It’s Valentine’s weekend. To me, this means awkward displays of romance, overpriced flowers, and bracing my core for a deluge of #couplegoals gym selfies with captions like, “couples who train together/lift together/sweat together… stay together.”
Don’t get me wrong, as a qualified personal trainer and self-confessed fitness addict who trains nearly every day, I too will be working out on Valentine’s Day. The difference is, I’ll be very much alone. I’ve been with my partner, Mark, for 25 years and while we’re still very much in love, a “couple who sweats together” we are not.
It’s not to say we haven’t tried. There was the time Mark joined me for a run, which ended in a shouting match in the street and me sprinting home without him. Apparently, I was running too fast, and then “patronisingly slow”. We joined a gym together but our training styles are mismatched: I prefer an hour of serious lifting followed by mobility work or stretching, while Mark’s perfect gym session is peppered with distracting pranks and requests to go home. Also, I didn’t love how quickly his bench press surpassed mine.
We tried spin classes together (too noisy for Mark) and yoga sessions (too quiet). We eventually discovered a joint appreciation for hiking, but mainly because it’s exercise I’ve disguised as a holiday. Still, while I’ve decided to keep my love life and gym life very separate – we can’t even be in the same room if I’m training at home – that’s not to say there aren’t benefits to working out with your significant other.
Just look at the long list of celebrity couples – Victoria and David Beckham, Ciara and Russell Wilson, Jessica Biel and Justin Timberlake, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds – who do work out together and whose relationships have stood the test of time. In fact, research shows that couples who train together not only have more successful workouts, they often report higher levels of relationship satisfaction. A positive workout together boosts feel-good endorphins and hormones, which means as a couple you leave the gym feeling motivated and satisfied.
Training together can also strengthen emotional bonds and intimacy, improve communication, commitment and accountability, and even boost attraction, while mirroring exercise moves can make you more in sync in the real world – all factors that can help build towards long-term happiness. “We can totally understand each other because we train together,” says senior master trainer and wellness expert Linda Chambers, who has been working out with husband Brian – also a senior master trainer – since they first met 15 years ago. “We are best friends, and our love of fitness has made us even closer. Sharing a passion for movement, health, self-improvement and longevity together ultimately created an even stronger relationship and bond.”
She explains how lessons learnt in the gym can translate into real life: “When you’re training together, you have to be able to take feedback on form, which sometimes isn’t what you want to hear but you know it’s for your own benefit, learning to do this moves [out of the gym] and across the whole relationship,” says Chambers, who has proudly shared her own “couples who train together” posts on Instagram. “Sometimes you need to communicate how you’re feeling to avoid injury or you need to ask for help when the weights are heavy, just like asking for help in life. It teaches valuable lessons in communication – also, I just like watching him workout, it’s a very pretty sight.”
Social worker and influencer Sanam Fagan – who frequently uploads clips of workouts with her fitness-loving husband, Kai – agrees that training together has strengthened their relationship. “I would definitely say it makes you closer, when we’re working out we see each other’s struggles and we share vulnerabilities with each other,” she explains. “When your partner sees you being vulnerable in the gym, they can recognise that outside of the gym too. You’re able to more easily vocalise and share your feelings, you can better communicate with one another when there’s something on your mind, and you connect more on an emotional level.”
Fagan thinks it’s also key to find someone who shares your passion for fitness, rather than – like me – trying to convert them into being a gym-lover years after you meet. “I joined a gym as soon as I turned 16 because I come from a family whose mantra is ‘health is wealth’, so when I met Kai – who has played rugby at a high level, runs marathons and has a long list of health and fitness qualifications – I knew straight away that we would be a good match,” explains Fagan. “Not only did I recognise that we had shared interests but I knew we would have shared personality traits too, like being motivated and determined – I think these commonalities have helped our relationship succeed.”
While my own PT skills may have failed to motivate Mark into loving fitness, I’ve realised that my training time is still valuable to our relationship. Every day, we’re both guaranteed one to two hours of “me time” – which can be just as important as time spent together, especially for a couple who works largely from home. Whereas I like to spend that “me time” sprinting on the treadmill, practising Vinyasa or doing deadlifts, Mark can happily catch up on re-runs of Everybody Loves Raymond and pick up on chores that have been neglected (because one of us it at the gym again).