The article below is an excerpt from my newsletter: Well Enough with Harry Bullmore. To get my latest thoughts on fitness and wellbeing pop your email address into the box above to get the newsletter direct to your inbox.
Would you like to know the secret to the perfect workout? If so, I have good news and bad news.
The bad news is that I don’t believe it exists. Perfection is subjective and depends on your individual needs, and when you’re contending with life’s many curveballs, it simply isn’t achievable.
The good news is that this doesn’t matter – and understanding that is going to massively help your future fitness efforts.
Why? Because on the exercise front, doing something is invariably better than doing nothing, and racking up consistent yet imperfect workouts will likely have a greater long-term impact on your health than occasional hour-long bonanzas.
That is why imperfection – and its many benefits – is the common denominator driving this week’s newsletter.
I recently met sports psychologists Stuart Holliday and Tia Prior, who shared fascinating insights into the mental resilience of Sharon Lokedi – winner of the 2025 Boston Marathon, running it in a staggeringly fast time of 2hr 17min.
They told me she doesn’t plan for the perfect race, but instead imagines everything that could possibly go wrong and prepares for any eventuality. Come race day, she’s ready for the worst – anything better is a bonus.
Despite being a generally optimistic chap, this is similar to how I plan my weekly workouts.
I start with a baseline of two non-negotiable sessions that I will make time for come hell or high water – these are usually full-body strength training workouts.
Beyond this, there are a couple of less important sessions I’d very much like to get done but that can be sacrificed if life gets in the way. Then I also have a few “luxury workouts” – fun things I want to experiment with, which I can drop in if I find myself unexpectedly time-rich that week.
This is all underlined by a decent dose of daily movement – dog walks, general exploring and taking the active option (ie stairs rather than elevators) wherever possible.
To try this approach, take a look at your calendar and work out the minimum amount of weekly exercise you can commit to, whether that’s 20-minute strength session or simply getting out for a short daily walk. This is your baseline.
If you have time, try to build on this with a few extra doses of movement throughout the week. If you don’t, stick to the baseline. This way, you’ve still achieved what you set out to do, and you can be safe in the knowledge that it will benefit you in the long run.
That leads me to an odd tangent: Harry Styles and Tom Grennan. Both singers take their health and fitness incredibly seriously – you have to if you’re going to deliver dynamic live shows in new cities every night. Both also contend with imperfect training conditions on tour, lacking access to gyms, kitchens and fresh home-cooked food.
I’ve spoken to Thibo David, who trained Harry Styles in the years around the start of his Love On Tour shows, and Tom Grennan’s trainer Tom Lowe. Lowe sums up their attitude to exercise best: “There’s always a way.”
Styles and his team would do stair sprints in the stadiums where he performed to keep their heart and lungs healthy; Grennan hit resistance band workouts in his hotel room to stay in tip-top shape. These are not perfect workouts by any objective measure, but they are good and they are regular – and that is often enough.
This applies to your diet too. A puritanical approach to eating is neither fun nor sustainable in today’s food environment. What we can do for better health is aim for generally good eating patterns, prioritising whole foods and enjoying everything in moderation. To help with this, I was given a handy formula for healthier snacking by nutritionist Nicola Ludlam-Raine.
“With snacks, always think about including protein and fibre,” she says. “That could be apple and cheese, berries and yoghurt, carrots and hummus or nuts and dried fruit.”
Both elements are filling and nutritious, supporting vital bodily processes such as maintaining gut health and muscle repair.
And finally this week, I wrote about doing goblet squats every day for a month. It’s a great exercise that reinforces proper squat technique when done properly, and I noticed two clear benefits from doing it daily.
Firstly, I became better at squatting – practice makes permanent, after all. And secondly, by repeatedly asking my body to access a proper squat position, my hips, knees and ankles became more mobile. Chalk this one up as another win for consistency.
So, as always with this newsletter, it’s time to try to take a tangible takeaway from my musings above.
If you come away with one message, let it be this: your exercise routine and diet don’t have to be perfect. You just have to commit to doing small things that benefit your health on a regular basis – then stick with it.
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