Up at 6.45am for a bowl of sludge oatmeal…. I really had to force it down this morning, as it tasted particularly crap and took me over 10 minutes to eat! A bacon sandwich and a cup of tea would have been a better idea… Carbs in the baguette, protein in the bacon and sodium in the half inch of butter that is the secret behind a decent bacon sarnie… Or maybe my lack of dietary expertise is the reason Goodyear and Pirelli are fighting over the sponsorship of my midrift!

Down to Vanda for 8, with the sludge feeling like it was stuck somewhere between my trachea and epiglottis (neck and ribcage for those who haven’t got a new level of medical expertise following a trip to CSC!) I had a funny feeling that I would be seeing the oatmeal again sometime soon…. The benefits of that would be that it already resembles sick, so not a lot of work for the body to do.

When Alexis arrived, he asked me to take the guys out of a 20-25 minute run, and told them “to let me set the pace!”. Given that I am a short man with skinny little legs, I didn’t imagine my pace was going to be much to the normal sized men. Nevertheless, I set out at a pace that resembled an oompah-loompah with a stolen handbag, and went up the usual route around near the golf driving range and then through a hole in the fence to some other random part of the world where horses shit and monkeys fool around in the trees. By the time we reached the hilly bit, my laces had come undone twice, which was a shite excuse, yet welcome relief from the sprint I was trying to maintain. Naturally, a double-knot would have provided a less annoying pause, but that would mean I didn’t get a minute off here and there. The downside, of course, was that my little follow-the-yellow-brick-road style running action had to speed up to get back to the front of the group. After 3 undone lace incidents (I double-knotted them on the third time because I was getting woundup) and one Paula Radcliffe style toilet break, we were back in the gym after a good 25-minute warm up. The oatmeal luckily remained down, which was a huge relief!

We did some “power” circuits next, which involved 20-seconds of push-ups, crunches, bendy-twisty things with dumbell pumpy action, squats with a medicine ball, bouncy heavy fecker medicine ball against the ever crumbling wall, farmers walk, touchy-toe situps and squat thrusts. We did 3 sets of that, with a 1-minute rest between sets. I do enjoy these circuits, as they are challenging, yet fun, and you get to work all the muscles. Added to that, there were none of those fecking burpees involved. I really need to look up the benefits of the farmers walk though, as I can never work out what walking in a straight line with 17.5kg dumbells in each hand does other than make you look like a bit of a knob.

After that, there were circuits of jab and parry, where you throw your hook at your opponent, and he pads it away. This teaches you to fight a bit like Scooby-Doo, and helps you to not get hit in the face so much. I actually have a face that benefits from getting punched, but I do still enjoy this particular exercise.

After we completed a few rounds of this, we moved onto heavy bag work, where we did a few rounds of 1-minute punchouts. These are quite challenging, as you really feel the burn in your shoulders, but I always really enjoy these, as they push you right to the edge (if done properly!!).

Next up was 3 rounds of 30 crunch things with your legs bent at 90 degrees. As this was to be completed “in our own time”, the gym was awash with Michael Flatley type flailing legs as we each tried to be the first to finish. It was a cross between Riverdance and cockroachs that have landed on their back!

The final nail in the coffin was 2-minute plank. By this stage, everyone was knackered and moaning, which means Alexis was at his most cheerful! The last 30-seconds of the 2-minutes was, in Alexis’ words, “like listening to a room full of men having s*x”.

Who was I to question how or why he knew what that sounds like?!?