The much-loved Peloton instructor tells us how to make fitness a key part of your lifestyle…
By Karen Kwan
Peloton instructor Adrian Williams grew up playing football and running track, and he has always been active and fit. Eventually he started working in the fitness field, starting with some personal training clients and later at a boutique fitness studio on the West Coast; in 2019, he joined Peloton, where he’s now a Tread, Strength and Row instructor. His personal workouts nowadays focus on strength and conditioning. “Those are the two things I gravitate towards the most; the 5×5 program has always been part of my life and I continue to do it.” (The 5×5 program has a few iterations, but they all involve doing five sets of five reps of compound exercises.)
Still, as healthy as Williams is, it doesn’t mean that keeping a fitness routine comes easily to him all the time, both physically and mentally. Here’s what we can learn from the fitness pro when it comes to how he approaches workouts for himself, and what he recommends to anyone trying to stay motivated when it comes to keeping active.
Establish healthy habits by setting small goals
If you’re trying to kick-start your health and fitness journey and find it hard to stay motivated, Williams suggests aiming for small goals to start. “I think we all have this way of setting goals that are way too big sometimes – and it’s not always necessarily a bad thing – but I think setting goals that are attainable helps us to build confidence,” he says. Start slower and find something (a specific type of workout, for example) you can actually be happy about. “That’s the thing you’ll hold on to – you’ll leave that workout and you’ll hold onto that joy and that feeling of confidence,” says Williams. He says that from there, once you feel comfortable with the movement patterns and three or four days of activity, you can add a day to reach the sweet spot of four to five days of activity to really benefit your overall health.
Take an emotional lap
If you’ve ever taken a class on the Peloton platform with Williams, chances are you’ve heard him talk about taking an emotional lap. “It’s something I got from one of my coaches growing up,” he says. “It was our way of resetting when we were feeling the stress of the load from the workout. Mentally, sometimes you get to a point where you are completely exhausted or you feel like something is really just too hard. Take a minute to gather your thoughts, take a second to breathe and refocus on the intention of why you’re there, and then bring that back to the workout,” he explains. When we’re there to work out, in the grand scheme of things, we are there for our own health and benefit, so there’s no need to stress that much about it, he adds.
Make rest days as key to your routine as your hard workouts
Williams confesses that, before he joined Peloton, he was working out six to seven days a week. “I was in a community and working in a space where I’d teach and see friends and they’d be like ‘Take the class!’ and I would say okay, even though it’d be a day I wasn’t supposed to be doing movement,” he says. Nowadays, he’s become much more comfortable with saying no and making rest a priority. “You get to really have the best workouts when you’re rested and when you’ve fuelled your body with the proper nutrition – you can give more than 100 per cent,” he says.
Cut yourself some slack
While the three pillars Williams focuses on are workout, rest and recovery, he admits he doesn’t always do a good job on all of them, especially during busy times such as the holiday season. “But I try to give myself some grace depending on where I am. I know that at the root, I have great habits and that’s the most important part,” he says. He advises focusing on good habits and, if you stray and get off track, don’t feel guilty about it. “I don’t think it’s healthy to feel bad about maybe missing a workout or eating something sweet.” Williams says he often hears people saying they feel bad about their food choices and need to work out really hard the next day to “make up” for their choices. “It shouldn’t be like that; you have to have flexibility in how you live.”
KAREN KWAN is a freelance health, travel and lifestyle writer based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter @healthswellness and on Instagram @healthandswellness.
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