January brings about the usual getting in the gym resolutions, and with that, you get a lot of blog posts telling you that you neeeeeeeeeeeeeeed all of these things to be the most awesome thing in there. You don’t. The only things you need when you’re in the gym is a comfy outfit and to want to do things.

But here are a few things that I find are really really really nice to have.

Apple Watch

I first wrote about my Apple Watch on here in May 2015, which must have been a month or so after I got the very first version. Before getting the Watch, I wasn’t very good at wearing a watch  or any jewellery really – I had a Fitbit that hooked onto your bra, but I just couldn’t deal with something on my wrist. Spending a few hundred pounds on a watch forced me to change that view and now I feel weird if I don’t have it on.

I currently have the Series 4 Watch without cellular service, I’ve had it for over a year now and I still wear it almost every day and love it. Alex has the Series 5, but I didn’t feel like it needed upgrading. We’ve both tried watches with the cellular service, and while I’m sure it’s very useful in certain situations, I didn’t find it very useful, and not really worth an additional $10/month each on our phone bill.

The Apple Watch ties very closely into the whole Apple Health system, and I find that very useful for tracking things – the Watch obviously provides a lot of information into there, but I like that apps such as Strong (an app I use to track weight lifting) and MyFitnessPal (for logging food) and devices like the Withings range (we have the scales, blood pressure monitor, sleep pads and thermometer) all put their data into the same system, so you get a nice picture of how things are going.

Enso Ring

As mentioned above, I am not very good at wearing jewellery, but once we got married, I wore my wedding ring every day (taking it off at night). The problem I found then was that my white gold ring was getting lots of scratches on the palm side of it from lifting things at the gym. I ended up getting a rose gold Enso ring off Amazon, and now I don’t wear my “proper” wedding ring, I just wear this one all the time.

Hidrate Bottle

This is a new addition but it’s pretty great. The HidrateSpark is a water bottle that keeps track of how much water you drink. Yes, it’s ridiculous that my water bottle connects to my phone and needs a software update but since getting it, I have actually drank more water, so I guess it’s working. You can get reminders on your phone and on the bottle to drink more – the bottle will flash a light sequence at you to tell you to stop being such a thirsty bitch. It’s a little spendy but sometimes spending a little more than usual means you actually do the thing.

Airpod Pro

I’m considering doing a post on these separately because they’re so useful, but I wear these mostly at the gym and library – sometimes without any audio, just because the noise cancelling is so useful. This is my first pair of noise-cancelling headphones, and I never knew how well they could work! (side note: people who go to a room called the library and then have loud conversations are THE WORST)

(My Airpod Pro’s are in the blue leather case in the picture above – it’s from TwelveSouth who create a lot of really good accessories for Apple products.

Peloton

I don’t own a Peloton bike. I don’t want to own a Peloton bike. And yet here I am telling you that the Peloton is awesome.

When we were on our honeymoon, the hotel we stayed at had two bikes, so I tried them out and found that I really enjoyed some of the classes. When I got back to Bellevue, I saw that Peloton had an app that gave you access to all of their classes, and it was like, $20/month. That seemed like a good price, especially when you consider how much a SoulCycle class can cost! I used the app with the standard spin bikes that were at my gym – I had to know what one unit on the resistance worked out to be on the Peloton, but it was simple enough to do (my bike went from 1- 25, Peloton goes from 1 – 100, so every time they said go up 4 points, I would go up 1. Easy!). The app also gives you access to things like their walking/running classes (which was easy to do on the treadmills), yoga, strength and meditation.

Our gym got their own Peloton bikes, and they’re super popular. I really enjoy Cody’s classes, as well as Leanne’s (it’s just nice to hear a British accent). However, if the gym got rid of the Peloton bikes, I would resubscribe to the app, rather than buy the bike – I like the flexibility of being able to do the classes wherever, and I already have a gym membership which I would still have even if I had the bike.

If you’re on there, I’m hayleygh!

Clothing wise – I recently got a pair of On Cloud Cloudflow trainers which are so much better than the Nike’s I had for two years (yes, I know you should replace them every 6 months or whatever, but I was overwhelmed with choice decisions. Alex was ordering some new On Cloud’s so he chose these purple ones for me.) and I’ve found that I really like the Yogalicious leggings which are supposed to be a dupe of some fancy schmancy Lululemon leggings but I don’t know because I’m never going to pay $90 for a pair of bloody leggings I wear for a few hours a day.

What things do you find super useful for working out? What would you avoid?