Two new companies have teamed up to make Saturday mornings count for the whole family.

Soccer Stars Football Academy and The Feel Fabulous Project, a community interest company, have combined to provide youth football coaching and family fitness classes on Saturday mornings at Slades Park.

Helped by Active Dorset, the partnership, which has been running for two months, is already proving to be extremely popular.

Jim Legg is the founder of Soccer Stars Football Academy, a youth football coaching company that provides high-level qualified coaching, birthday parties and holiday clubs to children of mixed abilities aged four to ten, through a range of activities.

He said: “The collaboration with The Feel Fabulous Project and the Slades Park pavilion is fantastic, we’ve already received huge engagement from the community with lots of children attending our football coaching sessions every week.

“As part of Slades Park letting us use their facilities including the pavilion, our thanks is reciprocated by volunteering in the café. Our aim is to offer parents more than simply ‘sitting at the side lines’. Here they can either participate in the fitness sessions or, relax and socialise with a coffee whilst spectating from indoors.

“We want to keep the community centre open as much as possible as it’s very much reliant on volunteers. Help is always welcomed, encouraged and incredibly rewarding.”

Stacey Nowicki, one of the founders of The Feel Fabulous Project, said: “We found that there were three barriers preventing parents getting back into exercise: childcare, cost and confidence.”

Thanks to a £10,000 donation from the National Lottery Community Fund, the fitness group were able to host six weeks of free taster sessions during May and June to assist people in the local areas to get a free trial of what their typical fitness and bootcamp sessions are like as well as meet new people.

Stacey continued: “We keep our sessions low cost so that it doesn’t stop people from coming and, thanks to our collaboration with Soccer Stars, children who want to play football can go there and take part, whilst parents can work-out.

“We want to provide an additional path for people to take when they come up against physical and mental-health issues. We have found as a collective group that physical activity combined with the additional tools, guidance and online support, we have been able to take our power back over our overall health which is what we want to help others achieve too.”

Hannah Cullen, one of the founders and Lifestyle mentor at The Feel Fabulous Project, said: “As a new parent, you can feel quite isolated. You’re so busy caring for your child that you forget about caring for yourself.

“We have 60 plus members already, but we want to grow and provide more support. The bootcamps are all about making connections, talking with them face-to-face and helping people to break down their mental and physical barriers.”

With bootcamp sessions five days a week run by the five qualified personal trainers, as well as providing online support and dietary suggestions, the group look to expand their services and help everyone in the community.

The current project is funded by the National Lottery and the team are keen to gain new partnerships with local companies who would like to support their work and allow them to carry on into the future.

Further information is available on www.soccerstarsfa.com and www.thefeelfabulousproject.co.uk