Dr Melvyn Hillsdon PhD
Melvyn spent 10 years in the fitness industry before moving to the National Health Service where he developed a specialist exercise facility for clinical populations with Dr Tim Anstiss. For 10 years he was the Workshop Director for the ACSM Health/Fitness Instructor Certification in the UK. He has trained many health and fitness professionals for clients including Invicta Leisure (now Esporta), Virgin Active, the Fitness Exchange, Cannons, Fitness First and the Hogarth Group. For the last 10 years he has worked as an academic, most recently at the University of Bristol London carrying out research into exercise promotion.

During the last 5 years he has carried out extensive research into membership retention rates in UK health clubs and is the author of the Fitness Industry Association's Winning The Retention Battle series of reports.

Melvyn regularly consults on membership retention to a number of the UK's top health club operators and has presented the results of his research at national and international conferences, including IHRSA, Bodylife and LIW.
 
  
 
Paul Bedford MSc
Paul has been working in the fitness industry for the past 17 years. Much of that time was spent working for YMCA Fitness Industry Training as a senior lecturer. He has also assisted in the development of national programmes to change eating and exercise behaviour.

In 2000 Paul completed his master's degree in exercise and health behaviours, the focus of which was identifying methods to predict adherence to exercise. Paul is now working on his PhD at the London Sports Institute under the Supervision of Professor Chris Riddoch. The aim of this research is to identify interventions in a gym environment to increase adherence.

Over the past four years Paul has been invited to speak at numerous conferences here (Bodylife, Fit Pro) and in the United States (IDEA, IHRSA) on the topic of retention, adherence and attrition. Having developed a training programme to assist retention Paul has delivered this to 13 local authority providers, involving nearly 70 facilities.