AS A JOURNALIST working for a digital publication, reader feedback – positive and negative – is unavoidable.

The negative, admittedly, tends to stay with you more. 

I once wrote an article in defence of Glenn Whelan after he was receiving heavy criticism for his Ireland performances. “A mediocre journalist defends a mediocre player,” or something along those lines was one of the more pithy responses.

I’ve also written countless ‘worst article I’ve ever read’ pieces.

Particularly back in the early, pre-paywall days, mean comments were far from unusual, and accusations of bias and being a supporter of every English Premier League club (apart from the one I actually support) were commonplace.

But as much as a scathing (and sometimes fair) critique can ruin your day, thoughtful, well-meaning and helpful responses will sometimes make it.

Yet until now, I have never once contacted and conversed with a reader in response to feedback on one of my articles.

Fortunately, it was not to settle a score or get into a shouting match with someone who thought I followed Man United.

Long-term The 42 subscriber Rory Fleming responded to my second fitness piece a few weeks back. The headline summed up the article: “After the first workout, my whole body was trembling, and I was close to vomiting.”

While people who comment on articles publicly or via email often like to see themselves as experts, Rory genuinely was one.

Rory is a performance specialist who has been involved in the fitness space since 2012.

He has led athletics development programmes for senior inter-county hurling teams and now works full-time in corporate wellness.

A treadmill. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

Rory, while offering plenty of enthusiasm and admiration for my decision to take on the challenge, also raised valid concerns about the poor planning behind this spur-of-the-moment decision, while suggesting it was unlikely to be viable long-term.

I had to admit he was right. I had suddenly gone from no fitness training whatsoever to an intense workout regimen. But Rory’s reply was balanced and respectful.

“I see people every single day who probably need this and don’t take the step and, as clichéd as it sounds, that’s the hardest part – getting that realisation yourself,” he says.

Rory’s clients tend to be a mixture of “young and energetic” people and those, like myself, who are a little older, have a young family, and suddenly realise they are in bad shape.

“They’re the people who oftentimes are nearly afraid to start,” he says. 

“That’s probably part of why I sent you the email. I’m talking to three or four people like this every single day.

“‘It’s okay that you don’t really know what you’re doing, and it’s okay that you’re not really happy at the moment. Let’s keep this really simple and just get you moving more than anything else.’”

Rory explained his typical workout plan, which was not as strenuous as the one I was attempting.

“We get our team of coaches to be particularly mindful of people who are returning or starting training. So two sessions a week, 45 to 60 minutes, in and out. And the majority would be focused on hip, upper back, movement, stretching and mobility work.

What we really want to achieve when we’re looking at a training session, whether that’s strength or a run or a game of football or anything like that, is preparing the body properly to receive the workout that it’s going to do.

“So in simple terms, that’d be: ‘Let’s get some really easy movements around our glutes, hamstrings, quads and shoulders.’ That’s your activation work. Your mobilisation work would then be: ‘We’ve got a bit of blood flow and a bit of feeling. Let’s do a little bit of stretching, and then your movement preparation work. Then there are a million terms for this, but they would be: ‘Let’s do all the exercises we’re going to do, but at a much easier level, so you can get a feeling for them.’

“You kind of get your groove. And that could take five minutes. It could take 10 minutes for someone who’s really stiff. It might take 12-13, but that alone would and could have a massive difference in you feeling quite sore and a little bit sick versus feeling really positive with your workout.”

The training I’m doing, he adds, is a “bodybuilding” style or a “bro workout”. I mentioned core was my weakest area.

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“When it comes to your core training or your ab workout, the best thing you can do is do it really slowly and with as much control as possible, and use your breath,” he says.

“One of the biggest challenges we have is actually getting people to slow down instead of doing more. And I would usually say the hardest part of the exercise is when you want to exhale, and as you go back to the starting position, it would be to inhale.

There are times, particularly as you get more tired, that you’re holding your breath. If you hold your breath, your heart rate is going to spike. If your heart rate spikes, everything starts to feel more tiring and harder, and then that can lead to a little bit of dizziness, sickness, or generally just being like: ‘Jesus, this workout is tough.’

“So the breath side of things is really neglected, and it’s actually really interesting once you go down that rabbit hole. So, generally speaking, if you think of gravity – gravity obviously works from up to down. Any time that you are moving something, say a dumbbell or your body, against gravity, that’s when we want to exhale and breathe out. And then, as you’re going with gravity, you’d breathe back in, and obviously try to avoid holding your breath. But slower, take your time.

“Even if that means you don’t necessarily finish the amount of reps that are prescribed, you’re still going to get more out of the exercise, or the ab or core routine, by going slower and trying to use your breath while going through the movement.

“Even people who are seasoned trainers [can neglect it]. I probably tell more people to breathe than to move up the weight or anything like that.”

You can find out more about Rory via his official website here.