Shore Street Strength: a private personal training studio near the Shore in Leith, for people who don't like gyms

My son was nine months old and I couldn't lift the pram into the boot without my back complaining about it. I'd never set foot in a gym and I wasn't going to start in one full of twenty-year-olds.

Here it's just the two of you in the room. Ailsa started me with a kettlebell I could carry comfortably and we built from there, slowly, with a lot of talking in between. Nobody's watching. There's no mirror to catch yourself in.

Now I lift the pram, the shopping and the boy without thinking about it. Mostly, though, it's an hour a week that's mine.

I did my knee in stepping off a kerb, of all things, two years ago. Once the physio had signed me off I was frightened of it. Frightened of stairs, frightened of the garden, certainly frightened of a barbell.

Rory had me tell him exactly what the knee would and wouldn't do before I touched anything. We started with a wooden box and a bit of bodyweight. He stood beside me for every rep for the first few weeks, and then one day I noticed he'd stepped back a pace.

I'm sixty-one and I carry the compost bags up the garden now without a second thought. That's the whole point, for me.

I'd tried gyms three times. Each time I joined in January, went twice, and paid for a year of not going. The rooms were loud and full of people who seemed to know what they were doing.

This is a warehouse unit with a rack, a few bars and a window onto the water. Ailsa showed me how to hold the bar and where to put my feet, and let me get it wrong without making anything of it. We laughed a fair bit. It's the only exercise I've ever kept up.

I feel steadier now, on my feet and generally. I'm not training for anything. I just like being strong.