The Gym (Or: How I Accidentally Became One of Those People)

I’m going to start with a something that sounds like the conclusion of a midlife crisis.

The gym saved my life.

It didn’t, of course. Not literally. Nobody dragged me out of a burning building and handed me a protein shake. But in a quieter, more British way, the kind of way where nothing is ever said out loud until you’ve made a joke about it first, it has genuinely changed my life. And for someone who used to view gyms as fluorescent torture chambers filled with men admiring themselves from every possible angle, that is saying something.

Before Christmas, I spent a month in Australia for a wedding and to see family, and for a couple of weeks I stayed on Manly Beach. If you’ve never been, Manly is essentially a postcard with abs. Everyone there is not only in ludicrous shape, but also infuriatingly happy. It’s hard to know whether the happiness comes from the exercise, the ocean, or simply the fact that their vitamin D levels are not in a permanent state of British deficiency.

Naturally, I started comparing it to the UK, where we spend most of winter looking like damp laundry left out overnight.

A friend summed it up perfectly.

“If you had your shirt off for seven months of the year, you’d be in good shape too.”

He’s right. The British climate isn’t built for visible abdominal muscles. It’s built for jumpers, coats, and pretending we don’t mind the drizzle. You can’t blame the average man in Cotswolds for not maintaining beach body standards when the closest thing we get to a heatwave is a slightly warm day in June that causes panic-buying of fans.

But there was something else happening in Australia that I didn’t fully appreciate until later.

Every morning I was up at 6am, walking to my favourite coffee spot (Little Legends, which I recommend if you ever find yourself on the other side of the world needing caffeine and a sense of purpose). Then I’d walk along the beach.

And the place was alive.

Surfers were already in the water, runners were flying past, volleyball games were underway, and there were people like me, the coffee walkers, strolling around as if this was the most normal thing in the world. It felt like everyone had collectively agreed that mornings were not something to endure, but something to use.

One dad stood on the sand whistling his son in from the sea.

“This is every morning,” he said, shaking his head. “I just can’t get him out the water. He’s meant to be going to school.”

I remember thinking how wonderful that is. Imagine your biggest parenting battle being that your child is too committed to surfing at sunrise.

I also kept hearing a phrase: think of the 5–9 rather than the 9–5. In other words: don’t let life be swallowed by work. Make your mornings count. Build something for yourself before the day begins.

I loved it. I felt inspired. Almost unbearably optimistic.

“That’s it,” I thought. “When I get home I’m going to be a morning person. I’ll go for runs. Walk the dog. Enjoy the early hours. Become one of those annoyingly productive people who have already ‘done loads’ before breakfast.”

Then we landed back in the UK in early December.

It was raining at Heathrow when we arrived and I don't think it stopped until the end of January. The mornings were dark, cold and cheerless. Not the romantic sort of cold either, more the kind that feels personal. The sort of weather that makes you question every decision you’ve ever made, including your choice of country that you live in.

There was no 5–9am. There was only 5–9pm, which was equally unpleasant and consisted mostly of eating dinner and wondering why I felt tired all the time.

However, just before Christmas, a new gym opened in Bourton-on-the-Water. It’s called SOMA, and it was set up by two friends of mine. SOMA feels less like a traditional gym and more like a very well-designed place that happens to involve exercise. Think quietly stylish Scandinavian wood, greenery, soft lighting. There’s a subtle club-like feel, but without the ego or intimidation that often comes with it. It’s welcoming, well-priced, and refreshingly unpretentious.

Now, I have never really been a gym person bar a few courtesy visits when my cousin used to own one near Winchcombe. I’ve always kept myself fairly active. I play padel, I walk the dog, and I play cricket, although cricket is a slightly questionable form of exercise given that most of it involves standing still for three hours and then suddenly sprinting in blind panic because the ball has gone somewhere unexpected.

But a gym? Not for me. In my mind, gyms were full of people kissing their biceps in the mirror and taking selfies with captions like “No days off”. I assumed it was all ego, sweat and strange noises.

I was very wrong.

I joined. It may have been the free Stow Town coffee (some of the best in the Cotswolds by the way) for members that finally tipped me over the edge. I’d love to say it was purely about self-improvement, but I am still British enough to be motivated by caffeine and mild perks.

At first, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. The machines looked like medieval torture devices designed by someone with a personal vendetta against hamstrings. I stuck to the safe options: bike, rower, lat pulldowns, pretty much anything where I couldn’t embarrass myself too publicly.

But over time I realised something. The gym wasn’t just about exercise. It was about routine. It was about discipline. And, unexpectedly, it was about mental health.

There’s something incredibly grounding about starting your day by doing something difficult on purpose. It clears your head. It resets your mood. And, strangely, it becomes addictive, not in a cult-like way, but in a “why do I feel better after this?” way.

SOMA talks a lot about community. Normally, when a business says that, it feels slightly twee. You imagine forced smiles and someone calling you “buddy” a bit too enthusiastically. But this is the opposite. It genuinely feels like a space built for its members, and in many ways, run by its members. People talk. People help. People encourage. Some have joined simply to meet others, which says a lot about modern life, and even more about the kind of environment SOMA has created.

The classes are brilliant (even though there was an ABBA-inspired spin class last week which sounds like double punishment),  the atmosphere is relaxed, and best of all nobody looks at you like an idiot if you don’t know how a machine works. Quite the opposite. Someone will show you, without judgement, without ego, and without making you feel like you’ve just asked how to tie your shoelaces.

It’s been three months now and I never thought I’d say it, but I’m a gym goer. Not quite a gym nerd yet, but I’m dangerously close. I’ve also become that person who bores others to death with talk of distances, times, weights and personal bests. For that, I can only apologise. I haven’t properly started posting it on social media, but I fear it’s only a matter of time.

The truth is, it has changed my life, physically, yes, but mentally even more so. It’s gave me energy and focus during the darkest months of the year, and a sense of momentum when everything outside is grey and dank.

You don’t need to be fit to join a gym. You don’t need to know what you’re doing. You just need to take the first step and start. And, if I’m honest, I suspect there are rather a lot of people, like myself, who quietly assumed the gym simply isn’t for them. People who picture it as a world of lycra, loud grunting, and unspoken rules that everyone else seems to understand but them. So they don’t go. Or they mean to go. Or they go once, feel slightly out of place, and decide it’s not their scene. Which is a shame, because the truth is far less intimidating than it looks from the outside. Nobody really knows what they’re doing at the beginning, and most people are too busy trying to remember their own routine to worry about yours. It is, in fact, one of the rare places where you are allowed, even encouraged, to start exactly where you are.

And what’s surprised me most is how much more it offers than just fitness. There is something quietly powerful about having somewhere to go and doing something for no reason other than it makes you feel better afterwards. It’s difficult to overstate what that does for your mental health. It doesn’t solve everything, of course, but it smooths the edges. It clears the fog a little. And in a world where it’s remarkably easy to overthink everything, there’s something rather grounding about simply lifting something heavy, putting it back down again, and realising, for an hour at least, that things are a bit more straightforward than they felt before you arrived. It turns out that “never too late” isn’t just a polite sentiment; it’s actually true.

And if you happen to live in the North Cotswolds, you could do a lot worse than starting at SOMA. You may not end up looking like a Manly Beach surfer. But you might end up feeling like one.

Because as we head into a British summer, when your shirt might come off roughly five times, and three of those will be accidental, feeling good in your own skin is probably the closest thing we have to the Manly Beach lifestyle.

And honestly, that’s more than enough.

www.somaclub.co.uk