The gym has changed - and it’s for the better.

As many readers will know I’m a big advocate of strength training and have always made time for it and ensure my athletes do so as well as encouraging others to do the same in their own training.

I enjoy going to the gym and seeing the impact that it has on my own performance. However, as we all are acutely aware of Covid put a stop to all this and the gyms closed down. During lockdown, it was great to see so many people taking the gym to their homes - improvising and adapting with what they had to hand and staying motivated. Now home workouts are great but for strength training to be really effective and specific to a sport and not just ‘looking good’ you have to actually have some significant weight involved and be able to progressively increase the challenge. So when gyms were starting to re-opening I was quite looking forward to it.

Most of you reading this will have been to the gym before at one point or another and let’s be honest they can be intimidating environments. For one, they can be quite crowded and you feel like you’re being watched or judged in some way. There are people who do all manner of annoying things: flitting between machines, using way too much equipment and then the ones who make way too many questionable noises and make their presence known. Plus everyone seems to know what they are doing and make stuff look easy as well. 

Let’s face it we have all been in this situation at some point and it puts a lot of us off going. So it was with slight trepidation that I went along to my first gym session in months a few weeks back.

First of all, I had to book a slot. No more turning up and hoping it won’t be too busy or full of groups of people in vests and rugby shorts. This meant there would be a small number of people in there and lots of space between us. The slots were 50minutes long which is actually plenty if you go with a plan - something I encourage you all to do. 

So I wrote down my session and thought carefully about what it would involve. I didn’t want to be using a lot of equipment or machines as this would be time consuming and it might not actually be allowed for practical. So I planned a sessions with minimal equipment -  barbell, two kettlebells and a skipping rope. 

I know that not everybody has the knowledge to plan their own sessions and feel like they are productive so I’ll write more about how to plan sessions out in future blogs but I am always happy to talk this through or you could even come in for some sessions - shameless plug over.

So I arrived at the gym at my allocated time and was given a quick run down of the general controls in place - nothing too stressful and all reasonable - and was left to get on with it. I was given a bottle of sanitiser to spray down things after I’d used them and then put them in a quarantine area to be deep cleaned. I thought about this and wondered why one earth this wasn’t commonplace before. Why would you not wipe something down after you’d sweated all over it and man-handled it? I’ve definitely picked up equipment in the past that had just been used by somebody else who I have no idea about and where they stand on personal hygiene. 

Anyway, all the cardio machines were spaced out on the main floor and then in the weights area every other bay was pre populated with a bench an olympic barbell and a training bar. I was allowed to use other equipment as long as I cleaned it and put it in said quarantine area.

Fifty minutes later, I walked out with a great workout under my belt. Everyone in the gym had just been quietly getting on efficiently and respectfully. Nobody was idly texting or flexing in a mirror or chatting in groups. The whole place felty purposeful, safe and actually quite enjoyable.

So yeah - the gym has changed. And it’s definitely better.