My Gym Is A Very, Very, Very Nice Gym

I know people who have bits and pieces of fitness equipment around their house, I’ve also come across people who have their own multi-gym or even a bigger full sized one. But having a gym of your own is not always possible, firstly there is the cost and then there’s the issue of having a room available to use as a gym. If the truth be known, for most of my life, I never had any inclination to have a gym myself. I’ll admit to having bought a pair of 1.5kg dumb bells when I was a teenager (yep I was even more slight in those days and that was about the extent to what I could lift), in fact I still have them and yes I do use them, though only on some of my more genteel clients. However, when I’d had a couple of years suffering running related injuries I bought some cardio machines to help me stay fit with less impact. My first cardio machine sat in my lounge when I lived in a one bed flat, yes I was single at the time. Eventually, when I started making some good money I progressed to a bigger house and was able to use the loft space as a cardio room – still not a full gym, my weights were in my parents garage and at that stage of my life I had no desire to use weights anyway. In fact it wasn’t until about two years ago that I started doing anything with weights or even core exercises. You could take that statement and ask who needs core exercises if I can run as well as I did without them, to which my answer would be that I wish I had done them earlier as it may well have made a difference and may have saved me from some of the injuries I suffered. Oh well no point in crying over lost opportunities, just get out there and seek some more.

Now that I’m much more aware of exercising I have an array of equipment, to which I keep adding. This is equipment I use for myself and also with my clients. For the past two years we’ve been living in rented accommodation, whilst we tried to sell Carole’s place in Gorebridge. This restricted both how much equipment I could store and where I could workout. But now we’ve finally settled in Northwich, in our own place, and it opens up the opportunity for me to consider my gym situation. The beauty of this house is that there is a separate room that I can use to store my equipment but also carry out effective workouts. At the moment I only use it for abs/core, weights and kettlebell workouts but my intention is to bring my cardio equipment down from Edinburgh to make it a more effective gym for overall fitness. This will be good for me and also good for any clients who want to visit me to carry out their training sessions. 

So what do I have in my gym:

Interchangeable weights

Light dumbbells

Kettlebells

Ankle weights

Boxing pads and gloves

Wobble board

Skipping rope

Trampete

Football

Swiss ball

Small core ball

Exercise mat

Weight gloves

All the equipment one needs to create effective workout sessions. Soon, hopefully, I’ll have my cardio equipment and I’m considering getting a trx system, but we’ll see, and no doubt I’ll be adding to my kettlebell collection (I’m already adapting to the 12kg one so next I’ll be looking to get a 16kg one).

Of course the gym needs to be painted and needs a certain amount of personalisation. Lee Riley sent me a copy of a newspaper with a write up on his World Record breaking run and he’s added a little thank you note and his autograph, which nicely personalises it and stands as a reminder of the small part I played in his success, so I’m going to get that framed and put up – once I can find it in all the piles we’ve been moving from room to room.

Whilst I’m thinking about the gym it’s now time for me to get going and do a session, if I’m able, while we were moving furniture at the weekend I dropped a unit and pulled a small muscle in my back as I tried to catch it. It doesn’t stop me running, as I proved yesterday, when I did a big session but I don’t know how it will work lifting and twisting, I could feel it this morning when I was demonstrating exercises to clients so we’ll see how things go.

I should point out that Carole is pleased that she is no longer finding bits of equipment strewn throughout the house and that visitors no longer have to walk into a room to find me contorted and sweaty.

I’ve also been writing an article for a local magazine, which will hopefully be published. The magazine wanted some pictures of me, unfortunately, as many people will know, I don’t take a good action photo as my face gets awfully contorted due to the level of exertion I put into stuff. I’ve sent along a few recent pictures of me running for Herne Hill, even the one of me leading the first leg of the Southern Masters Road Relay, which Julian Critchlow likes so much. But the magazine have selected one of me running the East District Cross Country Relays for Edinburgh AC, that they found on the internet. I also had some photos taken of me in the gym and doing some kettlebell stuff but I wasn’t smiling so it’s back to the photographer to get some more. But I might as well include a couple. 

Rog in his Gym

Now you can see for yourself how weedy I am