I have wanted to write about my new gym motivation for some time now, but I always find it difficult to talk about something to which I never felt connected. That was until recently when I found this new level of my love of self-care and the gym/working out. Back in April 2020, I wrote a piece about Workout goals being hard and honestly back then it was really difficult to find the same passion that my wife has for working out.

Cut to 2023 and I am the one writing workouts, suggesting earlier times for the gym, I am not 100% certain what has flicked the switch for me, but I am most definitely feeling it more now than I ever did. I think the thing that did the most for me was going to the gym first thing in the morning, so what we did was we changed gyms to Puregym, no shade on my old gym though, they just only opened at 6:30 am. Kate got a new job where the hours are different and we had to adjust accordingly with our gymming. Now we had been going religiously for over a year and a half, so we had a very good platform to start on, but let me tell you what we have changed and adapted:

• Our first alarm goes off at 4:30, depending on where we are in the workout cycle depends on when and how long we snooze, Monday we are rather chipper, Tuesday too, then Wednesday… slightly later, same with Thursday and then Friday we get out of bed at 4:50, but we are always out of the house by no later than 5 past 5 with the gym no more than 6 minutes away.
• Another thing we have changed in the morning routine is we go downstairs – faff with the cat, make an espresso and take a thermopro burn tablet with it. We use this as our pre-workout and honestly, I cannot knock the results, before I was struggling with “getting into” the workout quickly enough. I would typically be nearly finished before I felt strong enough to push myself, this gives me the pep in my step.
• We have a very structured routine in terms of the workouts for the different days, the exercises change according to what is free at the gym, but generally, the workouts are as follows:
  • Monday: Full Body Circuit timed – decently heavy weights with cardio elements like ski erg (gross) and assault bike (ew)
  • Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday – these can be a little more flexible depending on what is sore at what time – but the workouts are always, Push, Pull and Legs. Usually chucking a PB in there, which just sucks
  • Friday is Full body with Sled pushes – we used to do this with just dumbbells but now we use a 15kg bar with 10kg on it and do a body part each while the other is pushing the sled of death.
  • Send it Sunday is a new addition to our slay timetable – this we do one of two circuits, we either do a boxing circuit or we do a cardio circuit and I need it to be known I dislike them both SO much at the time, but lord them endorphins.
• Another thing we have added is cardio at the end of every workout, in the beginning, I was like, let’s do this cause I have some weight I want to shift, but now I feel I am doing it also just to cool down (even though it is the opposite). A quick note about cardio – not all cardio is equal, some suck a lot more than others for example, the assault bike sucks a lot more than you want.

The final thing that I have changed, this works for me, is that I now track all the workouts that we/I do, Kate does the meal planning and the calories/protein all that side, and I track how many sets, how many reps and at what weight, I also keep track of PB’s so I do a mini dance when I beat it. Honestly, I think this has been one of the standout things for me, being able to see where you are getting stronger and where you are not – I am looking at you left arm, you just know to focus a little more on it and it will catch up.

Thank you for reading my apparent essay!

Share on Facebook

Post on X

Join me

Pin