Fitness Regime

If you'd asked me in December 2011 what I thought of Gyms and Fitness regimes, I may well have paused momentarily from filling my face with Xmas Pud to offer you a scoff and some other discourteous comment no doubt.

Men in Lycra! Enough to put anyone off going to the Gym!


The whole idea of self obsessed posers prancing around in front of mirrors in lycra whilst "The only way is up" blasts out in the background would have filled me with irritation.

Even as a fairly active sportsmen in the 80's and 90's to a pretty decent standard, I saw training as an unnecessary evil that was restricted to those within the team who clearly lacked the same natural talents that God had undoubtedly blessed me with. It's probably due to this attitude alone I spent most of what should have been the prime of my sporting career, huffing and puffing my way around various sports fields.

As for Gym memberships, just like memories - I've had a few! Before 2012, The problem I had with gyms was absolute boredom, they just never resonated with me, I didn't have a clear goal for going in the first place and so the whole process of being able to track and be motivated by my progress never clicked in. I am ashamed to say I actually joined one gym because it had an outdoor pool and the promise of BBQ's in the summer!

All my early gym memberships ended in tears; I would eventually concede to the boredom, negotiate the cancelling of my membership, take my new found wealth and blow it on a weekend on the beer with the lads, before repeating the cycle again 6 months later somewhere different, no doubt offering a higher class of BBQ!

Yet despite all of those experiences; I am now one of the self obsessed prancers (I've avoided the lycra for now!). So how did I get here?

Well if you can be bothered to read My Story Page you'll know that the trigger was joining my first Bootcamp. The difference with Bootcamp was not only that fact that by the point I had joined my first I was desperate to lose some weight and get fit, but the additional social aspects of meeting new people (albeit reluctantly at first) and getting to know them and sharing a common goal was something I hadn't previously experienced in the months of propping myself up on an exercise bike whilst watching the lycra-clad Mr Motivator's in front of their mirrors (appreciate there may be one or two of you pondering exactly what kind of gym's I was attending - fair point!)

It's really important I don't underplay the quality of the boot camp itself too. I owe an awful lot to Grange Fitness and the great guys there (All the Matt's, Mark and Alex) without whom I'd have probably packed it all in, in favour of weekend at some Eastern European Beer Festival (hope you're following the thread!)

Sadly Bootcamps don't last forever (hmmmm actually for some of my Grange Fitness buddies they do - you know who you are!) - having completed mine and remained motivated by the results I have continued my gym membership at Grange Fitness.

In addition to Gym membership I have started taking part in other some other fitness motivated wacky events like Spartan Race, Rock Climbing and will be doing events like the Whole Hog and Tough Mudder in the coming months.

I typically train around 5 times a week now and whilst I believe every session I do meets all of my goals to varying levels, I try and mix up my sessions a bit to focus on the aspects they are best at addressing. I like high intensity interval training for fat burning (big believer in 'afterburn' - if you train at the right intensity with smaller intervals you will keep burning fat long after you finish training), weight sessions for muscle building and aerobic sessions for general fitness.

A typical training week for me looks like this:

Monday - 40 minutes Upper Body Weight's session

Tuesday - 30 minutes ABS Blast class - this is 30 minutes of high intensity interval training with a particular focus on ABS

Wednesday - Rest Day

Thursday - 45 Minute Z-Trainer suspension training class - again high intensity interval training to achieve the 'afterburn' effect.

Friday - 45 minutes Fat Burning Circuits class - by now I guess you get the theme!

Saturday - 6KM Run

Sunday - Rest Day


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