This guest post was submitted by Luke Barlow who found that a gift experience day bought for him by his wife helped him to get into a regular exercise routine and adopt a more healthy lifestyle.
For the past four years, my New Year’s resolution was always to exercise regularly and lead a more healthy and active lifestyle. But what with work, life, one thing and another it never happened.
I might go for a swim for a couple of weeks, go for an early morning run or even seriously think about signing up for a proper gym membership and make a weekly routine of it.
But it never happened.
And it’s actually due to two things. Firstly, that the change I wanted to make was too radical. And secondly that it all felt a bit intimidating without having someone to go with, or at least someone to ‘introduce me’ to it all and practically ‘hold my hand’ and get me through it until I was confident.
After years of procrastination, my wife bought me an experience gift for Christmas, which was a personal training session.
Knowing how bad I am, she opened the gift pack for me, called up and book the appointment for an evening after work when she knew that I’d be home on time for a change.
So imagine my delight (not!) when I got home from work to find a bag full of gym clothes and trainers on the dining room table before being ordered to head out to a secluded health club some 10 miles away.
Well, I went along not in the best of moods, found a stunning health club hidden behind some woods and was greeted by a friendly woman at the desk who called down my trainer for the session, who was equally friendly.
Despite my nerves, I was made to feel very welcome and they both did their best to put me at ease. Meanwhile my trainer, while a small blonde woman, was a few years older than myself, which was also strangely comforting.
I was asked to go get changed then meet her at the upstairs desk in the gym for my session to begin.
After getting changed in a fairly mediocre changing room of wooden benches and steel lockers, I walked up the stairs to the gym and stepped into a cool, fresh, air conditioned space with dimmed ambient lighting and dance music – a bit like where I used to play Quasar as a kid. It was also strangely comforting, possibly due to the reduced visibility and general ambience of not being a brightly lit, sweaty gym where everyone is looking at you.
We had a quick chat at the desk about what I wanted to achieve from a work out plan and what kind of things I enjoyed. Running was discussed and I said I didn’t really want much other than general health and fitness.
And so my trainer quickly came up with an hour routine, with 10 minutes of cycling, 20 minutes of running and 30 minutes of various ‘resistance training’ exercises on different machines.
She showed me how to work the cycling machine, treadmill and resistance machines and simply spent the whole hour chatting to me, making sure the settings weren’t too challenging, but definitely challenging enough.
More than anything, it was having a nice environment to exercise in and a nice person to make me feel at ease which made the whole experience so good.
I enjoyed it so much that I went back the following week, same time, without being pressured to by anyone. Although this time it was much harder not having anyone with me.
But ever since, I’ve made it a regular thing to go once a week without fail and stick to the same routine.
I’ve felt miles better for it and it’s all thanks to finding somewhere a little bit exclusive I otherwise would never have found and having someone to put me at ease and show me the ropes as it were.
So if, like me, you find yourself struggling to get some regular exercise, even a one off personal training session could really help. Because it’s nice to have someone with you if you can. And at this place they make sure you never feel intimidated.
