New year, new approach?
Come on, let's have a natter about it
Happy new year!
How are you feeling? Old? Excited? Indifferent?
Have you got a plan for the year, the month, the week, today?
Do you need help with any of the above? Let me know – it’s kind of what I’m about!
Over this way, I’ve jumped counties and moved to Nottingham ahead of a new job in a newly refurbished gym and, right now, sat in a booth of its café with decent ergonomics and wifi, I fancied chatting with you about something I see everywhere that you might be un/consciously contributing towards, and, if you’re game, I’ll offer ways we can curb it and improve on it too.
People love to confuse access to a clean space with people cleaning up after them
I went to see Marty Supreme at the weekend (4.5* and a career best from Chalamet), and while I wasn’t directly impacted by what I saw immediately following it, I had to wonder why:
The two women sat to our left, wearing expensive looking trench coats and fluffy jumpers, hadn’t made a peep through the screening but, as I went to turn right down the stairs, I had to step over cartons, popcorn bags and emptied cups that only they could have produced.
As a kid, I 100% thought that you were meant to leave your wrappers and sweet packets behind because every adult was doing it. I thought that’s literally rubbish for the people working here and decided I’d take my bits away with me.
And in every men’s locker room, there’ll be someone leave a toilet cubicle having flushed who’ll walk straight out without washing their hands – despite no one stopping them from getting to the sink, soap or hand dryer.
And the act/s that compounded my need to vent today: two sinks sprayed with shaved facial hair.
Look, I get it.
You’ve paid to be here. You want to get your money’s worth, right? You want to move in a space that’s comfortable and clean, enjoy your time, and leave it behind…but at what point does that make it alright for you to inconvenience the people around you who, you’d have to think, want exactly the same thing?
If your living room or bathroom look like the cinema post-screening or the gents’ no less than two hours after I’d seen them cleaned, it’s likely we’re not [going to be] friends…
If you don’t own it, put it back or at least leave it better than you found it
Whether it’s a hotel room, or a yoga box, or even your own bed decked in fresh sheets, how nice is it to step or slide into a clean space?
Equally, how shit is it when you have to move things people have left behind to use the same thing as them, or to ask those people to tidy after themselves, and/or to then have to wash your hands or clothes because you’re covered in other people’s mess?
Look, whatever happens in the spaces you own, fair play; I may not like it, but it’s yours; whatever happens in a shared space though surely it’s only fair that you’re considerate of the people you share it with.
In a restaurant, the expectation might be to leave your plates behind because the wait staff will be quicker than you at cleaning it up; in a stacked café where people are clearly waiting for a seat and there’s a queue, it might be helpful to at least brush the sugar off the table, stack your plates and at least help the people after you sit down, right? Or nah? You’d rather your sleeves soaked up someone else’s spilt milk as you treat someone you’re caring for and/or interested in to a cuppa and a catch-up?
Specifically around New Year, New Me
In the gym – and to be clear this is most of the gyms I’ve been to across 10 different countries now – how frustrating is it to have to take somebody else’s weights off a bar or machine just so you can warm up?
Or to go hunting for the other dumbbell or a carabiner?
It’s rarely the staff who are messing your session up – typically beleaguered as it is with your complaints about things out of their control not working – it’s the people next to you slamming and throwing kit around because that’s what people do in the gym, right?
Or at least it was the people next to you until they ran away following the worst set of leg presses you’ve ever seen, stacked with 10 plates only to bend their knees an inch – or, as I saw in The Gym in Sheffield not even do a single rep after loading the machine with all of the available plates – hoping that no one calls them out on it.
And it’s not the big men. The strongest people in the gym are often some of the most helpful to know whether you’re staff or a member: they might spend more time in there than a paid employee – it’s in their interests to keep things ticking over.
It’s invariably the midweights; men who don’t [know how to] train legs, Sweaty Betty-legging-ed women and folk who generally think that if they put two plates on a machine or bar, it’s their god-given right to walk away from it.
And it’s all nonsense.
Nearly all of us are here to improve
Whether it’s because I’ve been paid to notice or just become better at working out, over the past four years of coaching and nearly 10 years of using gyms, this idea of self-improvement seems only to have become more selfish – more and more people with less and less idea of what and why they’re doing what they do needlessly impacting the people around them.
Look, not all gym classes are created equally, and I’ve outright blasted some of the movements and approaches I’ve been encouraged to teach when I’ve been in staff and review meetings, but when I worked in PureGym in Sheffield, you best believe there was an active community around each of Helene’s step classes and Belle’s dance classes, Karl’s circuits and my stretch sessions. People helping each other to get kit out and put it away, talk new people through new movements, and asking each other and/or the instructors how they could do better next time and/or practice between classes.
The boxes we taught in were clean and well kept, yes, in part because the staff were paid to do it, but mainly, really, because the people who cared about their time to work out in a morning or evening treated it as a place to get fitter and feel better among and with others.
You’ve paid the ticket, now take the ride
You’ve invested in a coffee or a movie ticket or a fitness membership, so why not invest in the vibe of the café or the cinema or the gym?
Why not be polite to the people serving you, or helping you with your rubbish, or asking if you’d like some help with your form?
When you were new to the gym, was it helpful or unhelpful for you to have to take 100kg off the barbell to practice squats for the first time?
Why not leave things as you found them, or, better yet, knowing how much you’d appreciate it if you worked there, why not take an extra mug or glass back with you to the bar, split your cans and cartons up in the recycling outside the screen or stack similar weights with each other.
You’ve paid to be a part of something
If you’ve bought the ticket, you should expect a functioning ride.
In the UK in 2026, I think it’s fair to expect clean shared spaces.
But when you or your mates or your contemporaries are the inconvenience, and you all can do something about that, it’s not fair to pin that on the venue or the staff: strangers don’t need to shout at each other because you can’t leave a sink or seat or squat rack tidy.
And I’m saying this as someone who shaves his head once a week and no matter where he stays scoops the hair up with dry then wet then dry tissues and flushes it all down the loo to limit how much my grooming regime impacts other people[’s].
I’m hoping that I can lead by example when I start my new job, that people will see how I move and tidy and join in in whatever way they can; it happened in Sheffield and through sheer repetition it’ll happen in my new gym in Notts.
Do you reckon you can make it happen where you are?
F&T podcast
F&T episodes go out weekly, this week’s is with…me!
Spotify and Apple Podcasts (audio only) on Wednesday evenings and
YouTube on Thursday mornings.
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If you can do this, I promise to keep doing my best to bring you the most thoughtful, silly, serious, and soul-searching conversations about what it means to feel fit and well in the world we live in.
And that’s it from me!
Much love, and I’ll see yas in the next one
J x