📙 Part 2: Describe an activity you do after school or work

This episode's vocabulary

Routine (noun) - a usual or fixed way of doing things.

Regime (noun) -  particular way of operating or organizing a business, etc.

To ramp sth up (phrasal verb) - to increase the speed, power, or cost of something.

Consistent (adj.) - always behaving or happening in a similar, especially positive, way.

To compliment (verb) - to praise or express admiration for someone.

Demanding (adj.) - needing a lot of time, attention, or energy/always behaving or happening in a similar, especially positive, way.

Self-discipline (noun) - the ability to make yourself do things you know you should do even when you do not want to.

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Questions and Answers

M: Now, Rory here from Scotland, is gonna talk about an activity he does after school or work. He's going to say what it is, where he does it, who he does it with, and he's going to explain how he feels about it. Rory, give us a shout out. Are you ready?

R: Yes.

M: Off you go.

R: Well, it's not every day, but it's regular enough to be like that. And actually, the whole routine takes up my entire week. So I'll go with that. I have an exercise and nutrition routine or regime, I suppose, that I follow every week. That usually involves going to the gym, and also the swimming pool, because there's a swimming pool next to the gym, where I go. I just go by myself, which is probably for the best, since it's quite a detailed and complicated set of instructions and measurements I have to follow. So that's quite important that I keep my concentration. Like I say, it's a regime in every sense of the word. In more detail every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening, after university or work, I go to the gym and follow the instructions set out by my old personal trainer. There's usually a different set of machines and weights to use every day. And this ramps up over the course of the month. There are two key exceptions to this. In the first week of the four, I have to take some lighter exercises and dial the weight back to under a little more, sorry, back to a little under that which I did before. And then in the fourth week, I go to do the same full-body set for each of the three days at a higher weight ratio than before. After all the workouts, regardless of, well, whichever machines I've used, I go to the gym, and then I walk home. Alongside this, I have a smaller set of less intense workouts that I do at home, and I have a diet that I keep pretty consistent to compliment all of my efforts elsewhere. I imagine that sounds quite demanding. But once you get into it's actually quite nice. And you learn to enjoy the process and the progress that you make. In terms of how I feel about it, obviously, if I could take a magic pill instead of spending all that time working out, then I would, but I've learned to enjoy the self-discipline of it all and the results, of course. It's been well worth the effort so far.

M: What about your friends? Do they do anything like that?

R: I have one friend who comes close, but he's a lot more knowledgeable about this than I am. So I suppose he spends less time on it.

M: Thank you, Rory! That was a lovely answer!

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