Why the smart set are training by mood
“SORE” is the answer I give Nancy Best when she asks me to describe my mood ahead of our second PT session in her studio in Clerkenwell.
It’s quite the contrast to the “hopeful” response I sent her last time as I danced, spring-like, into the office before the first of our week’s sessions — and before I knew quite how many rounds of squats she was going to put me through.
Then again, having any kind of WhatsApp conversation about my feelings is a rather different experience to any PT sessions I’ve had over recent years, when they’ve asked what I want to focus on in our sessions going forward. Sure, I’d love to tone up my arms for brides-maiding this summer, and it would be nice to be able to lift a heavier dumbbell, but Best — founder of female-only fitness community Ladies Who Crunch — is less interested in those parts.
Thanks to the new “mood glossary” she’s launched for clients, our workouts going forward won’t be based on aesthetic or body part, but rather the specific mood I’m feeling on the day of each one. Think “long day at the office” classes instead of “bums and tums”, and workouts designed to fight the post-holiday blues over the post-holiday bloat.
“For so many women, exercise is a form of punishment, to ‘burn off’ a meal or ‘torch cellulite’,” Best tells me as we crunch through the first of our sessions together, a 60-minute sweat-out designed to capitalise on my surprisingly energised Monday mood. It’s simple, turning the workout on its head to focus on feelings over calories or reps, but oddly powerful. By our third session I’m sleepy after a restless Sunday night, and it’s nice not to have to worry about Best making me leap around the studio when I can’t think of anything worse. Sure, she doesn’t go easy on me — I can still feel that resistance band work in my glutes — but by focusing low-impact, I don’t leave feeling frazzled or low in confidence because I couldn’t complete it at all.
Best isn’t the only one moving away from aesthetic-focused workouts towards those putting mental wellbeing first. Peloton allows users to filter its classes by core emotions while Gymbox recently launched a mental health-focused “Weight Lifted” class for those feeling stressed or overwhelmed — a fitting trend, as Mental Health Awareness Week kicks off with “Movement: Moving For Our Mental Health” as this year’s theme.
The benefit of mood-based workouts, says Best, is a healthier way of looking at exercise; of increasing confidence, not simply decreasing the number on the scales. Her mood glossary launched this year and is designed as a tool to help navigate her class library via emotion (think “angry” or “exhausted”) or life scenario such as “before a social occasion I’m secretly dreading” or “having an ‘I-hate-my-body’ day”.
“It’s the cheat sheet for feeling better,” says Best, who wants the glossary to be a practical document you can go to when you’ve only got 45 minutes before a Zoom call and don’t want to look red, or when you’re hungover and fancy something soothing. She’s seen her clients’ mental resilience improve already. The other upside of focusing on mood is you can be as specific as you like, from “healing from a break-up” to “zero sleep from a screaming baby”. By the fourth session I’m on my period, so Best gives me deadlifts because this is apparently the phase of your cycle when you’re at your peak for doing weights. Such a practical concept might not be revolutionary, but it certainly feels so when you’re a busy Londoner navigating the chaos of life in our capital city. My mood might be different every time I’ve entered Best’s studio so far, but my mood when I leave her is always several notches higher.