Starting my Fitness Journey

Hey friends,

I’ve been meaning to start a “fitness journey” for almost a year now – going to the gym, losing some weight, getting that Gymshark athlete body. I haven’t had a proper exercise regimen since early 2021, which had led to some bad things:

1. Bad posture
2. Looking less hench
3. Getting a bit of a belly (Deliveroo x3 a day hasn’t helped)

Enter my videographer Gordon, who used to be a competitive bodybuilder + fitness coach. Here he is in his prime:

He’s been prodding me to get back in the gym for a while, and even set up a fitness schedule for me. So on Wednesday morning, he showed up at 7.30am at my apartment building and we had our first gym session. It was pretty intense, working the upper body: dumbbell presses, lat pulldowns etc. Gordon’s approach to building muscle is that:

1. You only need 45 minutes per session
2. You need to lift weights that are heavy enough
3. You should be training almost until failure, really pushing your body.

Here are the exercises we did this week:

With a lot of these sets, I might have stopped at 12 reps if I was just by myself. But with Gordon psyching me up, I was getting to 20 reps. To be honest I think I overdid it on the first day with the ‘repeat till failure’ sets: I felt a bit sick and looked slightly green by the end.

That might have had more to do with the KFC I had the night before though.

Have a great week!

Ali xx

♥️ My Favourite Things

📚 Book Summary – Nonviolent Communication. I’ve been on a roll with reading Shortform book summaries. This section on giving compliments from Nonviolent Communication is particularly good:

🖥️ Tech – Apple Studio Display. Just had this beauty delivered to the studio. I’ll probably it on my filming desk for PTYA Zoom calls, so I can see my presentation and notes on one screen, and the main Zoom call and chat on the other.

🎶 Instrument – LX1 Little Martin Guitar. This is the type of guitar that Ed Sheeran uses: it’s about 3/4 size. Mine is much cheaper than his though – I keep it propped up by the sofa at my apartment for casual strumming + music-y vibes.

🎧 Audiobook – Amp it Up. This is a very hustle-culture bro approach to business, but has a pretty good discussion of how you can be ‘reasonable but wrong’ and ‘unreasonable but right’ – eg being so nice that you don’t make hard business calls because you’re afraid of being unreasonable / hurting someone’s feelings.

✍️ Quote of the Week

Remember that a clear “No” can be more graceful than a vague or noncommittal “Yes”.

From Essentialism by Greg McKeown. Resurfaced using Readwise.