Melissa

What is your exercise routine?

I go to the gym 6 days a week doing a mixture of classes, PT sessions, own workouts and sessions in the Climbing Wall.

From your own experience, how does exercise impact on your mental health? Does exercising positively impact on your work and how?  

Exercise has a huge impact on my mental health. It helps me to de-stress after work and just makes me feel better and more positive in general. It gives me a sense of achievement at the end of a day where I may feel I haven't managed to achieve much at work.

It also has a positive impact on my work by giving me a place to go to get me away from my desk at the end of the day to prevent me from doing longer hours than I should.

What is your greatest exercise accomplishment?

A few weeks before lockdown in December, I managed to do a superset my Personal Trainer, Calum Thresh, gave me which ended with me doing 9 reps of Mountain Climbers in to Pushups straight into 9 reps of Walkouts into Pushups. I would never have imagined I could ever do 18 Pushups in one go!

What advice would you give to others who are looking to become more active?

Don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t achieve the level of activity you plan to do at the start of the week. Be realistic when planning activity in to your week and try not to set yourself goals that you are going to struggle to meet. I believe this is not as motivational as setting smaller goals and achieving them. You can then increase your goals each week if you feel that you can.