I have just come out of the gym after my first proper session in a while. Last week was a family trip to London, which was brilliant, but it knocked me out of my routine.
This morning was one of those days where I really did not fancy going at all. WHOOP had my recovery in the yellow. Sleep was fine, stress and strain yesterday were nothing dramatic, but I still felt flat. It would have been very easy to decide that today was not a gym day and leave it at that.
Instead, I tried the new approach I have been talking about. I took my WHOOP numbers and dropped them into ChatGPT. In return, I got a clear session plan with target figures that matched how my body was supposed to feel on a “medium” day.
The structure was simple. Five minutes of warm up at a set pace to get moving. Then three blocks of 2,000 metres on the rower, again at a set pace. Nothing heroic. Just long, steady, repeatable work.
On paper it looked almost too easy, especially with that “you should probably train” yellow score. In reality it was exactly what I needed. Each 2,000 metres felt long and cruisy. Hard enough that I knew I was doing something, nowhere near the point of blowing up. By the end of the third block I felt like I had trained, but I did not feel broken.
The bigger difference was in my head. I walked into the gym tired and not really in the mood. I walked out feeling lighter and quietly pleased with myself. The combination of WHOOP data and ChatGPT as coach gave me just enough structure to get over the hump of not wanting to start.
It is early days for this experiment, but right now it has promise. If this is what a “didn’t want to go” day can look like, I am curious to see what happens on the days when I actually feel ready.
This is The Sub-7 Experiment.
The Sub-7 Experiment 
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