{"id":223536,"date":"2026-01-08T17:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T17:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/223536\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T17:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T17:00:07","slug":"a-trainer-shares-the-realistic-weekly-workout-routine-that-helped-him-get-consistent-with-exercise-again-after-losing-motivation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/223536\/","title":{"rendered":"A trainer shares the realistic weekly workout routine that helped him get consistent with exercise again after losing motivation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to Workout Diaries<\/a>, a series where we ask expert trainers to talk us through what a week of exercise looks like for them, helping you figure out how to develop and maintain an effective workout routine.<\/p>\n

Monty Simmons<\/a> is a personal trainer based in London.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

With more than 13 years of experience and 15,000 personal training hours, he knows a thing or two about developing an exercise routine that works.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Despite this, he admits that he fell out of the habit of exercising recently. \u201cI\u2019ve got so many competing priorities,\u201d Simmons tells Fit&Well. \u201cWorking out got pushed off the scale, which is strange because I\u2019m a personal trainer, so it shouldn\u2019t be like that. But when you get older you get busier and I wasn\u2019t going to the gym because it was taking a whole hour after my day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trainer quickly noticed the impact skipping the gym was having on him. \u201cMy back started hurting and I didn\u2019t feel great,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Simmons decided the solution was prioritising shorter workouts and he now mostly completes 30-minute workouts. \u201cThat felt like the minimum time [I needed to spend in the gym] but also realistic,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Although he sometimes spends longer in the gym, his routine is more manageable without the pressure to spend an hour or more working out every session. That means it\u2019s easier than ever for him to be consistent. Here\u2019s what a week of workouts looks like for Simmons.<\/p>\n

Start your week with achievable workout ideas, health tips and wellbeing advice in your inbox.<\/p>\n

Monty Simmon\u2019s weekly workout routine<\/p>\n

Monday 5pm
45-minute upper-body gym-based workout.<\/p>\n

Tuesday 12pm
45-minute lower-body gym-based workout.<\/p>\n

Wednesday 1pm
30-minute cardio workout.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Thursday 12pm
30-minute upper-body gym-based workout.<\/p>\n

Friday 3pm
30-minute core workout.<\/p>\n

Saturday 10.30am
Short walk.<\/p>\n

Sunday 2pm
Resting and stretching.<\/p>\n

Monty Simmon\u2019s tips for developing an exercise routineChoose a time-efficient workout structure<\/p>\n

Because Simmons often only works out for 30 minutes, making sure he gets the most out of these workouts is key. He uses supersets, which involve doing two exercises back-to-back with no rest in between.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe secret to supersets is you typically don\u2019t want to do two exercises that work the same muscle group in the same way, back to back,\u201d he explains. \u201cIdeally, you want to pair opposite muscle groups, like chest and back, or maybe you\u2019re pushing overhead and then you\u2019re pulling down.\u201d<\/p>\n

This means that you need to rest less, because one muscle group is resting while the other one is working.<\/p>\n

Be mindful of how you feel when you don’t exercise<\/p>\n

To stay motivated, Simmons tries to maintain an awareness of how he feels when he does exercises, versus how he feels when he doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t exercise for a couple of days, that\u2019s okay, but by the time it gets to the third day of not exercising, I can feel that,\u201d he says. \u201cMy head\u2019s a bit more foggy, I\u2019m a bit more irritable and my back feels stiff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the critical moment,\u201d he continues. \u201cIf you catch it, then you continue where you were. If you ignore it, every day after that becomes harder and harder to start again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pick your favourite exercises and commit to them<\/p>\n

Rather than setting yourself specific guidelines around what you\u2019re going to do each session, Simmons suggests picking between 10 to 20 exercises that you want to do every week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI track which exercises I do throughout the week, and then I make sure that across those exercises I\u2019m hitting every muscle group,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n

This means he has some flexibility with his training, and he can choose certain exercises that suit him that day.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also a different way of looking at your exercise goals. This might help you commit to multiple workouts in a week, as they\u2019re all part of a bigger goal to complete 10 exercises, instead of ticking one workout off and then having to motivate yourself for the next one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to Workout Diaries, a series where we ask expert trainers to talk us through what a week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[565,134,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-223536","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-fitness","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}