Club 300 Glasgow South

Reiss left us this review last week and one line has been rattling around my head since.

“It feels less like a gym, and more like hanging out with friends to better yourselves.”

A few years back, Reiss wasn’t training at all. The weight had crept up, the motivation had gone, and he wasn’t feeling great about himself.

He describes joining as “biting the bullet” - which tells you exactly how he was feeling a bit taking that first step back.

i’m sure you can relate.

Most people picture walking into a room full of strangers who all know what they’re doing, while they try to figure out how to adjust a seat without launching themselves across the floor. So they put it off…

Sometimes for years.

What Reiss actually walked into was a coach who knows when to push him (Shout out to Coach Phil, who might be unbearable about this shout-out for at least a fortnight), people who welcomed him in from day one, and sessions he now looks forward to.

He says it changed his whole mindset as well as his health.

And the community he’s on about was never a marketing plan… It’s just what happens when people are known by name, are missed when they’re off, and are allowed to have a laugh between sets (even if they use it as a tool to try and distract us).

If you’ve been circling that first step for a while, DM STRONG and we’ll help you take it.

Club 300 Personal Training Gym - Glasgow

Bit of an honest one.

I’ve fallen out of love with posting on here.

Ten years I’ve been at this, near enough, and somewhere along the way it stopped being fun.

In fact it’s absolutely became a bit of a slog.

Just another thing on the list I’d put off until Sunday night and then resent.

Lucy and I were watching Clarkson’s Farm last night (if you’ve not seen it, sort your life out) and I got thinking about why we’re always so keen for the next season the second it lands.

Then the penny dropped.

He’s just showing you the whole thing. A man with no real clue what he’s doing, having a go anyway. The daft ideas, the struggles, the bits that actually work, the odd tear. Nothing dressed up to look better than it is.

And that’s the bit that hooks you. Watching someone share the actual journey and going “I feel that” - realising life’s hard for everyone, even one of the most successful presenters on the tv.

So instead of going back to what I’ve done for years, I want to just try and document more of what we do.

What we’re up to, what’s happening in the gym, the good weeks and the ones where the wheels come off. All of it, not only the wins.

So, let’s see how it goes.

Getting in shape’s hard enough on its own.

Try doing it while working full-time, keeping the kids alive, remembering whose birthday party you’re meant to be at this weekend… and attempting to have some sort of social life.

Suddenly squeezing in fitness becomes a bit more interesting.

Which is exactly why trying to rely on motivation usually goes spectacularly well for about 9 days.

You need a bit of help.

A bit of support.

And something that still works when life inevitably gets messy.

Because fitness shouldn’t feel like a constant battle with your diary.

I can usually tell when someone’s been thinking about it for a while before they walk in.

They arrive slightly braced - like they’re half-waiting to be told they’re in the wrong place.

We had a new client in this week.

After her first session she told me she’d been driving past the gym for years. Wanted to join the whole time but talked herself out of it every time because she didn’t think she’d be able to keep up.

I asked her how she felt now she’d done one.

She was beaming.

Said it was nowhere near as scary as she’d built it up to be… actually it wasn’t scary at all - she loved it.

That’s usually the bit no one tells you.

The first session is simpler than you’d expect… the room isn’t full of people watching you and the coach isn’t just waiting for you to fail.

If any of these slides sound like the thoughts you’ve been turning over, you’ve probably been turning them over for long enough.

Have a look around the place… that’s all you’d have to do for now.

This was the first proper time off I’d booked all year.

After a manic start to it, the plan was a few quiet days to come down off the stag, sort my head out, and not have to think about much.

Life had other ideas and the days off looked very different.

A migraine landed mid-week as well, off the back of the weekend and a sleep schedule that had completely packed in.

Apparently the body doesn’t bounce back from a stag the way it used to.

Went into this week pretty fried.

Somehow got all 5 sessions in on the new plan, which I wasn’t expecting.

My body felt every one of its 35 years for the first couple but I eased back in and actually really enjoyed the new challenge.

Today was the first morning that’s actually slowed down.

Big family breakfast, all of us round the table, no rush.

That’s the bit that matters to me.

Everything else - the training, the early starts, the planning - is just so there are plenty more mornings like this.