Dublin GAA star and gym owner Philly McMahon has shared with Newstalk his top tips for staying in shape in 2022. 

Speaking to The Anton Savage Show, Philly said that sometimes the gym seems intimidating to fitness newbies but that it needn’t be: 

“One of the very few good things that come out of COVID over the last couple of years is that there’s a lot more people that maybe wouldn’t train at gyms but are starting to get active at home," Philly said. 

“And once they’ve got that confidence from training at home, they’ve started to maybe experiment and go to gyms.

“And what I would recommend to do, is to go to a gym that’s a bit more personalised. 

“So all gyms are not the same. 

“There’s a spectrum there where you have, let’s say at one end, a mainstream gym which is kind of the place where people are more conscious of going to… because it’s more of a chauvinistic type of environment. 

“It’s all about aesthetics and that’s good but that’s for some people. 

“But there’s other gyms for people on the other side of the spectrum where it’s more about coaching. And when you go to those types of gyms it’s more about community spirit, community environment.

“So you’ll spend a little bit extra on those types of gyms but you’ll get that type of welcome inclusion feeling and environment.”

Dublin star Philly McMahon during the GAA All-Ireland Senior Football Championship Launch, 05-08-2021. Image: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile

Philly also said that the key to successfully fulfilling your fitness goals is developing good habits.  

“Ultimately what we are is a multitude of habits. 

“Regardless of what kind of results you want to get, if you change the bad habits to good habits. That’s ultimately what makes a difference and you see someone  get results.

“So it’s about the mindset to be honest, once you can get your mindset around motivating yourself - and it might be that you’re unhappy looking at yourself naked in the mirror - it has to be a really deep connected emotional type goal. 

“So changing habits is the key thing. Once you do that then you’ll start to see changes in your body.” 

He continued: 

“For me, I always think about your future self. It’s very important to go and live in the present day by day to get these results and changing the habits day by day.”

A person at a gym runs on a treadmill.

Marathons

For anyone thinking of running a marathon, Philly said that the key was to start off slow and slowly build up your levels of strength and endurance: 

“What I would say is, a lot of people when they try doing marathons, they think let’s go out and train hard. It’s not really about that. 

“You need to build up your own capacity... Best thing I would say is get some sort of personal device that can measure your heart rate and stay within a certain zone of let’s say, below 70% of the heart rate. 

“And just take on a really low jog and just build up that threshold. And that will prolong your anaerobic - that’s when the lactic acid hits the body, when the lactic acid hits the body, that’s when you start to slow down. So you want to prolong that if you’re doing a marathon. 

“So starting off slow, keeping the heart rate down and maybe it’s a long walk, building it up to a jog and building that up to holding and prolonging the lactic acid building up in the muscles. 

“That’s essentially how runners do it. That’s how triathletes would do it.” 

You can listen to the full interview here.

Main image: A woman ties her laces before a run.