Farmer Wants a Healthy Life
Farmer Wants a Healthy Life
Guys Just Wanna Have Fun
In this episode we hear from Justin Knorrp about how he is helping farmers to be more active in Warracknabeal. He shares what made him want to start the Active Farmers group, who comes to the group and what they get from it. He also talks about what led him to the Wimmera and the need for down time in our busy lives.
Live in or near Warracknabeal and want to join Justin's Active Farmers group? You can find more information on the Warracknabeal Active farmers group here or on Facebook.
This episode mentions domestic abuse, if you or some you know needs help, 1800RESPECT can help.
Website: https://www.1800respect.org.au
Phone: 1300 737 732
Or Online chat
Interested in the topic and looking for more?
Active Farmers is a regular group fitness class program that is fun and interactive. It is designed to get people active and create a sense of community and belonging. There are Active Farmer groups in rural towns around Australia, you can find one near you here. You can find more information on each of the below aspects of Active Farmers below:
You can also jump on to the Active Farmers Facebook and Instagram pages.
Check out the You Got This Mate Program! A program for men living in rural Australia, aiming to help them reach their best physical health. It provides information on:
- Trying new things
- Making exercise fun
- Finding inspiration
- Tips on fitting exercise into your day
For more farmer specific exercise advice go to the National Centre for Farmer Health.
For general exercise and keeping active advice check out the below websites
Join the conversation
Facebook: @FarmerWantsaHealthyLife Twitter: @_FWAHL
Facebook: @FarmerWantsaHealthyLife Twitter: @_FWAHL
Brigitte
This is a West Wimmera health service podcast. Presented by me, Brigitte Muir.
Active and busy, certainly aren’t the same. In this episode, I find out what Active Farmers groups are all about. And I meet a very inspiring character, Justin Knorrp, who is not a farmer, and who did not grow up in the West Wimmera. So who is Knorrpy?
Justin
*hahaha*
Just the simple man trying to help people.
Well, I've been living in Warracknabeal about 15 -16? years now. We grew up in Fitzroy, in a high-rise commission building.
Brigitte
Oh really
Justin
I was in housing commission, on the 20th floor we were. It was sort of a tough upbringing and then domestic violence was in our house and an incident happened and mom said now we've got to get out there. I had a brother and a sister. So she applied for emergency housing. And so we moved from Fitroy to Clayton, which is south eastern suburbs.
So I lived there from when I was 12 and brother and sister and then sort of saw a lot of drug activity, criminal activity. My stepdad who was involved with the domestic violence, I've never met my real dad. He ended up moving back to Clayton and mum ended up having him back and he was a criminal was in and out of jail for more than half his life, I think, at least and we used to go visit him in Pentridge and all that sort of stuff growing up.
There might have been a fork in the road and I must have somehow ended up going right.
Brigitte
And how did you end up in Warracknabeal?
Justin
That was 2004, I organised through a mate who was a travel agent, to go to New Zealand and that's where I met Susie, who is now my wife and she's from Warracknabeal. So I decided to move, knowing that it was easier for me to move up here rather than try and drag Susie to the to the city. And Susan's parents are here. So just thinking ahead if it worked out all right, that'd be grandparents, which there is we've got three kids, we got five kids, three are with us and two, I sort of say a stars in the sky, our firstborn twins Flint and Jude. They didn't survive long after birth, so they’re in the Warracknabeal cemetery, and we've got three kids with us now yeah. With sorrow comes knowledge as well yeah, have seen a bit and learnt a bit and now the last few years sort of tried to change my focus a bit and change how I go about things. And and really want to help people.
I work for the council now. Yeah, as a youth engagement officer, which I've been doing over the last 14-15 months. Which is amazing.
Brigitte
You involved with youth? What about the Active Farmers group? What's that about? You know, when I heard that that phrase Active Farmers group, I thought surely farmers are active on the farm. What the hell is this about?
Justin
Well, you would think so but learning last few years as well like being in the farming district and being part of a farming community. There's the isolation for farmers out on farms is become so much greater. I have thought for a while about wanting to do something to try and help the farmers but I'm a bit self-conscious as well which surprisingly sometimes slightly can keep talking that maybe it's nervous talk, I'm not sure BS anyway, I wanted to sort of try and help some farmers and then I have a friend of mine mentioned Active Farmers and said I should check this out. So I did being a catchy name and it's like, oh, this will grab farms as well. And it's an exercise program that you deliver to, ah, men and women but in Warracknabeal I've created a men's only group it's an exercise program that ya delivered to men, which I'm doing for to help with their mental and physical health. So, get them off the tractors and get them off the land and so they can have a bit of time for themselves.
A lot of a lot of people might have played sport when they were younger, and then when you leave sport is there's a bit of a hole, there's a bit of a gap, with this group feel hopefully they can have that team group feel.
Brigitte
Okay, so it seems that, that was going to be one of my questions. What's the difference between sporting clubs, and this active, farmers group and you just mentioned it's a question of age.
Justin
Yeah
Brigitte
So it's for people who are a little bit older perhaps and maybe not so active in sport, footy, whatever they were active in, or do you get young people as well?
Justin
No I haven’t
Brigitte
Not everyone is into footy
Justin
No, that's right. Exactly. And that I, that was like another reason why I want to sort of get some kids activities going as well sporting activities, fun fitness stuff, because not everyone's into the mainstream sports, and that can be hard for kids, particularly when you're in small country towns because a fair majority of people are involved with those mainstream sports football, netball cricket, but yeah, I've only had a couple of young people come to my classes as such. We started in March but it is open for young people. I'm probably thinking more the lads that are coming now, are probably sort of my age sort of thing, where they have played before but they they're not now, it's it's definitely open to younger younger lads to come along and for their own mental and physical health. They just want to keep a bit fit, they can come along but if they want a bit of socialisation that's a big key of it as well. Like I, having spoken to a couple of partners of the lads that come, they're more than happy that their husbands are coming for the social aspect, and the physical aspect’s, a bonus that they get from that. So yeah, it's just to provide somewhere and hopefully encourage ‘em, encourage the lads to, when they are out on the tractors and working long days to get off the bloody thing for 10 minutes and have a walk and you know, just reset the mind and kick the leg there a little bit and just get a bit of exercise, even for 10 minutes and then get on with it hopefully encourages that a bit as well.
Brigitte
Has it grown since you started it?
Justin
Yeah, it's going pretty good, slow and steady. I had a couple of new people just Monday gone, which was great, they’d be about 40 minutes away from Warrack as well. Yeah, they haven't done anything for a little while, so they they liked the concept of it. So they're like yeah, I'm gonna come along, happy to just go for a drive and he's going to try and encourage another friend or two from his area to come with him and then that doesn't make the drive so sort of boring, I guess. But out this way everyone's used to driving as well, particularly farmers, they will drive trucks and we’ve got to drive distances to get places driving, so 30-40 minutes isn't really, doesn't sound like much for us out here.
Brigitte
There are only, I think, about three or four of these Active Farmers groups in Victoria many, many of them in New South Wales. Is it because it hasn't been around for long? Or is it that Victorians are not so inclined?
Justin
There has only been going three or four years, I think 2017. But yeah, I think Warrack’s the third one in Victoria, and it's actually across six states, amazingly. I'm not sure why it hasn't branched out into Victoria, but hopefully we can get something happening.
Brigitte
How did you get into it?
Justin
Well, I got into it just through talking to a mate of mine. He just sort of said look it up and so I rang Claire who's the team manager as such in Bridgewater and had a chat to her about it and she sent me some info and then after a couple of months, sort of sort of, bit the bullet and said right let's, let's do it. It was March and I thought I have to start now because it's going to be cropping time soon as well. So, we'll try and get a month in and just encourage people to come before they sort of might spend some time cropping and whatnot. Doesn't just have to be farmers either, it's all men are welcome to come along. So it's just to do something for for the blokes, And in town there's a couple of other exercise classes that are available that are predominantly for for female, which is great.
And men can be bloody hopeless at opening up too so, I thought if I came up men's only that that might actually encourage the men, if we had men and women when they might not show up, they might feel intimidated.
Brigitte
So what would you say to anyone who would think oh, maybe that's something I could do, for my part of the world?
Justin
I think it'd be great if there was people out there that would love to train men, men and women in their areas. Like I've spoke with different people in different towns around here within half an hour or so. And there's people that would like to come and like when we just talk about travel not being a problem. Sometimes it can be though just the time side of it. So if there was people wanting to by all means, look up Active Farmers, get in touch with myself here in Warrack, because we definitely would love to have some more trainers in the area and there's definitely scope for it. And if people weren't trained in certificate three or four in personal training or group fitness, Active Farmers there's going to be some scholarships coming up soon where they can help put you through it. It'd be amazing to have more Active Farmers, especially out this way.
Brigitte
This way being West Wimmera.
Justin West Wimmera, yeah, the Mallee in this region. It'd be it'd be great.
Brigitte
It sounds like a great program, I must say.
Justin
Yeah, it's excellent. And like I say it's the people coming and just chilling out having a bit of their time. One of the blokes who can Monday night who hasn't been before, I messaged him the next day and said thanks for coming. He said no thanks very much, he said for someone who doesn't really like exercising, he said “I really enjoyed it”, that was nice to hear. And some of the blokes that have come along, haven't done anything for 15 years, but they might have young kids, we've all got sort of young kids, so looking to the future we want to spend as much time with our kids as we can, we want to see them get married. We want to be grandparents. So, to do that we need to try and live fit and healthy lifestyles and if we can just change a couple of little things that will help us then then it's it's gonna benefit.
Justin
Well, you know, just hearing people laugh and smile when they're at the class or I don't care if they hang on a bit of shit on me like, so long as they’re having a bit of fun, you know? And they're getting they're getting something out of it then then I'm happy.
Brigitte
Is there anything else that you would like to say about this program or anything else?
Justin
Just to come along and try, like it's a good sort of, it's for the socialisation as much as anything, and then with the with improving your mental health, improving your physical health. So come along and tell a friend, grab a friend and bring them along and, you need a bit of downtime, like we all need it we can just work work all the time. Like today's ages were in such a rush. I'm not sure why it is with with farmers as well, they're hard-working people, but they're they got bigger machines and and they get things into the ground and off the ground a lot quicker than they used to. There seems to be this big rush which I don’t know, that's to do with today's age where everyone's in a hurry but I think we just need to slow down had a bit of time for ourselves and thinking of family and kids and all that it's hopefully that projects and adds years to your life. And you can become a grandparent and see grandkids grow up and all that sort of stuff. And for people or trainers out there, or people that are thinking about becoming a trainer, just do it, like it's it's amazing how good you feel, like feel it for yourself when you know you got to keep improving yourself when you're helping someone else, it's brings massive reward that people don't even realise so, and try and reach more people and the more people we can reach the better.
Brigitte
Thank you so much, Justin. It's been very inspiring talking with you. And I know that people out there are going to be inspired too, so farmers and people who want to become trainers in this Active Farmers group do get in touch. You won't regret it. I'm looking at Justin, and let me tell you, he's shining.
Justin
Absolutely thank you Bridget I appreciate it.
Brigitte
That was Justin Knorrp Active Farmers groups trainer in Warracknabeal.
You will find as always contact numbers and details in the notes attached to this episode. And while you're at it, please give us a star rating. We'd also love to hear your comments and suggestions. Our Facebook and Twitter details are in the notes. Until next have a healthy life won’t you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai edited by WWHS Health Promotion
