Say goodbye Dad Bod and hello to Adonis – Alun Newman

Alun Newman, from BBC Radio Solent, starts working out
Alun Newman and Lou Hannan from BBC Radio Solent.Alun Newman and Lou Hannan from BBC Radio Solent.
Alun Newman and Lou Hannan from BBC Radio Solent.

I've never managed to be the kind of guy who does the fitness thing.

Sure, I've wanted the physique that makes people swoon at the pool side when I'm on the two week break in Spain.

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However, it's never happened. I've scorned away at the beautiful people demonstrating the Thigh Naster 2000 on the shopping channel but they've got themselves in shape and that requires commitment, discipline and decision making.

I once bought a leather jacket in a Liverpool market that was a size too big in the misguided belief that I was going to bulk up and become an Adonis. Never happened. I remained thin and since turning 40, thin with a Dad belly.

But not anymore (at this point, on-air, my co-host Lou would fade up the Rocky music while simultaneously completing an eye roll), I've become one of those people that actually does fitness!

I'm not a runner, so no marathon chat. I'm not a cyclist, so not conversations about riding two abreast and it being legal. And I'm not a swimmer, so no chat about pool temperatures. I'm a static, no water, in the garage rower! Borrowed from my sister and held together with cable ties, it's become my oasis, known by the family as the 'gym'.

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Thanks to my new television role model, Ant Middleton (SAS Are You Tough Enough), I've been inspired to ‘stop flapping my gums and get up that mountain!’.

It's become my inspiration, a moment when I think I'm actually doing something, not thinking something.

For too long I've talked the talk and not walked the walk (save me from these fridge magnet, mind-puff, slogans!).

No more talk, no more theories about what I need, no more 'if only I could'. It's Mission Row.

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I still don't really understand what clicked but something did and I'm seven weeks in and still going, disappearing to the garage and powering my way down an imaginary Dorney Lake (London 2012) occasionally winning gold.

I love it and in true dad style I'm overdoing it, making a big song and dance about it and like all regular gym goers telling absolutely everyone I meet at any opportunity, and I can see why now. It's exhausting!

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