Fitness regime - a change of speed, a change of style

I wrote, here, a darkly confessional piece about negative body image and my progress on my own fitness journey. 

Since then I had a few back twinges, shoulder aches, and I was worried I wasn't making as much progress on my abs as I would have liked. 

A couple of things have changed.

Firstly, Rachel has joined me on the daily workouts, has accelerated her own progress and has joined MyGym in Hazel Grove, working regularly with my personal trainer pal Steve Hoyles. I've supported Steve's new gym since he started and have been enjoying going there, it's a lovely environment to train in, and a step up on the weights I shift.

Secondly, those basic routines have had to change.

I went to Marple Physio with the back problem and came away a bit shocked at how I was on the edge of damaging myself in a few ways. 

When I was a kid I used to be quite good at swimming and my stroke of choice was backstroke, but the abdominal action accelerated a hernia. Because of my obsession with improving my abs, I was at risk again of another hernia or a rupture to the stomach wall. I must admit I was really fed up to hear that, but I would be even more upset if I wasn't able to go on a Freshwalks because I'd had a back spasm, which I was in real danger of having. 

Luckily, I was booked in with Leonie Fitzgerald, who really knows what she's doing. The progress I've made since has been remarkable. Both the repair to my sore back, and the strengthening of my core and the impact on my abs. I so rate physios, by the way, they seem to be able to spot the slightest things and impressively diagnose cause and effect. 

The routine she prescribed that has absolutely changed everything is pilates. I must admit I'd never really given it much thought, I just assumed it was a bit like yoga (it is, to be fair). Although I don't throw myself around like I do with High-Intensity Interval Training where I would bang out the sit-ups and the crunches, the breathing and holding movements have been awesome (and exhausting).

Life comes at you fast. I do still love the endorphin burst, the fact that I can push on up the hills and fells with very little trouble. And I like that I look better too, I'm not going to lie about that. As we eased out of lockdown, I played football again. Once. I really liked how my stamina held up for the hour, but I was really worried about getting injured. It was an old fellahs five-a-side, and everyone was dead sensible, but the next day my left Achilles was quite swollen. Scoring a wondergoal, or threading a pass, just isn't worth it if I then miss a Kinder sunset.

It's a reminder why we do this, why we push ourselves and how it makes us feel. 

September blog challenge

I need to get my mojo fired up and my writing head on. I've created a whole load of deadlines and expectations for the month, that will keep me motivated. However, I've also set myself the blog a day target as well. 

I've done this before in July 2019 and November 2020. I may even get around to covering some of the topics I promised to cover last time, but didn't. Like on our radio show, I do requests, but reserve the right to not do ones I don't like.

In short order, and on the list are:

• Academic writing v journalism
• Refugees
• Magazines
• Debate and disagreement
• Networks, why we need them, and why we don't
• 24 Hour News vs Slow news
• Family
• Friends
• All Those Things That Seemed So Important
• Aesthetics
• Devolution and Democracy
• Living with medical conditions
• Welsh Nationalism
• Some book reviews
• The 143 (not a bus route, a music list)
• Folk horror
• Kinder Scout, my complex relationship 
• Cumberland

Just to be clear, I don't often suffer from writer's block, but I am old enough to recognise that I work best under pressure. I should also at this point link to the Big Issue in the North, which published my feature on the BBC. I'd love you to buy a copy from their digital archive, here.

I also do a weekly column on music (mainly) for the Weekender section of the Tameside Reporter and Glossop Chronicle. One of the recent ones is here.

I was also involved in the Inset Day at Aquinas College yesterday, which prompted this piece on LinkedIn. 

So, which me luck and I hope this works.

Lockdown training - finally a goal

One of the things I've been doing since the very beginning of lockdown is a daily workout. Before you think it's another alpha male with an Instagram account show boating, then it really isn't. I never thought I'd be that person, even when I joined a gym a couple of years ago it was often an effort. I've blogged a couple of times before about where this came from and what that journey has been like.

In February 2018 it was about how training gave me focus and got me fitter. 

By July 2019 I was wondering what the next level might be like, getting ripped like Simon Pegg and trying something substantial. In truth, I was plodding along and wasn't very good at goal setting or motivation.

Lockdown changed everything.

Our gym closed, I tried following some Zoom sessions, but it didn't work. Instead I just thought I'd follow some British Army training moves and the routines we used to do at the gym, but without weights. After a while I found myself wondering out loud what the point was, and finally settled on something I think I'd been avoiding, some proper goal setting. 

The thing that has always bothered me about how I looked (and how that affected me) has been my middle. Despite being six foot tall with a slim build, I have what can only be called a pot belly. Despite giving up alcohol and generally eating well, it hasn't really shifted in the few years since I started training. I feel better, and I now have actual shoulders, better stamina, a couple more holes in my belt, and strong legs; but that belly hadn't really shifted. It's always bothered me, and there are incidents and comments over the years that have triggered me. In many ways it's just been a part of me, an element of a negative image of myself that I just priced in.

I researched a set of routines and have now built a six day a week full body workout, with a special day for my major goal - Abs Wednesday. I can't pin point the time it started to make a difference, but it has.  Not ripped, not a six pack, but better.

But though this is the goal, it isn't the main benefit. It's got to the stage now that it's part of the wake up routine. Coffee, news, workout, breakfast, shower. It's a release of endorphins in that middle one that is as important as all of the others to how I can mentally function. Some mornings it's so hard; it gets to the point where I dread a push up more than anything. But I have to go on. I don't have any wisdom, any technical tips, a programme for you to copy, and I'm not trying to laud it over anyone. The point is that I've finally found something that works for me. I'm happy to share the routines with anyone who wants to have a look, but the point is to find something that works for you.

Goal setting and male body image

I was a bit disturbed when I first saw this picture of actor Simon Pegg uploaded to Instagram by his personal trainer. I too get unsettled by pics our PTs stick on the Facebook group, mostly because I seem to look like I've got a wok under my top and have sticks for legs.

There has been all sorts of commentary and judgement on Simon's transformation, but on further reading of his story to fitness over the last few years I found the journey a familiar one until this point he reached in March. So I simply don't have the time, the money or the capacity to set goals as ambitious as his - rapid weight loss in order to look scrawny for a part in a film.

But I have reached a point where I'm struggling with goal setting. When my gym moves to a new site next month it will mark about two years since I started training. I wrote about it here, so it will be a useful juncture to weigh up where we are and what I do next.

On the plus side I'm the fittest I've ever been at 53 years of age. I suffer no shame in that. Getting into the habit of going to the gym about three times a week was a big step and I've stuck at that. It's also been 7 and a half years since I drank alcohol. I haven't weighed myself in ages, but if I say it now, it's there for the record, I'm just over 90 kilos (14 stone). I'm terrible with figures, but I think I've been almost two stone heavier. Putting that number into an NHS website, with my height and age, it flashes up - "you should cut down on your pork life mate, get some exercise". My Doctor isn't concerned.

There's the nub of it, the numbers don't tell me anything. How I feel does. I don't get as down as I used to. I'm not going into all of that, but there's a massive link between the endorphin rush of a training session and how well I feel mentally, and then how I sleep, and all these things are linked.

So what should I aim for - more weight loss? Dieting? I think I eat quite well. I don't want to give up a chippy tea and the odd pie. I like to think I've earned it.

I'm not going to get in a boxing ring and I don't want to run a marathon. My football days are over. So what's it for?

But how about going for a reduction on body fat and getting ripped like Simon? Can I? Should I? Then what? How much metal should I be shifting. Every single time I go, I record what I've done in my book, and right now I couldn't tell you accurately what my personal best is for deadlifting, bench pressing or squats. Even if I did, I wouldn't put it in a blog.

There was something the writer Tony Parsons says in his GQ column this month, "the work is never done." You don't stop when you reach these goals, or slide back, you carry on, until the next session and the one after that. Packing your bag, making sure the kit ready. It was the last of his ten commandments of the gym, my absolute favourite being "train with someone" which has been the biggest single joy of being a member of Body Box Mcr. It's the other people, my training partners, the expert personal trainers. But maybe that's all it is, keeping at it, loving it, staying happy with it, seeing others hit their goals, being part of that, committing to something greater than yourself for the benefit of others. Maybe that's it?

How I came to love the gym and probably saved my sanity

Last year I started training again. Most people my age have some longer term aspirational goal, or a health scare. Me? I just knew I needed to do something again, the scare came later.

That said, feeling persistently tired and having constant junk food cravings aren’t good. I knew that doing the mountain walks with the Freshwalks crew a few times a year, and the full circuit of Marple walk three or four times a week with the pooch, wasn’t going to battle off the middle-aged spread and reduce the chances of getting ill. The stats for sedentary males are a worry - diabetes, heart attacks, tumours, high blood pressure and depression. The comment that stuck with me was that if you can’t find the time for yourself to exercise, expect to give up time to be ill. It became one of those ambitions that I wanted something to work at, but didn't know what. I miss football like mad, but I'm too timid now to risk injury. I even asked the doctor if I was in imminent danger of damaging myself before I took the plunge. I took the bike to work, I used the Mobikes in Manchester when I could and I checked out a few activities at work, but still nothing stuck. I went swimming a few times, but the biggest thing I needed was motivation. With the best will in the world I’m not going to pull off a marathon from scratch and to be honest I just can’t get excited about running. A few years ago I had a personal trainer, Steve Hoyles, who made a big difference and helped me lose weight. Our weekly sessions were good fun, but I was missing too many due to work commitments and I wasn’t sure  what the goals were. I liked Steve’s company and his approach, but wanted something more sociable as well. My pal Will Stone told me about this converted warehouse in Stockport with a no frills approach to fitness and that Steve was doing some work out of there. So, I reached out to Steve again, though events took a slightly different turn.

Five months on I can’t even begin to describe what a difference I’ve felt. Once the introductions had been done, I joined the gym, which almost instantly changed ownership and is now run by Melanie Duffy, a personal trainer who led my first session, under the banner Body Box. There are no machines, no pools, no spa treatments. It is as back-to-basics as they come. Lots of free weights, industrial tyres to flip, medicine balls, punch bags, kettle bells, prowlers and hanging bars. In jest, I say to friends it is not so much a gym as a medieval torture chamber. And I love it.

But the real experience comes from the people I train with. We do our own bespoke workout programmes, but always finish off with a High Intensity Interval Training session. We are as eclectic a group as you could pull together. But the support in the group sessions like ‘HiiT Squad’ ‘Saturday Suicide’ and the punishing ‘Chipper’ is just phenomenal. Someone asked me last week whether I’ve lost any weight and to be honest I haven’t, but I have changed my body shape. More importantly, that's all made me feel sharper and fitter and happier. Sure, some days it hurts, after intense leg work I end up walking like John Wayne the next day, but the warm downs and stretches usually work well enough to avert too many aches. It’s costing me money to buy new trousers as I’ve dropped two waist sizes, even if my pot hasn’t quite shifted yet. I know I have a long way to go, to be as fit as I can be, but the simple act of doing the kind of exercises which were flooring me when I started is such a rush.

At the turn of the year I enjoyed my first post-Christmas sessions and felt a twinge the next day in my lower abdomen. For a day I put it down to training and thought I must have pulled something. It turned out to be much more serious and I had two days in Stepping Hill Hospital hooked up to a drip and on powerful IV anti-biotics. Hospitals are not happy places to be, the consolation that I was reasonably fit and don't drink probably saved me from sliding into a spiral of despair. It was mortifying and upsetting being visited in hospital by my family. The scan revealed no tumours, which was obviously a relief, but the medical advice I'm trying to live by was a stark reminder of the importance of good diet and, of course, proper exercise.

It’s made me more determined to enjoy the gym sessions and take my wellness a bit more seriously. I now have two clinical conditions under control and don’t want another. I was talking to my dearest friend John Dixon about it all recently. We traverse through these ages. Catching up with friends used to be about what great fun times we've been having, then we started taking work seriously, then how our kids are. Now we swap stories of our ailments. There's another age to it, that sort of runs in parallel; what we're doing about it.