Working out where to work out

A burpee was just a funny word to me this time last year, I knew that people hated doing squats and all I knew was a lunge was something men in short shorts should never  do.

Although I have never been obese or completely inactive, my main source of exercising, when it happened, has always been Netball (indoor/outdoor), running and walking and a short stint at my University gym that looking back now I was never going to see the results I was after as I wasn’t really pushing myself – nor did I really know what I was doing,

This changed once I joined bootcamp through my work. It was twice weekly and included a range of workouts with equipment or without. It was a lunchtime affair and at the time we lived only about 3km from my office so I began walking/running to and from work most days (money saving tip). The days we didn’t have bootcamp I would make my way down to the park before work regardless and run my only “Schmuly’s little mini bootcamp” for one, based on what our great trainer Jess had previously taught us.

Since those months of becoming more stronger and clued up on how to train myself through bootcamp I decided to instead join a 24/7 gym as Rob was joined up and I didn’t like that on the weekend’s my only real option was to go for a run or hold a “Schmuly’s little mini bootcamp” for one. So bootcamp and I went our separate ways and I became a gym rat . I joined Plus Fitness and Rob and I would run there before work, train for 50 minutes (separately) and run back home together, shower (separately), get ready for work, jump on the train together and be at work by 9am. I was averaging 6 work outs a week, sometimes forcing a rest day on myself, which I would sporadically mix up with a 6-7km run or 1 hour walk where  I would challenge myself to keep my heart rate ‘In zone’ for the entire time – you can seriously feel this in your behind days later.

But once again hitting the gym, trainer-less (another money saving tip) meant I was a little unfamiliar with what I was doing. This was slowly rectified by doing plenty of Instagram research and using apps such as PumpUp. There really are some amazing girls on IG, that go to so much effort putting together workouts for their followers or even going to the extent of posting videos to ensure technique is correct. Together with the help of these resources and my prior bootcamp knowledge I can quite happily go along to any gym and put together a killer workout for myself.

And this will become one of my biggest challenges over the next 6 months, working out how and where to workout. I tend to do the accommodation booking on our trips and I sneakily ensured our first hotel in Bangkok had a gym,  alas this won’t be a common occurrence so I will need to seek alternative forms of fitness when often running 5km down an unfamiliar road on my lonesome will not be an option, Rob said …..