Workout Wednesday: An Insight Into My Training

This is a topic which a few of you have asked about in the last few months. At the moment, my training is very general. I’m currently not training for anything specific. I may enter a few 5k/10k or maybe even half-marathon races in the coming months, but not with a specific time or goal in mind, purely just for a day out.

I’ll give you an insight into my specific constraints and how I fit training in around my life, and I’ll also use a random week from this year. One of my pet hates is when you see a ‘What I eat in a day’ video and it clearly just isn’t a typical day and has just been cherry-picked because the poster perceives it to be ‘good content’.

Hopefully, this newsletter does 2 things:

• Reassures you that you don’t need to be training in a superhuman manner like some influencers have you believe.

• Confirms to readers that my priority has always been, and will always be, training to maintain consistency and habits. I practice what I preach!

Let’s crack on!

Photo by Zoran Borojevic on Unsplash

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Housekeeping

Here are a few quick reminders before we begin:

• You can access my entire archive of Muscle Monday and Workout Wednesday here.

• You can download my FREE guide, 20 Habits to Change Your Life, here, and explore my other socials here.

• You can get 10% off EVERY order, present and future, at Awesome Supplements by using the code ‘EZEP’ at checkout. The electrolyte powder, Hydrate, is a smart idea for those exercising in the Summer months.

• ***FINAL CALL*** Paid subscribers get full access to exclusive newsletters. I’m offering 10% off annual plans until June 1st 2025, so hit the button below to redeem this offer.

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My Training

Before giving you a day-by-day breakdown of my physical activity, let me outline some of the pros and cons of working in the field that I do.

Pros

There are some great advantages. I work at a gym in the heart of the Cotswolds in the UK. Straight away, this eradicates two big barriers to physical activity. I don’t have to pay for a gym membership, and I don’t have to lose time to travel to a gym after a hard day at work. Even if I did want to exercise on a day when I’m not working, I live five minutes away. Time and money are traditionally the two largest barriers to exercise, so I appreciate that this is a big win for me. The fact that regular members and other staff are always there also keeps me accountable, and I will often tell my clients if I am going to do my own session after I finish working with them, as this ‘locks in’ the session in my mind.

Cons

There aren’t many, but scheduling is probably one challenge. Each day and each week are different. Whilst I may see the same people at the same time on the same day each week, this isn’t always the case. Being flexible is sometimes an obstacle. Late cancellations and last-minute bookings can happen. It may be that I’ll have 30 minutes between clients to squeeze something in, and if I did plan for a strength day, I may have to change to a quick run or circuit instead. Alternatively, I may have to stay until after-hours to do something, or arrive early before opening. This can sometimes have a knock-on effect on fuelling correctly and sleeping enough. These are small issues in the grand scheme of things, but they can be stumbling blocks compared to when I had a traditional 9-5 job.

With this in mind, let’s break it down. Below you’ll find a sample week of my training and other relevant health habits below. I just scrolled back in my diary to a week in March and this is what it uncovered…

How can you not be inspired when exercising here?

Monday

I started my week with a blood pressure reading. Well, actually three, but I take the average of those readings. I like to take at least one reading a week, since I have a family history of cardiovascular disease, and symptoms of high blood pressure appear far too late in the game for my liking.

On this particular Monday, I actually didn’t exercise. I took it as a rest day. This is not uncommon, as I tend to be active over the weekends, as you’ll see later on. However, many of you will find this strange. I’ve previously written about how Mondays are often the busiest day in gyms as people make up for their weekend of eating, drinking, and not exercising. For me, this means lots of work, and Mondays are now the only day of the week when I work across two venues, which results in more travel. This is good for business, but it provides a greater challenge to fit in a regular exercise routine.

A rest day on Monday avoids the gym rush, which is no bad thing. However, just because I didn’t perform any structured training, this doesn’t mean I didn’t move. I still recorded over 10000 steps for the day through general movement at work and a couple of short walks.

Health highlights:

• Blood pressure reading first thing after waking (111/72 mmHg average for nosey readers).

• 10165 steps.

Tuesday

I would normally perform a weigh-in on Monday morning as well as a blood pressure measurement. However, for whatever reason, I didn’t do this on that particular Monday. Instead, I weighed in on Tuesday. Again, I like to do this at least once a week. I realise that it may not be beneficial for certain people, but for me, this routine allows me to catch any trends before they get out of hand. Full disclosure - I do use ‘body composition’ scales. Whilst not 100% accurate, I know that if these tell me that I’m veering too far from 15% body fat, then I need to just tighten things up a tad. I have no interest in training to have a certain physique, and to be honest, realistically, as long as I’m below 20%, then I’ll be happy in the long run. That said, 12-15% is a happy spot for me. I can eat pretty much whatever I like (within reason) and in a fairly unstructured manner at this level without having to stress about having too much cheese on my pasta or counting the calories in my ketchup.

My exercise for the day was treadmill intervals. A nice, simple 10-minute warm-up followed by 1 minute of sprinting at a very challenging pace, and 1 minute of walking, repeated 10 times. The treadmill is great for this as I can perform it at a steady, pre-determined pace, without any hills.

This session helped me to complete over 15000 steps on this day.

Health highlights:

• Weigh in and body composition check

• Treadmill intervals: 10-minute warm-up. 1-minute on/off x10, 5 minute cool-down.

• 15718 steps

Wednesday

Whilst routine tends to be hard to find for me generally, Wednesdays are often strength workout days for me. On this particular day, I was able to get in a couple of tri-sets in a half-hour period after my last client. The workout itself was as follows:

1. Dumbbell bench press x12, bodyweight pull-up x10, rear foot elevated split squats x6/6.

2. Hex bar deadlift x12, dumbbell incline fly x12, single arm row x6/6.

I performed each tri-set 3 times, making this a really quick and efficient workout. I’m sure plenty of people will point out that “there’s no abs work there” or some other criticism. It doesn’t matter. What I managed to do on this day was a good complex of exercises for the posterior chain, unilateral and bilateral exercises (one limb at a time and both limbs together), ‘pushes’, ‘pulls’, bodyweight and free-weight. The tri-set nature of the exercises was a good challenge for the cardiovascular system, too.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that more time in the gym = better fitness.

Parkinson’s law states that work will expand to fill the time available. In other words, if a workout can be done in 30 minutes, but you give yourself the full hour, you’ll probably mess around on your phone, chat, or do whatever it takes to fill the hour. If you can, get it done more quickly.

By the way, I also hit 12020 steps on this day, and that’s without any structured ‘cardio’ in the gym as a warm-up or cool-down.

Health highlights:

• Strength workout

• 12020 steps

Thursday

I may have mentioned this in my notes before, not in a newsletter, but I typically alternate between days of ‘cardio’ and strength training. Therefore, on this particular week, my Thursday became a ‘run’ day.

Thursdays have become busy for me recently. I start writing the next ‘Workout Wednesday’ the morning after the previous newsletter is published, and I like to stay at least one week ahead if possible. On top of this, I have found many new clients for Thursdays, particularly in the mornings. On this particular day, I finished a full morning of coaching, then went for a 6k easy run (~5:45min/km pace for those interested - and yes, the average heart rate was 144, so it was both subjectively and objectively easy, not just saying it for the clout!). This was an outdoor run, not a treadmill run, so plenty of hills and traffic to contend with, too.

After the run, I went home to spend a few hours writing the next newsletter, before going on a short walk. A surprisingly low step count of 14272 in the end, so I must have had a lazy evening.

Health highlights:

• Easy 6k run

• 14272 steps

Friday

Since Thursday was a run day, Friday was another gym-based strength workout. This session was a fun one, where I performed supersets of barbell exercises with dumbbell or machine exercises. I had slightly longer to perform this session than the previous gym session, so I managed 8 exercises spread across 4 supersets. I performed each superset three times, and dropped the number of repetitions for each set in a bid to switch things up, increasing the load accordingly. The first two supersets were lower limb dominant movements, and the final two supersets were upper limb dominant movements. The session was as follows:

• Barbell back squat x 12/10/8, machine leg press x 12/10/8

• Barbell alternating reverse lunge x10/8/6 each leg, dumbbell deadlift x10/8/6

• Barbell bench press x12/10/8, assisted pull-ups x12/10/8

• Barbell overhead press x12/10/8, seal row x12/10/8

I appreciate that I was lucky to be able to get this session done, as busy gyms would never have the availability to hop from the rigs to machines. It was challenging, and I rated this a 9/10 in terms of perceived difficulty. If I remember correctly, I also ached big time over the weekend.

Health highlights:

• Gym strength session

• 10555 steps

Saturday

I do sometimes work on Saturdays, but was fortunate to only have a couple of hours of work on this particular day. The weather was nice, so I made the most of the sun and went for a long-ish walk to help get some movement through my legs. They were already starting to ache by the afternoon on this day, due to the gym session on Friday. I find walking and cycling massively help with the stiffness of DOMS, both whilst I ache, and in anticipation of the ache.

All in all, this was a pretty relaxed day, and I managed to get through 18322 steps.

Health highlights:

• Recovery day with a decent length walk

• 18322 steps

Sunday

I don’t coach at all on Sundays if I can help it. I do get a fair bit of writing done, but I don’t stress about it. If an hour goes by and it feels like a big effort, I’ll call it a day, but I do sometimes lose a few hours to writing on a Sunday morning.

This is especially true if, like this particular Sunday, I get out for a run first thing in the morning. I knew that I would just get more and more stiff from sitting around and writing, so I got out and ran a 40-minute tempo before eating breakfast on this day. It was a decent pace, roughly at my current 10k pace of 4:20 per km, which isn’t bad for a pre-breakfast run and outdoors where you can’t escape any hills in this part of the world!

I also took a few shorter walks on this day, which took my step count up to just shy of 20000 for the day.

Health highlights:

• Tempo run for 40 minutes

• 19124 steps

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What should be noted?

This is just my routine on a random week, but the structure is pretty consistent. If you take anything away from this newsletter, don’t focus on the specifics of my workouts. Instead, zoom out and notice the patterns:

• Well over 10,000 steps each day, regardless of training;

• Rest and recovery days happen fairly often;

• 2x strength sessions in the week;

• 3x run sessions (although I often cycle too, just not this week);

• Weekly accountability check-ins;

• Walking as a form of low-level exercise AND recovery.

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Useful?

Hopefully, you find this to be insightful. If you really want to, you’re welcome to try to copy this exact week of training (or even improve it)! The most important thing is to find something that works for you. If you can’t see yourself training in 3-5 years, then your plan isn’t sustainable. Switch things up if you need to, try something different, and see if you can enjoy your training! Any questions - just ping me a message using the button below. There’s also a share button in case you’re feeling generous enough to spread the word. See you next week!