While I’ve stressed again and again the importance of sticking religiously to your regime however, it’s also important that you make sure you allow yourself some flexibility to help fit your training programme in with your lifestyle. The way I achieve this is to have ‘floating’ off days. This means that rather than having my resting days on say Wednesday and Sunday; I place my resting day one whichever day I feel tiredest or am doing the most on. This way I never have to miss a session as such. If I get invited out that night I simply make that one of my two or three resting days and make a mental note that I have to get to the gym the next day. One of the rules is that you never take two days off in a row however so if you’ve just had an off day then you should feel extra obliged to do your workout the following day. If you get it into your mindset enough then you should find yourself feeling guilty over the fact that your missing a potential workout and start planning ahead already for the next day (though don’t let it run your life either, that aint’ cool).

If you’ve already had your quota of off days however and you really can’t get to the gym for whatever reason, then remember it’s perfectly fine to train at home. Even if you have zero equipment you can make an entirely serviceable workout for you pecs/shoulders/triceps just from press up variations and dips (check out the wealth of ideas for bodyweight training online). If you have a set of dumbbells (around £20 or $40) or a pull up bar (around £5 or $10) then you can get a full workout for your biceps and back too. And legs and abs are pretty easy too. This will save you a lot of time and energy spent by getting changed and travelling to the gym and staying in your own environment will be more comforting and less of an upheaval. Just make sure you approach these home workouts with the same vigour as you would a gym workout.

This latter point fits with a philosophy that’s greatly helped me stick to my workout – that something is always better than nothing. So if you for whatever reason cannot accomplish your full goal of getting to the gym and training your pecs on five different machines and having a ten minute run – then just three sets of fifty press ups will be better than nothing if you’re feeling poorly or for a loss of time. Obviously don’t do this every time, but if for whatever reason you can’t make a full workout then there’s never any excuse not to just do a few and you can even do it in a hotel room.

Mack LeMouse

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