A stormy sequel – Walking the plank

Week two of the six week fitness trial at Source Gym. Hmmm, the difficult second album, the disastrous sequel, the one-week wonder…

A new fear had crept in, but I charged on ahead and booked the next set of classes using the recently installed MindBody app.

Inside I was thinking that the blast of exercise-induced endorphins experienced in the first week, may be difficult, if not impossible to replicate.

My enthusiasm waned and flickered further, as one named storm after another crashed against my bedroom window in the way-too-early hours, when I was due to get out of bed and get the shorts on for the 7am workout. Even the cat seemed to have curled himself in a tighter ball to drown out the howling wind.

And the Winter Olympics was on television. A wealth of excuses.

So just making it through the door of the gym was a triumph – though in truth, storms Dudley and Eunice weren’t all that bad.

With three classes under my belt, I certainly felt more confident, if not physically stronger, that I would be able to handle the exercises in week two. No more Mr New Boy.

But that’s the barbed beauty of the Source classes – you’re never quite sure what the next work-out is going to involve.

There seems to be an infinite number of moves, stretches and strengthening positions to smoke out another dormant set of muscles in the arms, shoulders, legs and back.

“You might feel this a bit tomorrow… sure it’s no bother to you,” smiled Scott – the instructor – as we rounded off the third set of half burpees, with a squatting interlude and a 30-second wall-sit for good measure.

Wall-sits is one of the few moves that I can do quite well… along with sitting on walls..

Scott was correct, I could feel the exercise mildly stinging the reawakened muscles the next day, like every other day after a class. But it’s not pain or discomfort, it’s just that unique sensation that your body has been given a robust reboot; to switch on and take the pressure off the poor weary joints overburdened by years of bad posture and a sedentary life spent battering on the keyboard, as I am of course presently doing.

Our very economy and society is set up to make our lives more convenient, to the point where we need never leave the saggy sofa into which our superfluous bodies crumple and melt.

I was never that far gone, but it’s easy to see how easy life can be.

In my latest progress update with Niall Hollywood from Source, we spoke about the whole concept of setting goals and how that often leads to failure and disappointment.

“The most important thing we do, when anyone comes to Source is to find out what’s behind the goal. People might say they want to lose two stone, but we need to find out what they really want to achieve and often we find that they are lacking confidence as a result of their weight,” he said.

“So our whole focus is on the process of working towards that goal and not the goal itself, as that is where the disappointment comes in.

“What we nearly always find, is that people find a whole new confidence by just coming to the gym and working out. Yes they will be losing weight, but it’s no longer about the two stone target, it’s more about the way they feel after they complete a class and the improvement it makes to their well-being.”

Niall is drawing me in to the psychology behind training and illuminates the pitfalls which perversely have been the foundation for the traditional fitness business.

As he bluntly states, “The fitness industry has been set up for people to fail. Unrealistic targets are set and when people don’t reach these goals, then they give up, before starting all over again in a few months’ time and it all becomes a vicious circle.

“That’s why here at Source, we have taken a different approach. We don’t want people feeling really sore after each training session, or telling them to cut out a whole lot of foods they normally eat. We would advise people to add a lot more good foods like vegetables and by doing that there is less room for the bad foods.

“It’s about building habits and embedding lifestyle choices. For a lot of the people at Source, it’s simply about coming to the gym and training with other people. As humans, we find purpose when we work together.”

With a nod to my slight dip in enthusiasm at the start of week two, Niall continued, “Motivation is one of the big things we look at. It’s not something that comes straight away. The first step is movement, the next step is to build momentum and then comes the motivation to keep that momentum going.

“It’s a sad state of affairs that there are so many people walking around who do not know what it is like to feel well, they have aches and pains or maybe they have constant problems with digestion. What we are doing here is helping people feel better and the classes are all about progressive exercises to help the body.”

Last week, I declared my rather ambiguous goal was to improve core strength.

Six classes in, and there’s still a bit of a wobble when I lift weights on my dodgy shoulder (injured in a weird whiplash fall involving stairs and the laundry basket), but there is definitely a sense of increased strength and stability. The old cliché of ‘you don’t know what you have, until it’s gone’ is equally applicable to sore backs, aches, cracking joints and general weariness.

This progress is heartening and more-over, it makes me want to keep going, regardless of whatever new storm – declared and christened by Barra Best – is rattling the windows in those pre-dawn hours over the coming weeks.