Over the last few years, fitness has become quite a significant part of my life. It wasn’t something I originally set out to make a major part of my routine. I’ve always done some form of excercise, but I don’t think it was truly part of my life, I just fitted it in.

That all changed  with a rather unflattering realisation while changing a car tyre. I went to get up from the footpath and struggled to keep my balance.

Something  wasn’t right. I was too young for this and something needed to change. I’d ridden bikes for years and, as I said earlier, I always considered myself reasonably active, but I wasn’t actually getting any fitter. In fact, my weight was gradually going up. This was even after I retired and I was no longer entertaining a few times a week. I was however not really watching my diet and I was having a glass of wine most nights. I was also struggling to keep up with my riding group.

Eventually my doctor made the fairly obvious observation that I could probably afford to shed a few kilos.

It was time to do something about it.

Then along came COVID.

Rather than eating my way through lockdown, I decided I would exercise my way through it. My normal fitness routines had disappeared. Group bike rides were out and the gym was closed.

I didn’t have much equipment at home. I had a mat and a few hand weights, although my definition of hand weights was rather unconventional. I  had my mother-in-law’s lawn bowls balls, which I pressed into service as weights. They weren’t exactly the sort of equipment you would find in a commercial gym, but they were heavy enough, available and did the job.

It was a start.

When the gym eventually reopened, I returned to a more structured routine. But my approach to cycling also changed. I stopped road riding altogether and moved to indoor cycling using Zwift. I also started using Zwift at the beach house as well, which meant I could continue riding when we were there.

There was, however, a bigger issue at the beach house. There isn’t a professional gym nearby, and I didn’t want being at the beach to mean abandoning the fitness routine I had established at home.

I decided I needed a functioning home gym there.

At first, it was fairly basic. I bought some hand weights and a bike trainer and put them in the garage. It wasn’t much of a gym, but it gave me the essentials.

More importantly, I began to work my gym routine into our time at the beach house in much the same way I do at home. It became something I made time for rather than something I did only when it was convenient. It also wasn’t weather dependent which road riding was.

Then the renovation came along.

Renovations have a way of forcing you to confront everything you’ve accumulated. As we reorganised the house, we cleared a lot of junk out of the garage to make room for furniture from the house. Once the renovation was finished and the furniture went back inside, I suddenly had more space in the garage.

Until then, my home gym had been squeezed into a corner. It worked, but it was cramped. Now I had an opportunity to turn it into something more practical.

We reorganised the garage, installed better storage and had another serious clear-out. Once again, getting rid of things we didn’t need created more space than I expected.

I reset up the bike and trainer and brought out the hand weights. But now that I had the space, I wanted to do more.

I bought a bench.

Of course, the bench arrived in pieces and needed to be assembled. Then came a proper weights rack, along with additional and heavier weights.

Gradually, the corner of the garage began to look like a gym rather than somewhere I happened to keep some exercise equipment.

There was still the problem of the floor.

The garage has a concrete floor, which is fine for a car, but not particularly forgiving when you’re doing floor exercises. I wanted something that would make floor exercises more comfortable without permanently taking over the garage.

I eventually found a thick folding exercise mat. It was substantial enough to make the concrete almost irrelevant, and because it folded away, it was practical for a shared garage.

Then I decided I needed a box. That turned out to be more complicated than I expected.

The box arrived in pieces and, as I’m at best a very average handyman, I quickly realised that assembling it was probably beyond me. Fortunately, our landscape gardener came to the rescue. He had the tools and the practical skills to put it together, leaving me to do the finishing touches.

And that was pretty much the final piece.

What I now have is a functioning home gym in the garage. It isn’t the same as the professional gym I go to. I don’t have all the machines or equipment available there, so I’ve had to adapt some of the exercises.

I’m using hand weights for bench presses and deadlifts, for example. Other exercises have been modified to suit what I have available.

But I’ve discovered with the help of my gym instructor that the equipment doesn’t have to be identical to that in a commercial gym for the routine to work. 

The important thing is that I have a space where I can exercise and, more importantly, that I enjoy spending time there.

There is something satisfying about walking into the garage and having everything ready to go. The bike is there. The weights are there. The bench is there. The mat can be unfolded when I need it and I don’t have to go anywhere or wait for a machine.

Fitness has become part of the way I organise my life. When we’re at the beach, I make time for it just as I do when we’re at home. It isn’t something I squeeze in if I happen to have time. 

Looking back, it’s interesting to think that this all started with me struggling to keep my balance while changing a car tyre.

What began as a concern about getting older, putting on weight and losing some physical ability has gradually become part of my everyday routine. COVID forced me to find different ways of exercising. Giving up road riding led me to Zwift. The lack of a nearby gym at the beach house encouraged me to create my own equipment setup. And the renovation  gave me the space to expand the home gym.

None of it was particularly planned. It just evolved.

Perhaps that’s how many worthwhile changes in life happen. You notice something isn’t quite right, you make a small adjustment, then another, and eventually those small changes become part of the way you live.

I certainly never imagined that changing a car tyre would eventually lead to me having a gym in my garage.

But I’m glad it did.

PS – you’ll notice the tiles under the box. That’s because the garage wall leaks when it rains heavily and the tiles mean the box is above the water that seeps in.