It has recently occurred to me that I am unforgivably lazy. You know how Olympians always talk about getting up early every single day, fitting in training between work and school, persisting until they reach their goal? I have none of that. I am determinedly focused on finding any excuse possible to not do any exercise. Winter, is for me, an unending source of excuses.
Unfortunately, my usual winter habits of setting my alarm an hour early, it going off and me laughingly re-setting it for 10 minutes before I need to leave have met an opponent.
There are, apparently, now exercises you can do inside your home. Which means, despite my very best efforts, that I have simply run out of excuses.
I am sure you all are desperately keen to rush outside in the dark, cold early morning, but just in case you're not:
1.Kettlercise
This is a Body Transformation, toning and weight loss system, started by a very nice chap called Guy Noble. He has released 3 Kettlercise DVDs which work through the fat burning exercise class in different time frames- there is an 8 minute ab workout which has really put paid to my much-used excuse of 'not having enough time to exercise'.
The class alternates exercises between the upper and lower body, so you're constantly working. There are 37 different exercises, but you only have to do each one for a minute- and there's a little clock in the right hand corner of the screen, which helps enormously.
It's a high calorie, high fat-burning, non-boring exercise programme that can be done, in pj bottoms and a sports bra, in your living room. Done.
2.Z-trainer
This piece of kit made me feel impossibly glamorous- as if my life was an endless whirlwind of hotel rooms and fancy travel-where I just had simply no time to go to the gym, what with all my hairdressing appointments and vital meetings with world leaders.
The Z-trainer is a set of 2 resistance bands which let the user do almost any type of exercise wherever they are. (It comes in a little carry bag, which I enjoyed immensely). The Zbands are two different strengths-so if even making it out of bed was tricky, you can lower your resistance strength.
The Z-trainer comes with an exercise manual that shows just how versatile a piece of kit it is- although the exercises that asked me to attach it to a solid anchor were slightly beyond me- or, as my flatmate so kindly put it- 'You are too heavy. Do not break our flat.'
In the instruction pack, I learnt that I could do deadlifts and rows 'without lugging around heavy equipment'. - which, I must admit, I was absolutely thrilled by. Not that I ever do carry heavy equipment about with me, but simply that someone thought I might.
I'm pretty certain that as soon as I leave my living room I'll be snapped up by the GB 2016 team.