slagg

In the spirit of the wave of getting fit thats gripping the country I decided to join a gym (its all lies I wanted the washboard abs and you all know it, but lets keep up the pretense for now). I've been a member of a gym before and it was difficult for me to get into for 2 reasons;

1. I kept finding reasons not to go; it was expensive, I hadn't a car to get there and the weather was crap, my kit was in the wash, blah blah blah.
2. I wasn't confident working out infront of other people, self concious fail right there.

After a few months of not going I quit, kicked myself for a while before finally coming to a revelation. I could do it at home!

BEST DECISION EVER!

So I bought myself a weights bench + weights from Argos (they were somewhere near £60, which was so much cheaper than I was expecting) and started working out at home. Good plan! I thought to myself all the benefits without the social pressure of a gym or the prolonged cost.

I looked around online and learnt a few excersizes and got on with it managing a session once or twice a week for a few months. It allowed me to develop my body and confidence in using the equipment to the point where, when I moved back to uni I could comfortably use the gym facilities there. I even took up swimming (which I'm mortally afraid of).

My advice to anyone looking to get into the gym but who're apprehensive of joining a gym would be to look online for excersizes you can do at home. The truth about gyms is that you can do pretty much everything that you can there, at home. Its only when you outgrow the capabilities of your home would you actually NEED to join a gym.

Hopefully I'll be putting together a brief series of workout routines for folks of varying levels of fitness to fit in around peoples lives and posting them up here in coming weeks.

Im the other way around, too many destractions at home (tv, xbox360, internet...), whereas at the gym theres nothing to do but work out, each to their own

I'm on the http://www.twohundredsitups.com/ program. A nice start and a cool app to use if you have an iphone.

I was going to post the twohundred situps and twohundred pushups programs up. They're good ways to working out and they take like 10-15 mins per day three times a week.

I'm actually joining a gym tomorrow. Too many distractions at home, and I know that if I have money going out to the gym, I'm going to feel bad and wasteful if I -don't- go. Plus where I work, I can use my staff card to get a discount on prices at the gym, so that's a bargain.

I dislocated my knee in 2001, and suffer from a weak ankle too, so I'm looking to really build up the strength in the joints, slim down and start work on strength and stamina (without the bulk of course. Some people like the female Arnie look. I for one do not!) and may even add swimming into that at some point in the future, because a childhood of those accursed primary school swiming lessons in over-chlorinated water turned me off it for too long.

Well being of the “old & fat” clan I have started training at home (well mostly in hotel rooms) too. As I’m really only home at the weekends, so joining a gym was a none starter. At the minute I’m concentrating on stretching exercises (old lower spinal injury) and have really gotten an interest in Kettle bells as I can take them with me.

Zortel – I injured an ankle (torn ligaments) playing rugby as a kid, found the best exercise was jogging in an “S” shape along the beach. From lose sand over hard sand and into the water to mid calf depth and back up the beach. Helped improve the stabilising muscles.

Sounds like the kind of workout boxers use to strengthen their ankles as well to be honest.

So its been a few months since my last update;

I reached the limit of what my kit at home could do, and so I went the 2 whole flights of stairs down to the gym and asked for a personal trainer to draw me up a routine.

Now on week 6 of this routine I've added 10Kg to pretty much every excersize and 2 sets onto my crunches and pressups.

I'm even eating healthier, albiet slightly less (thankyou student income) and on the whole have gotten into the routine of going once every other day. It was really weird over christmas, I was gagging to get back to b'ham just so I could go to the gym. ..I know I'm sick, I need help.

Let me know how ya'll are doing!

Well done Vortegan and remember DONT STOP. I used to be well into my exercise and was able to bench 100kg. That was over a year and a half ago and i now resemble Mr Burns! LOL. Seriously though you must not stop, as soon as you do its so hard to get back into it. I've just sold my bench and weights to fund some of my equipment lusts and do regret it. I've kept a few dumbells so am just gonna concentrate on a few basic excersises to stop me feeling so self conscious when I take the kids swimming.

Yeah I was gagging to get back to it over christmas when I took a week off to visit family and the like. Its a part of my uni timetable now, since I only go to uni every mon-wed-fri I use those days so that my rest days are the days where I've got no scheduled activities.

My experiences have taught me that if you stick with it past the first month or so til you start to see gains (or losses whichever you're aiming for) then the gains start to give you more motivation to continue.

At the minute my gym is packed full of all the people whom over new years have said they'll start going to the gym, whilst I should be encouraging them on I can't help but wishing that they'd all just give up so I can get back to my uninterrupted routine. Come the end of the month there'll be none of them left.