I’ll go back in time slightly, and give you a brief description of the first time I walked into the free weights area. I walked in, had a look, then walked out. I decided to do 20 minutes of HIIT on the cross trainer instead. I knew by the next workout, I’d have to do something with the free weights, so I bit the bullet, and went to the gym on a Monday morning.

 Because I knew absolutely nothing about weight lifting bar what I had read in my boyfriend’s Body for Life book, I had no idea of what to actually do. I didn’t want to ask the fitness instructors as I was a little worried they wouldn’t take me seriously, and would give me exercises to do on the machines, and I knew I didn’t want that. So instead, I came in armed with a sheet of A4 paper, and drawings of little stick men with the exercises I wanted to try.

 There weren’t too many people in the free weights area, but enough so that I was the only woman, and one bench free. I remember struggling to do the chest press with 4kg dumbbells in each hand! Now when I add weight to the 20kg bar, I look back at myself and rather than be amusingly embarrassed, I’m quite humble at the fact that it wasn’t bravery or courage that got me in there, I was more driven by my fear. I don’t know exactly what that fear was, but the nature of it changed, and soon afterwards, I no longer needed a piece of paper with drawn on stick men and I was no longer bothered by the presence of other people as they were not always doing the impressive looking exercises correctly.