The Personal Trainer arrives. Time to sweat!

Sun is shinin' in the sky

There ain't a cloud in sight
It's stopped rainin' everybody's in the play
And don't you know
It's a beautiful new day, hey hey

Electric Light Orchestra. Mr Blue Sky 

Today’s lyric reflects a lightening in my mood. I’ve found some hope. Tuesday I’d hit another low, but after a walk and talk on Wednesday I felt a small shift and woke slightly brighter on Thursday morning. 

It marked day one of regular sessions with a personal trainer. It’s a twelve week programme, devised to first and foremost, help my mental health improve. There should of course be other multiple benefits to my overall fitness and health.

By sheer coincidence, we had a delivery of logs for our fire, and as it was drizzling, I had little choice but to move 1 tonne of logs by hand. A good warm up workout after the recent months of predominantly sedentary behaviour. I spent the afternoon testing all the equipment ready for my first session with the trainer. I’ve a smart turbo trainer for my road bike, a Garmin heart rate monitor and a subscription to the cycling app, Zwift. 

4:30pm arrived and with a little trepidation I had my first face to face meet up with the personal trainer who has devised a training plan for me, incorporating weights and cardio. I usually love cycling so there’s going to be plenty of that. But first it was important to begin to capture my baselines around fitness (or lack of). So it was straight into a Functional Threshold Power (FTP) test on the bike. This consisted of a twenty minute warm up cycle designed by Zwift, then a stomach churning, leg burning twenty minutes at maximum power and finally a five minute warm down. 

I’d only attempted an FTP once before, when I was much fitter, and had given up after the warm up, so whilst I found I’d definitely emptied my tank a good few minutes before the end of the test, I was able to complete it and actually not throw up!

I found myself enjoying the session, despite it being tough because of my lack of fitness. But now I taken a step and know I’ve more sessions to come, I’m hopeful and feeling positive toward the plan. I woke this morning feeling brighter, though the vivid dreams continue. But I decided to log myself on for an organised Zwift training ride and have completed another hour on the bike. This time the focus wasn’t on power but speed of pedalling, it took me a good 15 minutes before getting to the required pace, but once I did, I found myself concentrating purely on hitting the right pedal speed and power, I thought of nothing else. That’s a first for a long, long time.

I’m keeping a mood diary and can see incremental small gains over the past 2 days. I know there will be bumps along the way. But I’m already looking forward to next Tuesday’s session when I will begin to learn how to deadlift, bench, split squat and lord knows what else.

A positive end to a week that started so badly. 

Finally, if you think or know that a mate is struggling, send them a message. Don’t push them for an answer, but don’t be afraid to contact them. You might not get an answer, or you may get one eventually. It’s highly likely though that it will be read and appreciated. 

One way of signing off is this.

“Please don’t feel any obligation to reply to this. I know how difficult it can be to deal with things when your mind isn’t right and I wouldn’t want you to feel any pressure.“

Love and tier 2 hugs

Blot