Well yes, I DO work out.

And damn, aren't I surprised!

Somewhere around the beginning of October I had the surprise of my life. I was actually really enjoying the gym.

As a kid I was a bookworm. I read, and read a lot. I didn’t play hockey or soccer, and surely didn’t lift weights or anything like that. I was invariably one the last two or three picked for any team, and was by any measure just plain useless at sports.

I also pretty much flunked metal-work in high-school.

In those days no-one celebrated being geeky or nerdy. You were just looked down on, except by drama teachers. (Big hey to Mr Oke, who cast me as the ichneumon wasp in Karel and Josef Capek's The Insect Play) (And ordered me to not get my hair cut before the play premiered.)

OK, to be honest I did water-ski in high-school, and over the years have off-and-on cycled and run, but ultimately I was just totally disinterested in physical fitness.

Somehow that has changed. Part of the drive for fitness stems from hitting that age when your options are to get active at the gym, or turn into a fat blob of nothing. Part of it is realizing that a lot of things that you had taken for granted - knees; an ability to bend down to tie your shoes; enough muscle to pick up something 50 lbs heavy - were about to disappear forever if you didn’t work to keep them alive.

And part of this, honestly, is just about looking at people my age, or a few years younger, and asking if I wanted to look and move the way they do. That lack of physical movement, much less using a walker, scares me.

And of course part if it is about having a spouse who truly believes in fitness, and who you can encourage, or who can encourage you, to get up and get to the gym.

That gets you through the door, but what makes the real difference, and I wish I had known this a couple of decades ago, is having a trained professional to direct you.

My trainer Neil Hayes (that’s him in the photo) has been patient, but most importantly can tell me exactly what I should be doing at exactly this moment. He’ll drive me to do more, but he’ll also help me to understand my body, my muscles, and how all of this stuff is tied together.

All of that is really important. Fitness stuff doesn’t just come naturally, and the potential to hurt yourself, or even just to look stupid, presents a real barrier.

I think the turning point for me was when I was doing some kind of repetitive thing and suddenly looked in the mirror and realised that my legs now have real, defined muscles. More importantly, and this was a first for me, I realised that I felt pride when I see muscles developing.

At the same time I have been finding that I now know my way around the gym, and around the equipment, well enough to feel in control. I no longer feel like a fraud, and consequently don’t feel like I’ll be laughed at.

I know beyond a doubt that I never would have reached that point without Neil to support and teach me.

I think back to the one moment when I think we defined what I want, and how he would get me there. It was maybe two months into training when I said “You know what? I think I’d like to get into using free weights.”

It surprised me, and I think it surprised him, but that’s where we’re heading now. I’ve figured out that as nice as machines are (and safe I guess) using free weights takes everything to an entirely different level - not only are you lifting weight, you’re guiding the weights up and down, left and right, and that requires a whole other level of control.

To do that you need to have trust in yourself.

Which, to be honest, was another thing that I lacked as a kid.

Thanks Neil.