The Workout Secrets of Ridiculously Fit People

Hi there. How’s it going? I’m back in your inbox today with another Friday feature. It’s a five-Friday month again which means today’s newsletter is a bonus one for free subscribers. For paid subscribers, there’ll be two exclusives later this month.

I have a confession: I’ve been rubbish at working out lately. Summer is usually the season when I’m at peak fitness, but sometimes life happens. Sometimes you’re feeling low or burnt out or all in your head and no amount of Oura Ring shaming can compel you to pick up a dumbbell or even go for a walk. The irony, of course, is that when you’re feeling like this is exactly when a bit of exercise does you the most good.

Today’s newsletter is a semi-selfish one because I needed some motivation to get back into things. There are a few women I follow on Instagram who are absolute fitness baddies, and I reached out to them to see if they’d share their routines with Late Filing readers, partially in the hope that what they had to say would also spur me back into action. I’m happy to say it’s worked. This morning, I put on my fitness gear, and though I’ve been chained to my desk all day, once this lands in your inbox I’ll be heading out for an evening walk and then I might throw in some mobility work before bed. (Nothing crazy for now.) We fall off, we bounce back.

Grace Cook is a journalist and the founder of Salty, a global strategy studio and editorial platform that decodes the future of fitness, wellbeing and sweat culture as a modern status symbol. She publishes a weekly Substack newsletter that I open as soon as it lands in my inbox and also writes for the FT, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Vogue.

I work out because I find it hard to sit still. Not in a neurotic or intense way, but I genuinely find sitting around boring. I also grew up as a dancer and trained four to six times a week for 12 years, so my body has been naturally conditioned to move. Generally though, working out makes me feel at peace and connected to myself. Plugging into my headphones and moving is the easiest way for me to tune out of the day’s stress.

I believe in doing what feels good. People can feel strangely obligated in the world of fitness – to do a long run when they don’t want to, to sign up to a marathon just because everyone else is, to convince themselves they love spin (I will never love spin). It’s a self-imposed peer pressure but it’s unhelpful. There’s nothing worse than workout dread, but also time is a precious resource and if something isn’t bringing you joy, why would you do it? Fitness also comes in cycles and I think it’s important to give ourselves the grace to evolve. I used to do a really long run every Sunday and now I can’t even run 1k without feeling bored.

Right now, I’m focusing on getting strong. I’m going to the gym five to six times a week at the moment— I do a lower body day, two upper body days, one mini full body day, and on the other days I’ll maybe go and stretch or foam roll. I’m not doing cardio and I haven’t been running consistently for around a year, but I have signed up to a marathon in October. If I don’t start running again soon, I’ll have to cancel it, but I’ve booked a non-refundable hotel and train so stay tuned.

I’m currently two weeks into a fitness challenge. It’s called 6 Weeks to a Six Pack, and it’s hard but actually quite fun. I’ve never really bothered training abs until now – usually it’s a few crunches at the end of a workout – but this workout is a bit of a game-changer. I have the makings of definition already.

Exercising without breakfast is like trying to drive a car without fuel. Women are so used to doing fasted workouts but it’s really not good for us or our hormones. Running totally recalibrated my relationship with carbs – you literally cannot train for a marathon without consuming tonnes of food.

If you want to get into running, track it by minutes rather than distance. Your brain does not understand what one kilometre is, but it does understand six minutes. Start small and gradually add time – a couple more minutes each run is enough. If you want to start weightlifting, ask a personal trainer in the gym for guidance or book into a few circuits classes. I did months of circuits before I started lifting by myself and it gave me the confidence to feel a bit more competent.

Chanté Joseph is a writer, presenter, podcaster and digital content producer. She’s also the woman behind that viral Vogue article and the funniest person I follow on TikTok.

I work out for my mental health. My motto is ‘out of my head and into my body’. When I’m feeling super overwhelmed or stressed, I’m a very in-my-head person, and exercise is a way for me to be more present in my body. I’m not too fussed about what I’m doing or where I’m doing it – it’s just about moving. Also as I get older, I’m thinking about my mobility and how I can remain agile. I also feel like anyone who has ADHD should be engaging in regular exercise. If I don’t exercise, I find it very difficult to sleep and to focus.

My workout split is so varied and it’s usually led by impulse. For a while I was doing swimming lessons, and then I’d go to my spin class and that would be back day done. Most of the time, I do classes – that is my love and my joy. On Sunday, I always do pole and then stretching. I also do pole during the week with inversions or conditioning. I like to do spin or barre and also HIIT workouts and Body Pump. Body Pump is serious – those old workouts from the 80s work! If I want to treat myself, I’ll book a Reformer Pilates session, which eats every single time. When I’m doing a lot of Reformer, I look good.

I have to work out first thing in the morning. The only thing I do in the evening is pole, and even though I love it with all my heart, I still have to muster up so much energy to go to my classes. I’m a first-class-of-the-day person. I need to just eat the frog. I hate anticipating exercise in the evening so I try to just get up and move my body and it sets me off nicely for the rest of the day.

I used to run most days but I’ve been doing it less lately. I tore my meniscus last year and it really rocked me. I’ve had to relearn how to feel safe in my body and exercise in a way that doesn’t make me injury-prone. I’ve mostly been doing weights lately, and I kind of like it, but I’ve signed up to do the London Marathon, so I’m about to get real anal with my workouts again.

I’m trying to do a little bit less of the hardcore workouts and more of the mobility and flexility-based classes. My favourite class at my pole studio right now is called Hips and Hamstrings. It humbles me every single time – I find it more intense than pole. I was never doing any of those movements or stretching in that way, and going to this class helped to test the limits of my flexibility and mobility.

When I’ve done loads of classes and feel really achy, I go for walks or do some stretching. Or a neck, back and shoulder massage. And my gym has a spa now where there’s a cold plunge, sauna and steam room. I’m not in there often, but I do try to go after sessions if I have time.

If you want to get into working out, go to classes. Sometimes just going to the gym by yourself doesn’t work. I think it’s nice to build a community around fitness and try to find ways to incorporate it into your life and your relationships by going with friends. And if you do want to get it into the gym, you need a really good app that will help you get your goals together, and I think Ladder is brilliant for that. Before I had it, I didn’t do any gym-floor workouts because I just didn’t know what I was doing and I felt like I had too many options. Ladder has made me feel more knowledgeable and excited to go to the gym.

I think we need to move beyond what we picture a healthy body to be. I’d like to encourage people to focus on being strong rather than being thin. Being small is not necessarily being healthy. Work on being and becoming strong – not just for yourself but for the other people in your life who want to grow old with you.

Tobi Ojora is a content creator and the cofounder of a new braiding hair brand called Knott. She also runs a fitness page called Tone with Tobi and is one of the most pinned women on Pinterest for braids inspo. An influencer in the truest sense.

My workout philosophy is that it’s not about how you look – it’s about who you become through the work. I often encourage people to abandon identity-based aesthetic goals and focus on building practical habits and repetition. Every rep is a vote for the person you’re building. I like to say that the mind is the true mission and the body is simply a by-product.

I track my workouts in journals. I plan the whole week in advance, because I trust myself more at the start of the week than right after a tough session. Then at the end of the workout I write how I felt and what I need to improve. I run the same workout for two weeks, tweaking reps, sets or weight each time to push a little harder, then switch it up. It lets me actually see the progress, not just feel it. I also adjust according to where I am in my cycle. I think it is important to listen to and understand your body and not force it to do more than it can.

I absolutely love HIIT and cardio-based workouts – anything fast paced, honestly. I love when I can sweat. I think it’s a side effect of coming from a track-and-field background. On the other hand, I hate yoga. I know stretching is arguably the most important part of working out, but I just find it so slow and boring. I understand the whole mind-body connection of it all and I admire people who can quiet their minds long enough to do it, but it’s just not for me.

The secret to finding motivation is having small, achievable goals and setting yourself up for success. Motivation is fleeting but creating the right environment and routine is what lasts. I don’t believe in spending hours at the gym – most of my workouts are between 20 and 60 minutes. And I like to lay my gym clothes out the night before a workout. I’ve also made an active effort to abandon aesthetic-based goals and focus more on how I feel inside: calmer, stronger, more grounded. Doing that makes me show up for myself differently.

Summer is my chance to really diversify my workouts. I like taking advantage of the good weather by running outside or swimming in the ocean when I’m on vacation. There’s a great outdoor gym at the park near my house, so I love using that too. I travel a lot during the summer so I also like to adjust to where I am in the world. When I’m on vacation I’ll always check out the hotel gym first and get in a quick workout if I can – 20 to 30 mins max just to get the endorphins flowing for the day.

It may sound hypocritical, but don't take everything you hear online at face value. And also recognise that it can be hard for fitness creators to fit everything you need to know into 30 seconds. If you genuinely want to understand and look after your body, do your own research. If you have questions, read credible scientific and fitness journals. You understand your body and your needs better than anyone else. Learn everything you can about it because you owe it that level of care.

Jasmine Afia is a senior in-house commercial lawyer in tech and telecomms – and quite possibly the most got-her-shit-together person I follow. She also shares style, beauty and wellness content on Instagram and TikTok, and runs a referral-only fitness community for women called Welle Collective.

Exercise has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I had a brief stint in competitive swimming when I was young and played almost every sport imaginable at school. But I work out the way I do now for a very specific reason. Back in 2023 I had to have major open myomectomy surgery and my recovery was pretty brutal. It was the first time in my life where I felt like I wasn’t in control of my own body, and so the moment I was cleared to start training again I completely locked in. Outside of generally wanting to look and feel fabulous, I train because I never want to feel powerless like that ever again.

Building a solid fitness foundation takes months, sometimes years. The boring stuff – consistently sleeping well, eating well, moving often enough – will always beat the lightning diets or one-off intense bootcamps. Slow and steady wins.

My current split feels challenging enough without being overwhelming on my body. I do four times a week: typically two days of weightlifting (one lower body day and one upper body day) and two days of Pilates (usually Reformer or Tower Pilates). When I first started taking the gym seriously, I would train five days a week, including a 5k run on Sunday, but I found that my body was constantly sore or in recovery mode. These days, I’ll make room for minor adjustments depending on the time of the month if I need to – I usually have much more energy in my follicular and ovulatory phases than in my luteal and menstrual phases.

One of my personal goals this year has been to add variety to my social life by incorporating movement. That might mean replacing dinner or drinks as the default way to catch up with friends with a workout class or a gym session or a hike instead. A few of my workout days have looked different than usual, which I’m really enjoying for now. I was recently on a wellness retreat with Nobu Hotels in Ibiza with some amazing women and enjoyed lots of hiking, outdoor barre and Pilates classes, cryotherapy and dedicated R&R. That was genuinely my idea of heaven.

Because of my job, the best way for me to fit in a workout is do it first thing before the work day starts or during my lunch break. If I still haven’t committed to a session by that point, it’s probably not going to happen. To be completely honest, sometimes I have zero motivation. Those are the days when I’ll force myself to put on my favourite workout set and my playlist and turn the volume up ridiculously high, and I’ll remind myself en route to the gym of how amazing I’ll feel once it’s done.

The most underrated way to get results is by doing the same ‘boring’ stuff repeatedly. Your gym session doesn’t need to take two hours or be overly complicated. Most of the time, you need one or two compound movements (like a squat or a Romanian dead lift for leg days, or a bench press for an upper body day), one or two lateral movements for stability and to address muscle imbalance (a lunge or a lateral row), and one or two isolation movements to target specific muscles (a glute kickback, a front delt raise). Do your eight to 10 reps. Rest for two to three minutes in between. And that is it.

You are not going to put on lots of muscle by accident. Building muscle is, for most people, a very intentional (and sometimes even challenging) process, and I want to see more women not being afraid to lift weights. If nothing else, do it for the 60-year-old version of you that is wonderfully agile and has great muscle and bone density and isn’t struggling with osteoporosis.

Don’t waste time forcing something that doesn’t work for you. It’s okay if you never want to run a marathon. It’s also fabulous if you do. Ultimately, you’re never going to stick to a workout routine or a goal if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing (even a little bit) or at least have a strong enough overarching reason for it.

Your body needs fuel, so do not restrict yourself, but also know that you cannot out-train a terrible diet. It makes more sense to focus on solidifying a balanced and nutrient-dense diet than buying all of the supplements and electrolytes under the sun. The simple option is usually the best one.

Katie O’Malley is the former digital director of ELLE UK and the founder of A Long Way To Go, a women’s wellness community and podcast that explores pregnancy, postpartum and motherhood. Her Instagram posts might just convince you to run a marathon or do a Hyrox.

I work out as much for my mind as I do for my body nowadays. Over the years I’ve realised exercise is one of the best ways I can clear my head and focus. I also pride myself on the fact that I push my body to achieve certain goals. I like seeing what it’s capable of and going one step further every time.

Working out for me is also rooted in long-term health, strength and resilience. Strength training, in particular, has made the biggest difference. I’ve also developed a newfound appreciation for exercise postpartum as a way of coming back to myself – not in a ‘bounce back’ sense, but as something that reminded me I was still me. I set myself the goal of running a marathon after having my daughter in December last year and completed it in April with a PB. It felt like a huge achievement, because it was incredibly hard to train for, especially while navigating new motherhood. That made crossing that finish line even more special.

Before becoming a mum, I could work out pretty much every day. Now, it has to fit around life, childcare and work. In an ideal week, I’ll do three to four cardio sessions every other day, and then incorporate strength training on the other days. Cardio will most likely be a run, while strength could be weights or occasionally Reformer Pilates. But I try not to be too rigid with the split anymore. Some weeks go to plan perfectly, but most don’t. I have to be far more realistic with my workout routine yet still push myself to complete it when I can.

Pregnancy doesn’t automatically mean you have to stop moving. For many women, there are lots of ways to keep exercising right up to birth, if their health and circumstances allow, and there’s growing research and evidence to support this. I think we still have a long way to go when it comes to supporting pregnant and postpartum women in fitness. We need better education, more nuance and more honesty about what exercise during pregnancy can look and feel like and how that may change when you’re returning to fitness postpartum.

Motivation comes and goes – you’re not born with it. For me, it’s more about building a habit that can work with real life. There are absolutely days when I don’t want to work out, especially when I’m tired, the weather is miserable or life feels busy. But I try to remind myself that there will always be a reason not to go. And when I was in the early days of postpartum I would’ve done anything to have 45 minutes to work out and feel like myself again.

I used to get really caught up in tracking, and it would sometimes become another stick to beat myself with. Now, I try to use it as information rather than judgement. With running, I like seeing my pace, distance and progress over time. And I track workouts, whether it’s a Reformer Pilates class or HIIT workout, on my Garmin watch – but I’m much less obsessive about it now.

After the marathon in April, I deliberately took things a bit easier and gave my body a much-needed break. This summer, I’m focusing more on building strength and having fun with my workouts, whether it’s trying padel for the first time or going for an occasional swim. I’d like to sign up for a half marathon later this year and aim for another PB, but I’m trying to choose goals that fit into my life rather than take over my life for a while.

I used to be terrible at rest, but I’ve learned the hard way that you can’t just keep pushing your body. I’ve burned myself out before and ended up so exhausted that I couldn’t train properly for a week. Now, recovery looks like walking, getting a pastry, sitting in front of the TV, seeing friends or just doing nothing without feeling guilty about it. I’m slowly learning that rest is part of training, not the opposite of it.