who stay in touch.

A real ambassador for the programme, he has spread the word to many others – one is farmer Bernard Brennan, from Ballinaheglish, who went to Dysart at the end of 2022.

“My chest was bad (before Fit Farmers), it was very wheezy. I didn’t think at the time I’d be able to take up the walking and do it again. But now, it would be no problem to me to walk four or five miles” says Bernard, who keeps suckler cows and Connemara ponies.

There was a “big improvement” in his lung function and less need for an inhaler after only six weeks.

“I was walking faster without trying to when I was out in the field. I was a lot fitter and felt much better,” he says.

He also enjoyed the education aspect of the programme and tried to put it into practice, resulting in substantial weight loss.

“When we start, we do a sit-stand test and a walking test for a few minutes, and Bernard didn’t score well on either because his chest was catching him,” Laura from Ballydangan says.

“By the end of the programme, he was jogging the walking test and he had doubled his score on the sit-stand test.”

Clearly a passion for her, Laura is proud of her achievements in Fit Farmers at a time when there are fewer social outlets in rural Ireland and many farmers are under severepressure.

“I can’t wave a magic wand and take away all the problems and pressures, but what we can do is switch off for two hours and have a bit of craic. While you’re there, you’re focused, no one is talking about the price of cattle or Brexit, this is time out, and that’s the magic of it.”